AMA Citation Generator
Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.
Paste a PubMed ID or DOI and get an AMA 11th edition reference, numbered in citation order, with the journal's NLM abbreviation taken from the PubMed record. Upload a .nbib export from PubMed to do a whole reference list at once.
How to create AMA citations
Step 1
Paste your sources in citation order
AMA numbers references by first citation, so paste them in the order they appear in your manuscript. PubMed IDs, DOIs and PubMed links all work, up to 50, one per line. From PubMed you can also send results to a file (.nbib) and upload it.
Step 2
Choose Reference list
AMA is already the style. Reference list numbers the set 1 to n; Single citation formats each source alone; In-text citation gives the superscript number.
Step 3
Copy
Copy all takes the numbered list with the journal names in italics.
AMA reference format, with examples
Real references from the generator.
Journal article, seven or more authors
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
Journal article, up to six authors
2. LeCun Y, Bengio Y, Hinton G. Deep learning. Nature. 2015;521(7553):436-444. doi:10.1038/nature14539
Book
3. Kahneman D. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Penguin; 2012.
Chapter in an edited book (from a .bib entry)
4. Rumelhart DE, Hinton GE, Williams RJ. Learning representations by back-propagating errors. In: Anderson JA, Rosenfeld E, eds. Neurocomputing: Foundations of Research. MIT Press; 1988:696-699.
The AMA rules it applies
- Authors: surname and initials with no full stops, LeCun Y. Up to six are listed; with seven or more, the first three and et al.
- Article titles without quotation marks. AMA wants them in sentence case; the generator keeps each title as the publisher registered it, so lowercase one that arrives in Title Case, like the NEJM title above ("Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine"), keeping names. Book titles in italics and title case.
- Journal names abbreviated the NLM way and in italics: N Engl J Med, not New England Journal of Medicine.
- Date, volume, issue and pages run together: 2020;383(27):2603-2615, with the full page range.
- DOI at the end, as doi:10.xxxx with no space and no full stop after it.
If a record comes back with the full journal name, the publisher did not deposit an abbreviation. Look the journal up in the NLM Catalog and use its "NLM Title Abbreviation".
AMA in-text citations
AMA cites with superscript numbers, placed outside full stops and commas: "...was 95% effective.1" With a page: 1(p2605). Several sources: 1,3 or 2-4.
The generator gives the number and the page form, 1(p2605). Copied text arrives as plain text, so make it superscript in your document: Ctrl+Shift+= in Word, Ctrl+. in Google Docs (Cmd on a Mac).
Frequently asked questions
Up to six authors are listed in full. With seven or more, list the first three followed by et al. Vancouver differs here: it lists the first six.
No, though both are numbered medical styles. AMA uses superscript numbers, italic journal names, full page ranges and the DOI; Vancouver uses numbers in parentheses, no italics and shortened page ranges. Use the Vancouver citation generator if your journal asks for Vancouver or ICMJE style.
The AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition (2020), used by JAMA and many medical journals.
Only if it has a DOI or PubMed ID. Many guidelines do, as journal articles. Package inserts and web-only guidance do not, so write those by hand.
It is the number labelled PMID under the abstract on PubMed, and the last part of the PubMed address: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33301246/. You can paste the whole link.
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