How to format your references using the American Medical Writers Association Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Medical Writers Association Journal. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Haufe G. Chemistry. Putting a greenhouse gas to work. Science. 2012;338(6112):1298.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fitoussi C, Bourdon B. Silicon isotope evidence against an enstatite chondrite Earth. Science. 2012;335(6075):1477-1480.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yamamoto Y, Stock DW, Jeffery WR. Hedgehog signalling controls eye degeneration in blind cavefish. Nature. 2004;431(7010):844-847.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wei DJ, Liu Q, Zhang HX, Hu Y, Deng Y, Mahadevan S. Box-covering algorithm for fractal dimension of weighted networks. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3049.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wesley LD. Geotechnical Engineering in Residual Soils. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Zaoral R, ed. Money and Finance in Central Europe during the Later Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Gazonas GA, Main JA. Air Blast Loading of Cellular Media. In: Gdoutos EE, ed. Experimental Analysis of Nano and Engineering Materials and Structures: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Experimental Mechanics, Alexandroupolis, Greece, July 1–6, 2007. Springer Netherlands; 2007:11-12.

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 American Medical Writers Association Journal.

Blog post

Davis J. SpaceX To Deliver Radiation-Eating Fungi From Chernobyl To The ISS. IFLScience. Published July 18, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-to-deliver-radiationeating-fungi-from-chernobyl-to-the-iss/

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

Government Accountability Office. USDA Telecommunications: Better Management and Network Planning Could Save Millions. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Huang YF. The Effects of Two Methods on Training EFL University Students in Taiwan to Identify Three Non-Native Phonemic Contrasts. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University; 2013.

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

Crow K. Mott Street as a Path to Revolution For the Father of Modern China. New York Times. September 1, 2002:145.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	American Medical Writers Association Journal
ISSN (print)	1075-6361
Scope