How to Cite an Ebook in AMA Referencing

The AMA referencing system is commonly used for citing sources in medical research. But how do you cite an ebook with this system? In this post, we explain how to cite an ebook and format the reference list entry in AMA style.

How to Cite an Ebook in AMA Referencing

AMA referencing is a Vancouver-style number–endnote system, so you cite sources with superscript numbers in the text that indicate an entry in a numbered reference list at the end of your document. Let’s look at an example:

Experts believe that ebooks will replace printed books by the end of the decade.¹

Here, the ‘1’ means that we’re citing the first source in the reference list. The next source we cite would be numbered ‘2’, the third ‘3’, etc.

And to cite the same ebook again later in your work, you would simply use the same citation number as you did for the first reference. For example:

Experts believe that ebooks will replace printed books by the end of the decade,¹ as many authors are now publishing digitally.² However, some readers, especially older readers, still prefer printed books.¹

In this case, we cite source ‘1’ twice (once after the first comma, and again at the end of the passage). And since we use the same number for both citations, the reader will know we’re citing the same source.

If you quote directly from an ebook, moreover, you need to include page numbers in brackets after the superscript number. For instance:

This trend has been ‘a catastrophe for traditional publishing’.^3(p112)

Here, the bracketed ‘p112’ shows we’ve quoted from page 112 of the third source in the reference list. If they needed to, the reader would then be able to check the source to see if we’ve quoted it accurately.

Ebooks in an AMA Reference List

You’ll have to produce a reference list at the end of the document that provides full publication information for every source you cite.

The standard format for an ebook in an AMA reference list is:

n. Author Name(s) and Initial(s). Book Title. Edition number (second edition or above only). City, State (or Country) of publisher: Publisher’s name; copyright year. URL. Accessed date.

As explained above, the number at the start of the entry here is determined by the order in which you cited the sources.

In practice, an entry for an ebook in an AMA reference list would look like this:

1. Fleming, C. The Rise of the Ebook. 2^nd edition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press; 2012. http://www.oup.edu/books/459v8722/html/. Accessed 16 January 2020.

Hopefully, it’s now clear how to cite an ebook in AMA referencing. But if you’d like help to check your referencing is correct, why not have your document proofread by one of our expert academic editors?