How to format your references using the Lasers in Medical Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Lasers in Medical Science. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Smaglik P (2003) Wrapped in red tape. Nature 423:783

A journal article with 2 authors

Grzybowski BA, Whitesides GM (2002) Dynamic aggregation of chiral spinners. Science 296:718–721

A journal article with 3 authors

Wong CP, Luo S, Zhang Z (2000) MICROELECTRONICS: Flip the Chip. Science 290:2269–2270

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Sarin KY, Cheung P, Gilison D, et al (2005) Conditional telomerase induction causes proliferation of hair follicle stem cells. Nature 436:1048–1052

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pohl J (2011) Building Science. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, UK

An edited book

Lawless CE (2011) Sports Cardiology Essentials: Evaluation, Management and Case Studies. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Eftekhari SR (2012) Intellectual Property Rights in E-business Environment: Paradigm Shifts of Legal and Political Measures. In: Khachidze V, Wang T, Siddiqui S, et al (eds) Contemporary Research on E-business Technology and Strategy: International Conference, iCETS 2012, Tianjin, China, August 29-31, 2012, Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 54–61

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 Lasers in Medical Science.

Blog post

Carpineti A (2017) The Wow! Signal Sorted? Not So Fast! In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-wow-signal-sorted-not-so-fast/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1996) Aviation Safety: Targeting and Training of FAA’s Safety Inspector Workforce. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jekanowski EC (2017) District Leadership and Systemic Inclusion: A Case Study of One Inclusive and Effective School District. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University

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

Williams J (2017) Going After Big Prey. New York Times BR6

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Lasers in Medical Science
Abbreviation	Lasers Med. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0268-8921
ISSN (online)	1435-604X
Scope	Dermatology Surgery