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]

R.J. Deshaies, Structural biology: Corralling a protein-degradation regulator, Nature. 512 (2014) 145–146.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Gleich, J. Weizenecker, Tomographic imaging using the nonlinear response of magnetic particles, Nature. 435 (2005) 1214–1217.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Y. Gutfreund, W. Zheng, E.I. Knudsen, Gated visual input to the central auditory system, Science. 297 (2002) 1556–1559.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P.A. Mazzali, F.K. Röpke, S. Benetti, W. Hillebrandt, A common explosion mechanism for type Ia supernovae, Science. 315 (2007) 825–828.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

P. Saguet, Numerical Analysis in Electromagnetics, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ USA, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

P.K. Jaiwal, R.P. Singh, O.P. Dhankher, eds., Genetic Manipulation in Plants for Mitigation of Climate Change, Springer India, New Delhi, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. González-Béjar, Silver Nanoparticles in Heterogeneous Plasmon Mediated Catalysis, in: E.I. Alarcon, M. Griffith, K.I. Udekwu (Eds.), Silver Nanoparticle Applications: In the Fabrication and Design of Medical and Biosensing Devices, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 71–92.

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]

D. Andrew, How A Nasty, Brain-Eating Parasite Could Help Us Fight Cancer, IFLScience. (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-a-nasty-braineating-parasite-could-help-us-fight-cancer/ (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, DHS IT Contracting: Steps Taken to Enhance EAGLE II Small Business Opportunities, but Better Assessment Data Needed, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2015.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. Ramirez, Perceived efficacy of the O*NET Skills Search Tool among individuals with high functioning autism, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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]

G.G. Gustines, Super Powers: Turning a Dime Into a Million Bucks, New York Times. (2010) WK2.

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