Amanda Ehrhardt, MA, JAMA Network

Let’s take a little jaunt through time to before the pandemic days (remember those?) and look at one of the most downloaded and cited articles in the history of the JAMA Network. Perhaps you’ll recognize the title (or, more likely, the author).

As you move toward the reference section of this article by our former president, you may notice that something looks a bit different about the first citation.

It’s subtle, but according to the newest edition of the AMA Manual of Style, 3.15.3, the location of the published and access dates now comes before the URL in electronic references, and there is no longer a period after the URL.

If President Obama’s article were published today, that reference would look like this:

1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National Health Expenditure Data: NHE tables. Published December 3, 2015. Accessed June 14, 2016. https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html

Just as access to health care is important, so is the access date in articles!