Clinical medicine
AMA Citation Generator
Create accurate AMA references for journal articles, books, clinical guidelines and websites. Paste a DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, URL, or title to get started.
Based on the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition
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AMA uses superscript numbers
References are numbered in order of appearance and cited with a superscript numeral placed after the punctuation.
- Single source
- trial.1
- Range
- trials.1-3
AMA citation examples by source type
Author initials run together with no full stops, the article title is in sentence case, and the journal abbreviation follows the PubMed list.
[1] Polack FP, Thomas SJ, Kitchin N, et al. Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(27):2603–2615. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
Above six names AMA prints the first three followed by et al. This is the rule people get wrong most often.
[2] Doll R, Hill AB. Smoking and carcinoma of the lung. Br Med J. 1950;2(4682):739–748. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.4682.739
Up to six names, list every one of them.
[3] Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. Published online Month DD, YYYY. doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx
No volume, issue or pages yet: give the online publication date and the DOI.
[4] Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. YYYY;12(3):100-110.
End after the page range. Do not substitute a URL for a DOI that does not exist.
The 11th edition dropped the place of publication. A book reference is now author, title, edition, publisher, year.
[5] Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science. 6th ed. McGraw Hill; 2021.
No city. If you are copying an older reference list, this is the field to delete.
[6] Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, eds. Title of Book. 3rd ed. Publisher; YYYY:100-125.
[7] Author AA. Title of Book. Publisher; YYYY. Accessed Month DD, YYYY. https://example.com/book
Online sources carry a publication date when there is one, an access date always, and the bare URL at the end with no full stop after it.
[8] World Health Organization. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Accessed August 15, 2026. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)
When the organisation is also the site name, AMA lets you print it once.
[9] Author AA. Title of page. Site Name. Published Month DD, YYYY. Accessed Month DD, YYYY. https://example.com/page
[10] Author AA. Title of page. Site Name. Updated Month DD, YYYY. Accessed Month DD, YYYY. https://example.com/page
Clinical guidelines, agency reports and package inserts are cited by the issuing body, with the report number when there is one.
[11] Issuing Body. Title of Report. Publisher; YYYY. Report No. NNNN. Accessed Month DD, YYYY. https://example.com/report
[12] Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. Title of guideline: a report of the Society Name task force. Journal Abbrev. YYYY;12(3):100-110. doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx
[13] Drug Name [package insert]. Manufacturer; YYYY.
Presentations that were never published as papers are cited by the meeting, with its date and place.
[14] Author AA, Author BB. Title of presentation. Presented at: Name of Meeting; Month DD-DD, YYYY; City, State.
[15] Author AA, Author BB. Title of abstract. Journal Abbrev. YYYY;12(suppl 3):S100. Abstract 1234.
[16] Author AA. Title of poster. Poster presented at: Name of Meeting; Month DD-DD, YYYY; City, State.
Theses give the degree, the awarding institution and the year, with an access date when read online.
[17] Author AA. Title of Dissertation. Dissertation. University Name; YYYY.
[18] Author AA. Title of Thesis. Thesis. University Name; YYYY.
[19] Author AA. Title of Dissertation. Dissertation. University Name; YYYY. Accessed Month DD, YYYY. https://example.com/thesis
Build your AMA bibliography
- [1] Vaswani A, Shazeer N, Parmar N, et al. Attention is all you need. Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 2017;30:5998–6008.
- [2] He K, Zhang X, Ren S, Sun J. Deep residual learning for image recognition. Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. 2016:770–778. doi:10.1109/CVPR.2016.90
- [3] Jinek M, Chylinski K, Fonfara I, Hauer M, Doudna JA, Charpentier E. A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity. Science. 2012;337(6096):816–821. doi:10.1126/science.1225829
- [4] Brown TB, Mann B, Ryder N, et al. Language models are few-shot learners. Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 2020;33:1877–1901.
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- Style-aware sorting Ordered and numbered for your style.
AMA citation rules at a glance
- Reference order Number sources by first appearance in the text, not alphabetically.
- In-text citations A superscript numeral after the punctuation: shown to be effective.1,2
- Author names Surname then initials with no full stops or spaces: Doudna JA, not Doudna, J. A.
- More than six authors Name the first three, then et al. Six or fewer, name all of them.
- Sentence case titles Article titles take sentence case. Only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.
- Books have no city The 11th edition dropped the place of publication: publisher and year only.
Checked against the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition · Last reviewed August 2026
Read our methodologyCommon AMA citation mistakes
- Keeping the city in a book reference The 11th edition removed it. An old reference list carried forward is the usual source of this one.
- Listing all seven or more authors Above six names AMA prints the first three followed by et al.
- Putting full stops in author initials AMA writes Doudna JA. No commas between surname and initials, no full stops inside them.
- Title case in article titles Article titles are sentence case. Journal names keep their capitalisation.
- Placing the superscript before the punctuation The numeral goes after the comma or full stop, not before it.
- Omitting the access date for an online source Anything cited from the web needs "Accessed" plus the full URL, even when it also has a DOI.
AMA quick reference (one page, PDF)
Element order for every source type, the three-author rule, superscript placement, and what the 11th edition changed. Print it, or hand it to a clinical rotation group.
- Reference patterns for eight source types, guidelines and package inserts included
- The more-than-six-authors rule with worked examples
- Superscript placement around punctuation
- What changed between the 10th and 11th editions
AMA citation generator FAQ
Is this AMA citation generator free?
Yes. Generate, copy, save, and export AMA citations without signing up. There is no paid tier and no export limit.
How are AMA references numbered?
By order of first appearance in your text. The reference list keeps that order, so reference 1 is the first source you cite. Our builder numbers the list for you as you add sources.
What does an AMA in-text citation look like?
A superscript numeral placed after the punctuation: the trial was stopped early.1 Consecutive sources are written 1-3; separate ones are written 1,4.
How many authors does AMA list before et al.?
Six. With six or fewer, name every author. With seven or more, name the first three and follow them with et al.
Can I cite by PubMed ID?
Yes. Paste the PMID into the generator and we pull the record from PubMed, which covers most biomedical articles, including older ones with no DOI.
Where does the citation metadata come from?
PubMed for biomedical literature, Crossref for DOIs, and Open Library for ISBNs. Nothing is written by a language model, so a volume or page range is either verified or left blank for you to fill in. See our methodology.
Create your AMA citation now.
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