ISBN to AMA Citation Converter

What is an ISBN?

An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) identifies one specific edition and format of a published book. ISBN-13 is the current standard – 13 digits beginning with 978 or 979 – while older books also carry a 10-digit ISBN-10. Both work here, with or without hyphens. You will find the number above the barcode on the back cover or on the copyright page behind the title page. When you paste an ISBN into CiteTools, we look the book up in Google Books, then in Open Library, and pull the fields a book citation needs: authors or editors, full title and subtitle, publisher, publication year, and edition. That is the tedious part of citing a book done for you; the formatter then applies the punctuation, capitalization, and author-name rules of the style you select.

How the ISBN to AMA conversion works

1. Find the ISBN above the barcode or on the copyright page and paste it in – hyphens optional.
2. CiteTools looks the book up in Google Books, then in Open Library.
3. Copy the finished book citation with publisher, year, and edition included.

Example input:

9780262033848

About AMA Style

American Medical Association - used in medicine, nursing, and public health.

AMA style, from the AMA Manual of Style 11th edition, is the numbered system of JAMA and of many medical, nursing, and public health journals. Authors are a surname plus initials without periods, article titles use sentence case, journal names take their NLM abbreviation in italics, the year, volume, issue, and full page range follow, and a DOI closes the entry. CiteTools follows those rules and cuts seven or more authors to the first three and et al.

Frequently asked questions