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Citation Styles AMA (American Medical Association)

This guide will link you to citing styles for many disciplines

More Resources on AMA Style

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors.  This is an e-book

This book is also in the LHL Reference collection on the 1st floor.  Call number: WZ 345 AM35 2007.

Key Points to Remember

For article titles, only capitalize the first word and proper nouns and abbreviations that are ordinarily capitalized.

Use abbreviations of journal titles (use the PubMed Journals Database to get journal abbreviations).

References are numbered consecutively in the order they appear in the text.  All references are at the end of the paper under the heading Reference List.

Include DOIs for online articles.

Locating DOIs

If you have an article citation without a DOI, you can look up the DOI at CrossRef.org.

Likewise, if you have a DOI but not the citation information, you can look up the citation at DOI.org.

Some articles and journals do not provide DOIs--it is the publisher's preference to include or not to include a DOI. When citing an article without a DOI, check the style manual (APA, AMA, ect.) for guidance.

UpToDate

Examples of Citations for Books

Book with 1 Author/Editor:

Reference List:

Bollet AJ. Civil War Medicine: Challenges and Triumphs. Tucson, AZ: Galen Press; 2002.

Frumkin H, ed. Environmental Health: From Global to Local. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass; 2005.

Book with More than 1 Author/Editor: 

Reference List(For 2-6 authors/editors, list all; if 7 or more, list the first 3 followed by "et al.")

Kaplan C, Turner GS, Warrell DA. Rabies: The Facts. New York: Oxford University Press; 1986.

Marx JA, Hockberger RS, Walls RM, et al., eds. Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Mosby/Elsevier; 2010.

Examples of Citations for Blogs, Websites/Pages, Etc.

Website:

Reference List:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. http://www.cdc.gov. Accessed April 13, 2010.

Web Page:

Reference List:

Major earthquake in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti avoid nonessential travel to Haiti. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Website. http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/content/travel-health-warning/haiti-earthquake.aspx. Published January 13, 2010. Updated July 21, 2010. Accessed October 12, 2010.

E-mail:  E-mail and personal communications are not listed in the Reference List.  They should be included as in-text citations and should include the name and highest academic degrees of the sender.

In-text Citation:

(John Doe, Ph.D., e-mail communication, April 18, 2010)

Examples of Citations for Journal Articles

Print Article with 1 Author:

Reference List:

Cropley TG. Dermatology and skin disease in the American Civil War. Dermatol Nurs. 2008;20(1):29-33.

Print Article with More than 1 Author:

Reference List: (For 2-6 authors, list all; if 7 or more, list the first 3 followed by "et al.")

Rowney R, Barton G. The role of public health nursing in emergency preparedness and response. Nurs Clin North Am. 2005;40(3):499-509.

Seal AJ, Creeke PI, Dibari F, et al. Low and deficient niacin status and pellagra are epidemic in postwar Angola. Am J Clin Nutr. 2007;85(1):218-224.

Online Article:  (Include DOI if available; if DOI is not available, provide URL, published date, and date accessed.)

Reference List:

     DOI Available

Rowney R, Barton G. The role of public health nursing in emergency preparedness and response. Nurs Clin North Am. 2005;40(3):499-509. doi:10.1016/j.cnur.2005.04.005.

     DOI not available

Rowney R, Barton G. The role of public health nursing in emergency preparedness and response. Nurs Clin North Am. 2005;40(3):499-509.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0029646505000216. Accessed November 9, 2013.

 

In-text Citations

In-text citations are only used when a reference would not be included in a reference list, such as news articles, obituaries, and material submitted for publication but not yet accepted.

For in-text citations to articles:

  • author(s) should not be named
  • title of the article should not be given
  • title of the journal is abbreviated only when enclosed in parentheses
  • inclusive page numbers should be given

See Section 3.3 References Given in Text of the AMA Manual of Style for more information on in-text citations.