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BibTeX to AMA Converter

Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.

Paste bib file and convert it to AMA. The official CSL American Medical Association style file is used (the same one Zotero ships), author names render in AMA’s surname-then-initials form (“LeCun Y, Bengio Y”), accent macros come through correctly, and the entry type can be overridden per row.

How to convert BibTeX to AMA online

Visit the BibTeX to AMA tool page You’re already here. Bookmark thelatexlab.com/bibtex-to-ama/ for next time.
Step 1
Upload or paste your .bib Drop a .bib file using the upload button, or paste the BibTeX text directly. Single entries and large libraries both work. If you started from PubMed exports, see /pubmed-to-bibtex/ for the cleanest PMID-to-BibTeX path first.
Step 2
Confirm AMA is the right target AMA is the style most JAMA-network and several other clinical journals use. The output here is AMA’s reference list – numbered, surname-initials author format. If your target is Vancouver (the closely-related ICMJE-recommended style used by NEJM, BMJ, and most ICMJE journals), /bibtex-to-vancouver/ is the closer match.
Step 3
Convert, then copy or download Each entry renders as a numbered AMA reference with a per-row entry-type override and Copy button. Use Copy all at the bottom to grab the whole list in one go.
Step 4
Parsing and rendering both happen in your browser – the .bib content never leaves the tab. Entries that fail to render show up inline with the reason so you can fix or drop them without losing the rest of the batch.

Where most BibTeX to AMA converters break

They render a custom interpretation, not the official one AMA’s reference format is defined by the AMA Manual of Style (11th edition, 2020). The official CSL AMA style follows that spec. Plenty of free converters render their own interpretation – usually based on an older AMA edition or a confusion with Vancouver. The tool uses the official AMA style from the CSL Style Repository – the same source Zotero, Mendeley, and Pandoc use.
official AMA CSL repo
Author names come out comma-separated instead of “LeCun Y” AMA uses surname followed by space-separated initials with no period: “LeCun Y, Bengio Y, Hinton G”. Converters that don’t honour per-style name ordering rules render the surname-comma-initials form (“LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., Hinton, G.”) regardless of the chosen style. The CSL AMA renderer formats names correctly.
LeCun Y no comma, no period
Accent macros end up in the output A BibTeX entry with author = {Kr{\"a}mer, M.} should render as “Krämer M” in AMA. Converters that don’t parse BibTeX accent macros either pass them through (Kr"amer) or crash. The tool uses Citation.js’ BibTeX parser, which handles the full accent-macro set, brace-nested protection, and BibLaTeX field aliases.
Krämer M accent macros parsed
Entry type tagged wrong upstream AMA renders @article very differently from @incollection (book chapter) or @book. Europe PMC and many clinical reference managers tag book chapters and edited volumes inconsistently. The tool exposes a per-row entry-type override that switches the type and re-renders the citation without leaving the page.
Override per-result dropdown
Output is plain text by default. For HTML with italic journal and book titles, switch the To pill to “HTML” and re-render. Compressed PubMed page ranges (436-44) are expanded to 436-444 by our underlying engine when records came in via PMID lookup – consistent with what JAMA-network reviewers expect.

Frequently asked questions

They overlap a lot but aren’t identical. AMA is the style the AMA Manual of Style defines; JAMA, JAMA Network journals, and many US clinical journals use it. Vancouver is the ICMJE-recommended style used by NEJM, BMJ, The Lancet, and most ICMJE-affiliated journals worldwide. Differences are mostly in punctuation, author count cutoffs, and a few field orderings. Check your journal’s instructions – most state which one they require explicitly. If your target is Vancouver, /bibtex-to-vancouver/ is the closer match.

The 11th edition (2020), the current one. The 10th edition (2007) had different rules for online sources, DOIs, and electronic-only journals – if your target journal still references the 10th edition, the output will mostly match modern expectations but you may need a few hand-edits.

The AMA style renders whatever name is in the journal field of the BibTeX entry. AMA submissions want NLM-abbreviated names (N Engl J Med, not The New England Journal of Medicine). If your .bib has the full form, you’ll need to abbreviate – many citation managers have a “use abbreviated journal names” option that does this at export. /pubmed-to-bibtex/ emits the full title (because that’s what most styles want); for AMA, you may want to post-process or use a citation manager that abbreviates.

Three common culprits: (1) the file is actually NBIB from PubMed (use /nbib-to-bibtex/); (2) a missing closing brace – one bad entry blocks the parser at that point; (3) @string macros without definitions, common in journal-shorthand .bib files. Each failing entry shows up inline with the reason.

Free, no signup. Parsing and rendering both run entirely in your browser – the .bib file or pasted text never touches our server, no network call is made. The output exists in your browser session and disappears when you close the tab.

Yes – clinical journal submissions (JAMA, NEJM, BMJ, Lancet, BMC) each have their own templates and reference quirks. Our Elsevier and Springer formatting services cover the two largest publisher families; for others, email [email protected] with the target journal for a quote.

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