How to format your references using the Laboratory Investigation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Laboratory Investigation. 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

Kormendy, J. Galactic rotation in real time. Nature 407, 307, 309 (2000).

A journal article with 2 authors

Ingolia, N. T. & Murray, A. W. Signal transduction. History matters. Science 297, 948–949 (2002).

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, H., Li, W. X. & Ding, S. W. Induction and suppression of RNA silencing by an animal virus. Science 296, 1319–1321 (2002).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Ohtsuki, H., Hauert, C., Lieberman, E. & Nowak, M. A. A simple rule for the evolution of cooperation on graphs and social networks. Nature 441, 502–505 (2006).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ham, B. M. Proteomics of Biological Systems. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2011).

An edited book

Dincer, I. Clean Rail Transportation Options. (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Giaquinta, M. & Modica, G. Differential Forms. in Mathematical Analysis: Foundations and Advanced Techniques for Functions of Several Variables (ed. Modica, G.) 213–282 (Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 2012).

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 Laboratory Investigation.

Blog post

Hale, T. Dig Begins For Legendary Nazi Gold Train. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/dig-begins-for-legendary-nazi-gold-train/ (2016).

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. Establishment of a Central Focal Point for Telecommunications Matters. (1978).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Robles, S. Transient over-voltages generated by solar photovoltaic inverters. (California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2013).

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

Rothenberg, B. A Cosmetics Company Bets on Underdogs. New York Times B1 (2017).

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	Laboratory Investigation
Abbreviation	Lab. Invest.
ISSN (print)	0023-6837
ISSN (online)	1530-0307
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Pathology and Forensic Medicine