AMA Magazine Citation for Print Issues and Online Articles

Check whether the source is a magazine or a journal

Start with the publication and the article itself. A feature written for a general audience belongs to a different source category from a scholarly research article. JPU's AMA guide gives magazines and journal articles separate entries. A health topic, a monthly release schedule, or an online location does not settle that choice.

Check the publisher's description and the article's context. A feature reporting on a study and the research paper itself are separate sources, even when both appear online. For a scholarly paper, follow the journal guide linked below, including its rules for journal abbreviations. A magazine reference should preserve the publication details that identify the feature you read.

Keep the magazine's name as the publisher presents it. The examples here use Time. If a feature links to research you want to discuss, open that research before citing its findings. You can cite the magazine for its reporting or commentary, then cite the study you consulted for claims drawn from that paper.

Collect issue, month, and page information

For a print magazine, check the issue's cover or contents page and the article's printed pages. Save the full issue date alongside its volume and issue number. A monthly issue may give only a month and year. Preserve that precision rather than adding a day to satisfy a form.

Lev Grossman's The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth offers a useful date check. TIME places it in the US issue dated October 3, 2005, volume 166, number 14. JPU's print citation example supplies page 98. The article's online record displays September 25, 2005. Those dates identify different publication records.

The table keeps those records separate. Page 98 comes from JPU's example; the HTML article does not display that print page. For your own source, verify the page or complete range in the copy you used. A PDF viewer's page counter can differ from the numbers printed on the pages.

JPU's magazine pattern names the publication date, while its worked example uses a year with volume, issue, and page. The print reference below retains that example's year-based structure. Keep the full issue date in your notes and use it when your instructor's or journal's required format calls for it.

Handle an online article without print pagination

For an online magazine AMA citation, open the article's own page and save its byline, title, displayed publication date, and direct URL. Add the date you accessed it. Keep a labeled update separate from the original publication date. A sitewide footer copyright year cannot supply either one.

Online access does not always mean that issue information disappears. The University of Mary's AMA 11 example for a magazine accessed through a database or the web retains volume, issue, and pages, then adds an access date and URL. Use that information when the record provides it for the version you consulted.

When the web article supplies no print pagination, omit that field. Browser print-preview pages and paragraph counts are not the magazine's page numbers. Check the version before borrowing pagination from a print edition. The example below uses the article's displayed web date and October 8, 2026, the day we checked it.

If the article shows no publication date, check the publisher's archive or issue contents. Any remaining gap needs the missing-date treatment required by your target guide. Leave unresolved fields out of the finished entry rather than adding guessed numbers or empty punctuation.

Compare the record with the finished reference

AMA Cite has no dedicated Magazine form. Its Journal form can organize a print draft with an author, title, publication, year, volume, issue, and pages. Leave the abbreviation field blank to use the full magazine name. You still need to check the date format required by your assignment, especially when it calls for the month and day.

For a web article without issue data, the Website form can organize the available fields. Enter the checked author as Grossman L and the publication as Time. After copying, italicize the magazine name and check punctuation, including any period the formatter adds after the URL. Compare the result with the source before adding it to your paper.

1. Compare the author's name and article title with the source, then check the magazine name in the finished entry.
2. Match the date to the version cited. Verify every volume, issue, and page value, and remove fields you could not establish.
3. Open the final online link and make sure it leads to the article you used. Replace the example access date with your own.
4. Use the reference number assigned by first appearance in your paper, then reuse it for later citations to that same source.