
These citations may or may not include a title or author, but should include page numbers and, if possible, a DOI or URL. Parenthetical citations should ONLY be used for items that do not occur in the references list, such as unpublished material, personal communications, and news articles. For example:ĪMA recommends that you do not place a superscript reference citation immediately following a number, and advises that you revise the sentence to prevent any possible confusion with an exponent.

There should not be a space between numbers. Nonsequential references should be separated with commas. If you are citing sequential references, these should be indicated with a hyphen. Multiple references may be cited in the same instance. These superscript numbers should be outside periods and commas but inside colons and semicolons. In-Text CitationsĮach reference should be cited in the text using superscript arabic numerals. Consulting parents on childhood obesity and implications for medical student learning.


The abbreviations "Jr" and "Sr" ("Junior" and "Senior") may follow authors' names when applicable (e.g., Jameson JJ Jr). If the author's middle initial isn't available, omit it. However, do use a comma to separate more than one author in a single bibliographic group (e.g., Wheeler T, Watkins PJ). When writing up your references list, be sure to always include the last name and the first and middle initial of the authors without punctuation. Use sentence case for all titles (capitalize only the first word of the title). Abbreviate and italicize names of journals according to the listing in the National Library of Medicine database. If you are citing an online article, you should include the day and month of publication as well in the format of Month Day, Year. Sample ReferenceĪuthorLastname FirstInitialMiddleInitial. Additionally, each item should be single-spaced. References are found at the end of a manuscript and are titled “References,” and each item should be listed in numerical order (two references should not be combined under a single reference number) as opposed to alphabetically.
