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

Wadman M. US blood ban underlines CJD fears. Nature. 2001 Jul 5;412(6842):7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Enyeart PJ, Ellington AD. Synthetic biology: a yeast for all reasons. Nature. 2011 Sep 21;477(7365):413–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schweitzer MH, Wittmeyer JL, Horner JR. Gender-specific reproductive tissue in ratites and Tyrannosaurus rex. Science. 2005 Jun 3;308(5727):1456–60.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhou Y, Yao Y, Chen CY, Moon K, Wang H, Wong CP. The use of polyimide-modified aluminum nitride fillers in AlN@PI/epoxy composites with enhanced thermal conductivity for electronic encapsulation. Sci Rep. 2014 Apr 24;4:4779.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Olsson A. Understanding Changing Telecommunications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2005.

An edited book

Olsthoorn X, Wieczorek AJ, editors. Understanding Industrial Transformation: Views from Different Disciplines. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006. XX, 226 p. (Environment & Policy; vol. 44).

A chapter in an edited book

Gaillourdet JM, Michel P, Poetzsch-Heffter A, Rauch N. A Generic Functional Representation of Sorted Trees Supporting Attribution. In: Voronkov A, Weidenbach C, editors. Programming Logics: Essays in Memory of Harald Ganzinger. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 72–89. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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

Davis J. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Entire Population Of Single Species Counted For The First Time From Space. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/entire-population-of-single-species-counted-for-the-first-time-from-space/

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. Charter Schools: To Enhance Education’s Monitoring and Research, More Charter School-Level Data Are Needed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005 Jan. Report No.: GAO-05-5.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rafibakhsh N. Industrial Applications of Microsoft Xbox Kinect Sensor [Doctoral dissertation]. [Edwardsville, IL]: Southern Illinois 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. Check That Label, Jake. I Think It’s Chinatown. New York Times. 2003 Feb 9;147.

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