How to format your references using the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (CMAJ). 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

Witten E. Unravelling string theory. Nature. 2005 Dec 22;438(7071):1085.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cox E, Bonner J. Ecology. The advantages of togetherness. Science. 2001 Apr 20;292(5516):448–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cohn A, Fehr E, Maréchal MA. Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry. Nature. 2014 Dec 4;516(7529):86–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Goodnow CC, Sprent J, Fazekas de St Groth B, Vinuesa CG. Cellular and genetic mechanisms of self tolerance and autoimmunity. Nature. 2005 Jun 2;435(7042):590–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Drake PP, Fabozzi FJ. Foundations and Applications of the Time Value of Money. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Wang L, Shafiq B, editors. Data and Applications Security and Privacy XXVII: 27th Annual IFIP WG 11.3 Conference, DBSec 2013, Newark, NJ, USA, July 15-17, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XIV, 305 p. 71 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 7964).

A chapter in an edited book

Gentile NA. Implicit Monte Carlo Radiation Transport Simulations of Four Test Problems. In: Graziani F, editor. Computational Methods in Transport: Verification and Validation. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 135–50. (Barth TJ, Griebel M, Keyes DE, Nieminen RM, Roose D, Schlick T, editors. Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering).

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 CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Flat Semiconductors Possible With New Material. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/flat-semiconductors-possible-new-material/

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. Food Update, Volume 2, Issue 4. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977 Jul. Report No.: 103384.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Laffitte L. A Comparison of Pull-Out and Co-Teaching Models on the Reading Performance of Third through Fifth Grade Elementary Students with a Diagnosed Specific Learning Disability in Reading [Doctoral dissertation]. [Malibu, CA]: Pepperdine University; 2012.

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

Barnard A, Gordon MR. Aid Convoy Is Hit in Syria as Cease-Fire Falters and Bombings Resume. New York Times. 2016 Sep 19;A4.

In-text citations

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

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	CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
Abbreviation	CMAJ
ISSN (print)	0820-3946
ISSN (online)	1488-2329
Scope	General Medicine