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

Komar AA. Genetics. SNPs, silent but not invisible. Science. 2007 Jan 26;315(5811):466–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hartung T, Rovida C. Chemical regulators have overreached. Nature. 2009 Aug 27;460(7259):1080–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

Widom CS, Czaja SJ, DuMont KA. Intergenerational transmission of child abuse and neglect: real or detection bias? Science. 2015 Mar 27;347(6229):1480–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Vlad A, Singh N, Rolland J, Melinte S, Ajayan PM, Gohy JF. Hybrid supercapacitor-battery materials for fast electrochemical charge storage. Sci Rep. 2014 Mar 7;4:4315.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Garber R. BIM Design. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

Rider S, Hasselberg Y, Waluszewski A, editors. Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market: The Breakdown of Scientific Thought. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013. VI, 222 p. (Higher Education Dynamics; vol. 39).

A chapter in an edited book

Krejza J, Swiat M, Tomaszewski M, Melhem ER. Sickle Cell Disease and Stroke. In: Medina LS, Applegate KE, Blackmore CC, editors. Evidence-Based Imaging in Pediatrics: Optimizing Imaging in Pediatric Patient Care. New York, NY: Springer; 2010. p. 53–69.

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

O`Callaghan J. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Why Was A Leap Second Added To 2016? Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/why-was-a-leap-second-added-to-2016/

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. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: FAA Must Act Quickly to Prevent Systems Failures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 Feb. Report No.: T-AIMD-98-63.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Simmons-Johnson N. The path to graduation: A model interactive Web site design supporting doctoral students [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

Higgins A. In Measured Speech, Putin Calls for ‘Mutually Beneficial’ Ties With U.S. New York Times. 2016 Dec 1;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