The new edition of the AMA Manual of Style is here, and it has nearly 200 more pages on everything from reference citations to the ethical and legal issues associated with medical publishing.

If the amount of new content seems overwhelming, may I suggest starting with the basics?

I dove in by reviewing the References chapter.

Online Journal References

According to section 3.11.4, “Online Journal Articles, Preprints, and Manuscripts,” the basic components of an online journal reference haven’t changed: authors’ surnames and initials, the title of the article, abbreviated name of the journal, publication year, pagination, the date the article was accessed, and the DOI or URL.

What has changed it that the date accessed should now be listed before the DOI or URL, and the URL is not followed by a period.

Data Repositories

I’ve also edited a few articles that included an analysis of data sets from a repository. Data repositories serve as archives for isolated data sets that allow data to be mined for secondary use in research. In a situation like this, the data set used and the original source for the data should be cited.

In the example shown below, the information for the original source for the data is listed first, followed by the name of depository, the date of data deposit, and the DOI for the data set.

DeLeon TT, Almquist D, Kipp BR, et al. Data from: Assessment of clinical outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in melanoma patients with CDKN2A and TP53 pathogenic mutations. Dryad Digital Repository. Deposited March 12, 2020. doi:10.5061/dryad.m0cfxpp0g

Accurate references are a critical element of any published article. The updated guidelines on references ensure that readers are directed to additional resources for more information.—Juliet Orellana