How to format your references using the Lab on a Chip citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Lab on a Chip. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

M. Adler, Science, 2012, 335, 928–929.

A journal article with 2 authors

T. C. Mendelson and K. L. Shaw, Nature, 2005, 433, 375–376.

A journal article with 3 authors

W. de la Mare, N. Gales and M. Mangel, Science, 2014, 345, 1125–1126.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

S. Deville, E. Saiz, R. K. Nalla and A. P. Tomsia, Science, 2006, 311, 515–518.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

J. Trout and S. Rivkin, Differentiate or Die, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2008.

An edited book

D. P. Mohapatra and S. Patnaik, Eds., Intelligent Computing, Networking, and Informatics: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Computing, Networking, and Informatics, India, June 2013, Springer India, New Delhi, 2014, vol. 243.

A chapter in an edited book

L. Ruan and G. Zeng, in Emerging Infections in Asia, eds. Y. Lu, M. Essex and B. Roberts, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2008, pp. 75–96.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Lab on a Chip.

Blog post

T. Hale, The Bizarre Story Of Japan’s First Astronaut, https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-bizarre-story-of-japans-first-astronaut/, (accessed 30 October 2018).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office, International Space Station: Approaches for Ensuring Utilization through 2020 Are Reasonable but Should Be Revisited as NASA Gains More Knowledge of On-Orbit Performance, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2011.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

D. An, Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, 2017.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

B. Rothenberg, New York Times, 2017, D3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ¹.
This sentence cites two references ^1,2.
This sentence cites four references ^1–4.

About the journal

Full journal title	Lab on a Chip
Abbreviation	Lab Chip
ISSN (print)	1473-0197
ISSN (online)	1473-0189
Scope	Biochemistry Bioengineering General Chemistry Biomedical Engineering