Create Citation

AMA Citation Generator

Build accurate AMA references following the AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition. Paste a URL, DOI, or ISBN — or cite manually — and copy a numbered, AMA-formatted reference in seconds.

Cite Manually

How to cite in AMA

AMA is the citation style of American medical publishing. It is a numeric system: a superscript number appears in the text (for example, reading comprehension.1), and a numbered reference list at the end of the document is ordered by the sequence in which sources are first cited — not alphabetically. The first source you cite becomes reference 1, and you reuse that number every time you cite the same source.

Reference entries list authors by surname plus initials with no comma between them (Chen MS), set article titles in sentence case, and italicize the abbreviated journal name from the NLM Catalog (J Cogn Dev). Bibliographic detail is packed into a compact block — 2024;19(2):87-104 — with a hyphen in the page range and a DOI in the form doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx when one is available.

This page covers the essentials so you can generate a citation quickly. For the full rules — author truncation, source-type examples, common mistakes, and how AMA differs from its sibling styles — read the complete guides:

Need a style other than AMA? The main citation generator produces APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, and IEEE references too.

AMA citation generator FAQs

What edition of AMA does this generator follow?

This generator follows the AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, 11th edition (Oxford University Press, 2020) — the house style at JAMA and the JAMA Network journals. Full rules, with worked examples for every source type, are in our AMA citation guide.

What does an AMA in-text citation look like?

AMA uses a superscript Arabic numeral placed after the punctuation it follows — for example, “Working memory predicts reading comprehension.¹” Numbers are assigned in the order sources first appear, and you reuse a source's original number every time you cite it again. See our in-text citations guide for more.

How many authors does AMA list before “et al.”?

AMA 11th edition lists the first three authors and then appends et al once a source has seven or more authors. For six or fewer authors, list everyone. This is tighter than Vancouver's first-six rule — see how AMA compares to Vancouver.

Does the generator look up NLM journal abbreviations automatically?

No. AMA italicizes the abbreviated journal name from the NLM Catalog (for example, N Engl J Med). The generator italicizes whatever journal name you supply, so enter the abbreviated form yourself. The canonical lookup is the NLM Catalog.

Is the AMA citation generator free?

Yes. The AMA citation generator is completely free, with no account required. Need a different style? Use our main citation generator for APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, and IEEE.