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

Gossett JM. Environment. Fishing for microbes. Science. 2002;298(5595):974-975.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mohd-Sarip A, Verrijzer CP. Molecular biology. A higher order of silence. Science. 2004;306(5701):1484-1485.

A journal article with 3 authors

Feinstein NW, Allen S, Jenkins E. Outside the pipeline: reimagining science education for nonscientists. Science. 2013;340(6130):314-317.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ho KI, Huang CH, Liao JH, et al. Fluorinated graphene as high performance dielectric materials and the applications for graphene nanoelectronics. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5893.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kuehni RG. Color. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Vaezi MF, ed. Diagnosis and Treatment of Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease. Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Papamichos E, Papanicolopulos SA, Larsen I. Mechanical Behaviour and Properties. In: Kourkoulis SK, ed. Fracture and Failure of Natural Building Stones: Applications in the Restoration of Ancient Monuments. Springer Netherlands; 2006:71-92.

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 E. New Mapping Effort To Help Battle Lyme Disease. IFLScience.

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. Highway Infrastructure: Quality Improvements Would Safeguard Billions of Dollars Already Invested. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dashevsky-Kerdman I. The Meeting of One Hundred Ways. Doctoral dissertation. Pacifica Graduate Institute; 2009.

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

Pilon M. Armstrong Finds a Mixed Reception in Triathlon. New York Times. October 11, 2012:B14.

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