AMA Citation Generator

What this tool does

This generator builds AMA-style references following the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition — the citation format expected by JAMA, NEJM, BMJ, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, and most other peer-reviewed medical journals. Pick a source type (journal article, book, website, conference paper, thesis, technical report), fill in the bibliographic fields, and the tool emits a copy-ready reference plus an explanation of how to cite it inline with a superscript number.

The generator runs entirely on your device. Nothing you type is uploaded.

How AMA citation format works

Two conventions drive AMA: numbered references and NLM-style author formatting.

Numbered references. Unlike APA’s (Author, year) or MLA’s (Author page), AMA cites inline as a superscript number — ¹, ², ³ — keyed to a numbered reference list at the end of the document. References are numbered in the order they first appear in the text. When the same source is cited again, it keeps its original number. This is the same convention used by Vancouver style (the broader academic-medicine numbering system), with AMA being the US-medical variant of it.

NLM-style author formatting. Authors appear as Family Initials — no periods between initials, no spaces, no commas inside one author’s name. So “Jane M Smith” becomes “Smith JM”. Multiple authors separate with commas: “Smith JM, Chen RB, Patel SV”. List up to six authors in full; for seven or more, list the first three then “et al” (with no period, in the 11th edition).

Journal names use NLM abbreviations. “JAMA” stays “JAMA”; “New England Journal of Medicine” becomes “N Engl J Med”; “British Medical Journal” becomes “BMJ”. The PubMed journal catalogue is the source of truth for abbreviations.

Worked examples

A journal article from JAMA:

1. Smith JM, Chen RB. A randomized trial of intensive blood pressure control. JAMA. 2024;331(12):1009-1018. doi:10.1001/jama.2024.1234

A book chapter (note “Publisher; year” punctuation):

2. Goodman LS, Gilman A. The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. 14th ed. McGraw Hill; 2023.

A website (note the access date — AMA requires this):

3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Influenza Surveillance. CDC.gov. 2024. Accessed May 21, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

A conference paper:

4. Park EJ, Kim S. Predictive biomarkers in lung cancer. In: 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting; Chicago, IL; 2024:4502.

A doctoral dissertation:

5. Tan WL. Mechanisms of glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor signalling [dissertation]. Stanford University; 2024.

Common AMA citation mistakes

Using author commas inside the name. “Smith, JM” is wrong (that’s APA). AMA uses no comma between family and initials, no periods between initials. Right: “Smith JM”.

Using the full journal name. The 11th edition requires the NLM abbreviation. “Journal of the American Medical Association” should be “JAMA”. Submitting with the long form will get the paper sent back at review.

Forgetting the access date on websites. AMA requires “Accessed [Date]” on web references. URLs change; the access date locks in when you saw the content as it was. Use the format “Accessed May 21, 2026” (month spelled out or abbreviated, no commas inside the date when you write it that way).

Re-numbering on revision. A common slip-up after restructuring a draft: references stay numbered in their original order, but inline citations now appear out of sequence. Renumber the entire reference list to match the new text order before submission. Most reference managers do this automatically, but if you wrote citations by hand you have to redo the numbering yourself.

Mixing AMA with Vancouver. Vancouver is the parent numbering style; AMA is the US-medical variant. They are close but not identical — AMA has slightly different punctuation in book entries, treats DOIs differently, and uses NLM abbreviations specifically. If a journal says “Vancouver style”, check whether they mean ICMJE Vancouver (the international standard) or AMA — the two are interchangeable for ~95% of references but differ on edge cases.

Privacy

The generator builds the reference by concatenating strings in JavaScript, locally on your device. There are no fetch calls, no analytics on the values you enter, and no server-side logging.