Journal Abbreviations
How to Find the National Library of Medicine Journal Abbreviations
When citing a journal entry in AMA, you will need to obtain the official journal abbreviation from the National Library of Medicine. To do this, use the search feature from their website: National Library of Medicine. Click on Advanced Search and type the name of the journal into the search bar. Select Journal from the list of options under the All Fields menu. Using the medical journal Academic Emergency Medicine, an example is shown in the image below:
After making these selections, hit the Search button. This will generate a list of articles that show the journal abbreviation in each result. The circled areas on the image below show where these abbreviations are located in the first two results. This is the abbreviation you will use in your reference.
Note that you can get the same result by searching for the journal name on the main page and enclosing the word Journal in brackets: Academic Emergency Medicine[Journal].
Print Journals
For print journals, use the following format, keeping in mind that not all references will have all of these parts:
Author name(s): last name, first initial, middle initial. Put a period at the end. Separate multiple authors with commas.
Article Title: Capitalize the first letter and proper nouns, everything else lowercase. Put a period at the end.
Journal Name: use official abbreviation from the National Library of Medicine and italicize. Follow with a period.
Year: year followed by semicolon.
Volume number: with no space after semicolon, just type the number.
Issue number: put the number in parentheses with no space after volume number.
Page numbers: put a colon and page number(s) followed by a period.
Examples: (note that the top example has no issue number.)
4. Jones P, Jones S, Stone D. Accuracy of comparing bone quality to chocolate bars for patient information purposes: observational study. BMJ. 2007; 335:1285-1287.
5. Golbeck AL, Ahlers-Schmidt CR, Paschal AM, Dismuke SE. A definition and operational framework for health numeracy. Am J Prev Med. 2005;29(4):375-376.
Electronic Journals
Author name(s): last name, first initial, middle initial. Put a period at the end. Separate multiple authors with commas.
Article title: capitalize the first letter, proper nouns, and abbreviations. Everything else is lowercase. Put a period at the end.
Journal name: use official abbreviation from National Library of Medicine and italicize. Follow with a period.
Year: year followed by semicolon.
Volume number: with no space after semicolon, just type the number.
Issue number: put the number in parentheses with no space after volume number. Follow with colon.
Page numbers: put page number(s) followed by a period.
URL or DOI: for a URL, copy and paste followed by period. For a DOI, type doi followed by a colon and the number. A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is preferable to a URL because it gives the article a permanent location, unlike the URL, which may change. If both are available, use the DOI.
Access date: (only if using URL). Put a period after URL. Type Accessed followed by month, day, year, and a period.
Examples:
6. Clotman K, Wickler MD. Diabetes or endocrinopathy admitted in the COVID-19 ward. Eur J Clin Invest. 2020;50(7). doi:10.1111/eci.13262
7. Bower JE. Cancer-related fatigue--mechanisms, risk factors, and treatments. Nat Rev Clan Oncol. 2014;11(10):597-609. doi:10.1038/nrclinonc.2014.127E
8. Ramsay PT, Carr A. Gastric acid and digestive physiology. Sure Clan North Am. 2011;91(5):977-982. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0039610911000740?via%3Dihub. Accessed October 18, 2021.