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

Robinson, G. E. EVOLUTION. Dissecting diversity in the social brain. Science 350, 1310–1312 (2015).

A journal article with 2 authors

Deschenes, L. A. & Vanden Bout, D. A. Single-molecule studies of heterogeneous dynamics in polymer melts near the glass transition. Science 292, 255–258 (2001).

A journal article with 3 authors

Román-Leshkov, Y., Chheda, J. N. & Dumesic, J. A. Phase modifiers promote efficient production of hydroxymethylfurfural from fructose. Science 312, 1933–1937 (2006).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Bogdan, P., Deasy, B. M., Gharaibeh, B., Roehrs, T. & Marculescu, R. Heterogeneous structure of stem cells dynamics: statistical models and quantitative predictions. Sci. Rep. 4, 4826 (2014).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pratt, T. H. Electrostatic Ignitions of Fires and Explosions. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2010).

An edited book

Encyclopedia of Terminology for Educational Communications and Technology. (Springer, New York, NY, 2013).

A chapter in an edited book

Bernardi, C., Auriault, C., Bourrilhon, M. & Maruzewski, P. Numerical Modeling: A Tool for the Decision-Making Process. in Advances in Hydroinformatics: SIMHYDRO 2012 – New Frontiers of Simulation (eds. Gourbesville, P., Cunge, J. & Caignaert, G.) 47–64 (Springer, Singapore, 2014).

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

Andrew, E. Clouds Of Water Vapour Detected Just 7 Light-Years Away. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/space/clouds-water-vapour-detected-just-7-light-years-away/ (2014).

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. Transmittal of Comptroller General Decision on the Transportation Security Administration’s Time and Attendance Approval System. (2003).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Layer, B. D. Structured plasma waveguides and deep EUV generation enabled by intense laser-cluster interactions. (University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, 2012).

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

Vecsey, G. Football Coaches Find Stress And Satisfaction. New York Times D1 (2010).

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