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AMA Citation

A guide to citing sources according to American Medical Association's Manual of Style

Journal Citation Notes & Format

For more information see section 3.11 in the AMA Manual of Style, 11th ed.

Journal titles should use standard abbreviations of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Catalog. Search the NLM Catalog.

Prefer DOIs to URLs when available. No access date is needed for DOIs, but an access date is needed for URLs. Neither DOIs nor URLs should be followed with a period.

If you can't find the DOI for an article, you can use a DOI lookup tool.

For formatting for multiple authors and group authors, see the author name guidelines.

Author(s). Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Name. Year;vol(issue):inclusive pages. doi:xx.xxxx OR Accessed [date]. URL

Journal Articles

An example of an article without a DOI is included,4 but such citations should be increasingly rare as even older articles are being assigned DOIs.

  1. Wagh HD. Advocate for regional anesthesia in the corona pandemic? Reg Anesth Pain Med. 2021;46(2):186. doi:10.1136/rapm-2020-101464
  2. van den Brand FA, Candel MJJM, Nagelhout GE, Winkens B, van Schayck CP. How financial incentives increase smoking cessation: a two-level path analysis. Nicotine Tob Res. 2021;23(1):99-106. doi:10.1093/ntr/ntaa024
  3. Siebert JN, Ehrler F, Combescure C, et al. A mobile device app to reduce time to drug delivery and medication errors during simulated pediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation: a randomized controlled trial. J Med internet Res. 2017;19(2):e31. doi:10.2196/jmir.7005
  4. Tramer M, Moore A, McQuay H. Omitting nitrous oxide in general anaesthesia: meta-analysis of intraoperative awareness and postoperative emesis in randomized controlled trials. Br J Anaesth. 1996;76:186-193. Accessed August 11, 2016. http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/76/2/186.full.pdf

Preprints

Preprints are articles released before formal publication, therefore usually before peer-review. If a preprint is later published in a peer-reviewed journal, it can be cited using the normal AMA journal citation. However, according to the AMA manual, "The version cited should be the version used."

The example below is the same article in preprint5 and published in a peer-reviewed journal.6 As you can see, information like the title may change in the publication process.

  1. Shroff RT, Chalasani P, Wei R, et al. Immune responses to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in patients with solid tumors on active, immunosuppressive cancer therapy. Preprint. Posted August 25, 2021. medRxiv 2021.05.13.21257129. doi:10.1101/2021.05.13.21257129
  2. Shroff RT, Chalasani P, Wei R, et al. Immune responses to two and three doses of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in adults with solid tumors. Nat Med. 2021;27:2002-2011. doi:10.1038/s41591-021-01542-z

Retractions and Expressions of Concern

  1. Niu J, Sun Y, Chen B, et al. Retraction Note: Fatty acids and cancer-amplified ZDHHC19 promote STAT3 activation through S-palmitoylation. Nature. 2019;573(7772):139-143. Nature. 2020;583(7814):154. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2414-6
  2. Expression of concern: Functional analysis of the -2548G/A leptin gene polymorphism in breast cancer cells. Int J Cancer. 2009;125(5):1038-1044. Int J Cancer. 2020;147(12):E13. doi:10.1002/ijc.33275