Skip to Main Content

Citation Resources

Your one stop shop for citation information!

AMA Style (American Medical Association)

AMA style of citations was created for the JAMA network for use by their editors and authors of research submitted to their publications.  It is primarily used by medical researchers.

Why use AMA style? For publication in any of the journals in the JAMA network.  For those in the medical field to have effective consistency in their explorations of information, and for researchers to be able to scan quickly for key points and sources of information.

Citations are listed at the end of the body of the paper under the title “Reference”.  Parenthetical citations in-text should not be used unless in a situation where a reference list would not be used, as in a news article. For other formatting information use the AMA Manual of Style 11th edition listed below.

The citations in the guide are general citations from the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style. For more information and more details on the formatting, writing, and citing of papers see the resources listed below.  And remember you can always ask a librarian!

Basic book citation example:

     1.  Patterson JW. Weedon's Skin Pathology. 4th ed. Churchill Livingstone; 2016.

This example shows first the author's surname followed by initials, the title in italics, edition of book, publisher, and finally year of publication. (Citation found on page 82 of the AMA Manual of Style 11th edition.)

For further examples and examples of difference types of books and book chapters follow the links below.

 

Basic article citation:

  1.  Allison MA, Hurley LP, Markowitz L, et al. Primary care physicians' perspectives about HPV vaccine. Pediatrics. 2016;137(2):e20152488.         doi:10.1542/peds.2015-2488

This example starts with the author's surname followed by initials for all authors, the title of the article, followed by the abbreviated title of the Journal in italics, the year of publication, the location with pagination in parenthesis followed by the DOI.  (This citation can be found on page 73 of the AMA Manual of Style 11th ed.)

For further examples and examples of different types of articles see the resources below.

Basic website citation example:

  1. International Society for Infectious Diseases. PRoMED-Mail. Accessed February 10, 2016. http://www.promedmail.org

In this example, we have the name of the group responsible for the website, the title of the website, the date accessed, followed finally by the URL. (This example from page 94 of the AMA Manual of Style 11th ed.)

For further examples and examples of different electronic resources see the resources below.

For how to cite all other types of resources including Theses and Dissertations, comments Patents and more, and more in-depth information for the types of citations listed in this guide.