AMA Citation Generator

Paste one thing into the search box and the AMA citation generator works out what it is before looking it up.

AMA format generator lookups: DOIs, ISBNs, links and titles

• A DOI (it starts with 10.) is looked up at doi.org, with Crossref as a backup. It is the fastest route for articles you found in PubMed, CINAHL or a journal site; the DOI is on the article's first page.
• An ISBN is looked up in Open Library, then Google Books.
• A web address is read for the page's own title, author, date and site name. If the page carries a DOI, the DOI record is used instead.
• A title is searched in Crossref and Open Library, closest matches first. The lookup doesn't take PubMed IDs, so copy the DOI from the PubMed record.

Every result says how sure it is

The AMA format generator never guesses a missing detail. A result is marked Source details matched when it came from a database record, Details need review when fields are missing or came from the web page, and Entered by you for manual entries. Missing fields are highlighted.

AMA references are compact: initials with no periods, no "and" between authors, and a dense year-volume-pages block. Each part of this AMA reference format table comes from the Polack reference the AMA citation generator produced.

AMA citation format example: what to fix by hand

Two things depend on you, not the database. First, article titles go in sentence case: only the first word, proper nouns and abbreviations such as mRNA are capitalized. The tool prints the title as it is entered, and DOI lookups usually return title case, so retype it. Second, journal titles are abbreviated. DOI lookups return the full name, so type the abbreviation into Journal name. You can look up a journal's official abbreviation in the NLM Catalog. One-word titles such as Nature, Pediatrics or JAMA stay as they are.

Books and the city of publication

The 11th edition dropped the publisher's city, so the AMA reference format for a book is author, italic title, edition, publisher and year: Gawande A. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. Metropolitan Books; 2014. An edition number such as 3rd ed. goes after the title.

Every AMA in-text citation is a superscript number that points to the matching entry in your numbered list. The AMA citation generator's In-text tab shows it as a raised number, and Copy keeps it raised when you paste into Word or Google Docs.

AMA format in text citation rules

• Placement: put the number right after the fact or quote it supports. It goes outside periods and commas and inside colons and semicolons, as in "Sleep loss raises accident risk.¹"
• Same source again: reuse its original number every time.
• Several sources: separate numbers with commas and no spaces (²,⁵), and join three or more in a row with a hyphen (³⁻⁶).
• Author named in the sentence: name the author and still add the number: Gawande³ argues that...

Adding a page number

For a direct quote, type the page in the page box. The citation becomes a superscript 1(p738), the AMA form for a specific page. The full page range stays in the reference.

Each source type has its own form in the AMA format citation generator, with only the fields that type needs.

Journal articles

Paste the DOI. Authors, title, journal, year, volume, issue and pages fill in. Retype the title in sentence case and abbreviate the journal. With seven or more authors, the AMA citation generator prints three and et al.

Books and book chapters

Paste the ISBN, then check the author, edition and year. For a chapter of an edited textbook, choose Book chapter and add the editors and pages.

AMA format website references

Paste the URL. The reference gives the author or organization, the page title, the site name, the date, an Accessed date and the URL. The Accessed date is today's date unless you change it. Some AMA guides put Published or Updated before the date; add the word by hand if your instructor wants it.

Reports, guidelines and government documents

Clinical guidelines and CDC or NIH reports are cited as reports. Choose Report under More and enter the organization as the author, then the title, the agency as publisher, the year and the link.

News and videos

News stories come back as the Newspaper type. For a video, choose Film or video and check the result against your course guide.

In AMA style, the first source you cite is 1, the next new source is 2, and so on. The AMA citation generator numbers your list in the order you add sources, so the simplest habit is to add each source the moment you first cite it in your draft.

How the numbering works

• The preview for a single source always shows 1; the real number comes from its place on your list.
• The list can't be reordered by dragging; remove a source and add it again to move it.
• Add each source once. If you try to add it twice, the tool tells you it is already listed.

Saved lists in your browser

Keep a list per assignment, such as "NURS 310 evidence-based practice paper". A list holds up to 300 sources. Lists are saved in your browser's local storage on this device, so they don't follow you to another computer, and clearing browser data deletes them.

Download formats

• Download for Word gives a .docx file with a bold References heading, each number tab-aligned with the text, Times New Roman 12 pt and 1.15 line spacing.
• Copy all copies the numbered list.
• More formats gives plain text, RIS (Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote) and BibTeX (LaTeX, Overleaf).

The AMA citation generator formats references and in-text citations only. It doesn't build a title page or lay out your paper, so the points below are guidance to set up yourself. The AMA Manual of Style is written for journal manuscripts, so your program's template or rubric always comes first.

AMA format title page

Journals that follow AMA style ask for a title page with the title, authors' names, degrees and affiliations, a corresponding author and a word count. Many US courses use a simpler cover page: title, your name, the course (for example NURS 310), your instructor and the date. If your instructor wants an APA-style title page, the APA Title Page Generator sets one out.

AMA heading format

Research papers in AMA journals usually follow the IMRAD pattern: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. Follow your rubric's names for each section, such as Background or Implications for Practice.

AMA format tables

Number tables in the order you mention them (Table 1, Table 2), with a short title above each. Check your length with the Word Counter, which can leave the References list out of the count.

The AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, 11th edition, was written by the JAMA Network editors and published by Oxford University Press in 2020. It is the style of JAMA and the JAMA Network journals, and many other medical and health-science journals follow it. For a free summary with examples, see the UNF Library guide to AMA 11th edition.

What this AMA format generator uses

References are formatted with the Citation Style Language project's AMA 11th edition style file: numbers in citation order, superscript in-text citations, initials without periods, three authors then et al. for seven or more, italic journal and book titles, the year-volume-pages block, and Accessed dates for online sources.

Who uses AMA style in the US

You will meet AMA in medical, physician assistant, pharmacy and public health courses, in some nursing programs, and in pre-med research classes. Many US nursing programs use APA 7, so check your syllabus first; if it says APA, use the APA Citation Machine.

The same 1953 Nature article in three styles, from this site's generators (the APA title retyped with a capital after the colon, as APA requires).

AMA and Vancouver both number sources in citation order. AMA italicizes the journal, uses superscripts and gives full page ranges; the Vancouver Citation Generator follows the NLM's Citing Medicine instead. APA is alphabetical and names authors in the text. For sociology papers, see the ASA Citation Generator, or browse every style on the citation machines page.

If you are told to switch to an alphabetical style later, the Alphabetizer sorts a pasted list by last name.

The AMA citation generator is free, with no account and a fair-use cap of 60 lookups every 10 minutes. Here is where your information goes.

• Lookups: what you type in the search box goes to our server, which asks doi.org, then Crossref, for DOIs; Open Library, then Google Books, for ISBNs; Crossref and Open Library for titles; or the public page you linked, for URLs. Results are cached in server memory for up to six hours.
• Formatting: source details are sent to our server, formatted, and sent back. They are not stored.
• Your lists: saved lists are stored only in your browser's local storage. When a list is formatted, its sources' details are sent to our server and back, and not stored.

The AMA format citation generator never asks for your paper or any patient information, and you should never enter patient details in a citation.

References in this AMA citation generator are formatted by citeproc-js, the open-source citation processor used by Zotero and Mendeley, with the Citation Style Language project's AMA Manual of Style 11th edition style file. That file is maintained by Zotero and CSL volunteers; it is not published by the American Medical Association. The same engine powers the MLA Citation Maker and the IEEE Citation Generator.