Citation Styles by Discipline: Health Sciences

The most common citation styles used in the health sciences are AMA (especially for medicine) and APA. Some interdisciplinary fields may also use CSE. 

AMA style features the following general rules:

• It uses superscript arabic numerals for in-text references.
• All cited references should also be listed at the end of the document.
• Only use the last name and first initial of authors' names, without punctuation, in the reference list (example: Smith A).
• References are divided by specific punctuation into bibliographic groups.
• You must use the standard National Library of Medicine abbreviations for all journal titles.

Include a reference list (named 'References') with full citations at the end of your document. Your reference list must be in numerical order to reflect the order of your in-text citations.

Each reference is divided with periods into bibliographic groups. Each bibliographic group contains bibliographic elements, which may be separated using the following punctuation marks:

• Comma: if the items are closely related or sub-elements of a bibliographic element (e.g. authors' names)
• Semicolon: if the elements in the bibliographic group are different (e.g. between publisher's name and copyright year), before volume identification data, if there are multiple occurrences of logically related elements within a group
• Colon: after a connective phrase, before the publisher's name, between title and subtitle

General APA in-text citations follow this pattern:

(Author, Year of publication).

To cite an online journal article in a reference entry in APA 7th edition include the following elements:

1. Author(s) of the article: Give the last name and initials (e. g. Watson, J. D.) of up to 20 authors with the last name preceded by an ampersand (&). For 21 or more authors include the first 19 names followed by an ellipsis (…) and add the last author's name.
2. Year of publication: Give the year in brackets followed by a full stop.
3. Title of the research article: Only the first letter of the first word and proper nouns are capitalized.
4. Title of periodical: Give the full, non-abbreviated title of the periodical in title case. It should also be italicized.
5. Volume number: The volume number is also italicized.
6. Issue number: For journals that are paginated by issue give the issue number in brackets.
7. Page numbers: Give the full page range.
8. DOI or URL: Include the digital object identifier (DOI) as a hyperlink starting with 'https://doi.org/'. If no DOI can be found, include the URL that directly links to the cited work.

AMA Citation Guides 
This website is organized by source type and provides details about, and examples of, correct AMA citations.

AMA Citation Guide 
This guide covers all aspects of AMA style and includes examples.

AMA Style 
The official AMA Style website from the American Medical Association.

Purdue OWL AMA Guide 
This highly regarded AMA resource is from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University.

APA Citation Guide
This guide provides a detailed overview of APA style.

APA Style
The official APA Style website from the American Psychological Association.

Purdue OWL APA Guide
This highly regarded APA resource is from the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue University.

The ultimate guide to citing in APA
This guide provides detailed information on creating citations in APA style.