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

Bourzac K. Neuroscience: Rewiring the brain. Nature. 2015;522(7557):S50-2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Eisen JA, Fraser CM. Phylogenomics: intersection of evolution and genomics. Science. 2003;300(5626):1706-1707.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gregg JW, Jones CG, Dawson TE. Urbanization effects on tree growth in the vicinity of New York City. Nature. 2003;424(6945):183-187.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Herrmann E, Call J, Hernàndez-Lloreda MV, Hare B, Tomasello M. Humans have evolved specialized skills of social cognition: the cultural intelligence hypothesis. Science. 2007;317(5843):1360-1366.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fink JK. Metallized and Magnetic Polymers. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Loftus CM, ed. Anticoagulation and Hemostasis in Neurosurgery. Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Schomburg H, Teichler U. THE EDUCATIONAL PATHS AND ATTAINMENTS. In: Teichler U, ed. Higher Education and Graduate Employment in Europe: Results from Graduate Surveys from Twelve Countries. Higher Education Dynamics. Springer Netherlands; 2006:29-34.

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

Fang J. Royal ferns are “living fossils,” unchanged since the Jurassic. 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. Telecommunications: Preliminary Information on the Federal Communications Commission’s Spectrum Allocation and Assignment Process. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Alvandipour M. Thermographic Image Analysis with Gabor Filters. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University; 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

Kanter J, Kitsantonis N. Eurozone Agrees to Greece Debt Talks in Exchange for Bailout Payments. New York Times. February 20, 2017:B4.

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

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