How to format your references using the CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (CMAJ). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Abbott RJ. Evolution. Sex, sunflowers, and speciation. Science. 2003 Aug 29;301(5637):1189–90.

A journal article with 2 authors

Luoto TP, Nevalainen L. Long-term water temperature reconstructions from mountain lakes with different catchment and morphometric features. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2488.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wagemaker M, Kentgens APM, Mulder FM. Equilibrium lithium transport between nanocrystalline phases in intercalated TiO(2) anatase. Nature. 2002 Jul 25;418(6896):397–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

McCulloch M, Fallon S, Wyndham T, Hendy E, Lough J, Barnes D. Coral record of increased sediment flux to the inner Great Barrier Reef since European settlement. Nature. 2003 Feb 13;421(6924):727–30.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bonnini S, Corain L, Marozzi M, Salmaso L. Nonparametric Hypothesis Testing: Rank and Permutation Methods with Applications in R. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014. (Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics).

An edited book

Pawley JB, editor. Handbook Of Biological Confocal Microscopy. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2006. XXVIII, 985 p.

A chapter in an edited book

Basso D, Pesarin F, Salmaso L, Solari A. Multivariate Continuous Data. In: Salmaso L, Pesarin F, Basso D, editors. Permutation Tests for Stochastic Ordering and ANOVA: Theory and Applications with R. New York, NY: Springer; 2009. p. 85–101. (Lecture Notes in Statistics).

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 CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Blog post

Hale T. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Experts Have Some Advice Following A Nasty E. Coli Outbreak From Salad. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/experts-have-some-advice-following-a-nasty-e-coli-outbreak-from-salad/

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. International Aviation: Competition Issues in the U.S.-U.K. Market. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997 Jun. Report No.: T-RCED-97-103.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Meissner R. Analyzing inpatient hospital costs by payer: What do they mean for the future of health care in America? [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2009.

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

Brantley B, Green J. Just How Great Was That ‘Comet’? New York Times. 2017 May 11;AR16.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal)
Abbreviation	CMAJ
ISSN (print)	0820-3946
ISSN (online)	1488-2329
Scope	General Medicine