How to format your references using the The American Journal of the Medical Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 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	Download the output style file
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

Rasio FA. Astronomy. A black widow’s best friend? Science. 2011;333(6050):1712-1713.

A journal article with 2 authors

Maloy KJ, Powrie F. Intestinal homeostasis and its breakdown in inflammatory bowel disease. Nature. 2011;474(7351):298-306.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang Y, Lu H, Bargmann CI. Pathogenic bacteria induce aversive olfactory learning in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature. 2005;438(7065):179-184.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Fennell T, Deen PP, Wildes AR, et al. Magnetic Coulomb phase in the spin ice Ho2Ti2O7. Science. 2009;326(5951):415-417.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shi ZJ. Homogeneous Catalysis for Unreactive Bond Activation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Zini G. Solar Hydrogen Energy Systems: Science and Technology for the Hydrogen Economy. (Tartarini P, ed.). Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

van Eemeren F, Garssen B, Meuffels B. The Opening Stage: The Obligation-to-Defend Rule (I). In: Garssen B, Meuffels B, eds. Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness: Empirical Research Concerning the Pragma-Dialectical Discussion Rules. Argumentation Library. Springer Netherlands; 2009:111-137.

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 The American Journal of the Medical Sciences.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J. First United Nations Space Mission To Launch On A Space Plane In 2021. 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. FWS: Migratory Bird Hunting--Late Seasons and Bag Possession Limits for Certain Migratory Game Birds. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Horning CL. Kinesthetic Learning in Algebra and Its Effects on Students’ Achievement and Disposition toward Mathemathics. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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

Vecsey G. Suddenly, Jeter’s Not Fine. New York Times. June 15, 2011: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	The American Journal of the Medical Sciences
Abbreviation	Am. J. Med. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0002-9629
Scope	General Medicine