How to format your references using the JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) (JAMA). 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

Lane J. Let’s make science metrics more scientific. Nature. 2010;464(7288):488-489.

A journal article with 2 authors

Green DR, Kroemer G. The pathophysiology of mitochondrial cell death. Science. 2004;305(5684):626-629.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hinrichs KU, Hmelo LR, Sylva SP. Molecular fossil record of elevated methane levels in late Pleistocene coastal waters. Science. 2003;299(5610):1214-1217.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bjørnstad ON, Sait SM, Stenseth NC, Thompson DJ, Begon M. The impact of specialized enemies on the dimensionality of host dynamics. Nature. 2001;409(6823):1001-1006.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

The American Ceramic Society. Progress in Nanotechnology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Krawetz S, ed. Bioinformatics for Systems Biology. Humana Press; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Chen Y, Wu F, Wang N, Tang K, Cheng M, Chen X. KeJia-LC: A Low-Cost Mobile Robot Platform — Champion of Demo Challenge on Benchmarking Service Robots at RoboCup 2015. In: Almeida L, Ji J, Steinbauer G, Luke S, eds. RoboCup 2015: Robot World Cup XIX. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing; 2015:60-71.

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 JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association).

Blog post

Andrew D. Poo Transplants And Probiotics – Does Anything Work To Improve The Health Of Our Gut? IFLScience. October 20, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/poo-transplants-and-probiotics-does-anything-work-to-improve-the-health-of-our-gut/

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. Assistance Provided for the Construction of Higher Education Academic Facilities. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

RinconGallardo TJ. The Effect of the Use of Learning Journals on the Development of Metacognition in Undergraduate Students. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University; 2010.

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

Corkery M, Silver-Greenberg J. Store-Branded Credit Cards Buoy Struggling Retailers, but Mask Their Pain. New York Times. May 11, 2017:A16.

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	JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association)
Abbreviation	JAMA
ISSN (print)	0098-7484
ISSN (online)	1538-3598
Scope	General Medicine