How to format your references using the The American Journal of the Medical Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The American Journal of the Medical Sciences. 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	Download the output style file
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

Doebley J. Plant science. Unfallen grains: how ancient farmers turned weeds into crops. Science. 2006;312(5778):1318-1319.

A journal article with 2 authors

Plug LJ, Werner BT. Nonlinear dynamics of ice-wedge networks and resulting sensitivity to severe cooling events. Nature. 2002;417(6892):929-933.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lucia U, Ponzetto A, Deisboeck TS. A thermo-physical analysis of the proton pump vacuolar-ATPase: the constructal approach. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6763.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mook HA, Dai P, Dogan F, Hunt RD. One-dimensional nature of the magnetic fluctuations in YBa2Cu3O6.6. Nature. 2000;404(6779):729-731.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sellars C. Risk Assessment in People with Learning Disabilities. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

Girard P, Roy O, Marion M, eds. Dynamic Formal Epistemology. Vol 351. Springer Netherlands; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Ghorani-Azam A, Balali-Mood M. Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology of Mustard Compounds. In: Balali-Mood M, Abdollahi M, eds. Basic and Clinical Toxicology of Mustard Compounds. Springer International Publishing; 2015:63-99.

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 The American Journal of the Medical Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew D. Jungle Boogie: Five Dancing Animals Who Know How To Strut Their Stuff. IFLScience. November 17, 2016.

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. Payroll Activities, Atlanta Postal Data Center. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1972.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Pincolini R. Latchkey Girls. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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

Neuman PW. El desminado y la paz avanzan lentamente en Colombia. New York Times. April 20, 2015:A4.

In-text citations

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

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	The American Journal of the Medical Sciences
Abbreviation	Am. J. Med. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0002-9629
Scope	General Medicine