How to format your references using the Practical Laboratory Medicine citation style

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

[1]

K.A. Williams, Three-dimensional structure of the ion-coupled transport protein NhaA, Nature 403 (2000) 112–115.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

C.M.B.K. Kourra, N. Cramer, Catalysis: Gold unleashes the power of three, Nature 517 (2015) 440–441.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

L. Liu, S. Spasojevic, M. Gurnis, Reconstructing Farallon plate subduction beneath North America back to the Late Cretaceous, Science 322 (2008) 934–938.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

M.K. Vartiainen, S. Guettler, B. Larijani, R. Treisman, Nuclear actin regulates dynamic subcellular localization and activity of the SRF cofactor MAL, Science 316 (2007) 1749–1752.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. Fasano, Engineer Your Own Success, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

J.A. Lozano, P. Larrañaga, I. Inza, E. Bengoetxea, eds., Towards a New Evolutionary Computation: Advances in the Estimation of Distribution Algorithms, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

H. Liu, F.D. Coms, J. Zhang, H.A. Gasteiger, A.B. LaConti, Chemical Degradation: Correlations Between Electrolyzer and Fuel Cell Findings, in: F.N. Büchi, M. Inaba, T.J. Schmidt (Eds.), Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Durability, Springer, New York, NY, 2009: pp. 71–118.

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 Practical Laboratory Medicine.

Blog post

[1]

J. Davis, Scientists Plan to Spy on Sharks Using Camera Traps, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scientists-plan-spy-sharks-using-camera-traps/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Government Civil Aircraft: Longstanding Management Problems, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E.O. Kidder, Self-administered HPV Testing as a Cervical Cancer Screening Option: Exploring the Perspectives of Hispanic and Arab Women in the United States, Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, 2014.

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

[1]

J. Barron, Flash Photography Allowed (When It’s Your Tour Guide), New York Times (2017) A16.

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	Practical Laboratory Medicine
Abbreviation	Pract. Lab. Med.
ISSN (print)	2352-5517
Scope