NLM Adds "Citing Medicine" to the NCBI Bookshelf

Authoritative Volume Clears Up Questions Regarding Print and Electronic Medical Information

• When an online journal article comes out in multiple versions, which one(s) do you cite?
• If you’re citing a reference from a blog or a wiki, what exactly constitutes the publisher and what constitutes the publication? (And what if you have no idea of the city from which it was issued?)
• If you’re working with a printed medical journal, on the other hand, and you know it’s published in New York City, should you go with "New York (NY)" or just "New York" in your citation?

In the 21st century, technological advances have created a whole new world of medical citations. To give authors, editors, medical librarians and others a guidebook for navigating that world, the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the publication of Citing Medicine: the NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, available free of charge on the NCBI Bookshelf.

Citing Medicine provides guidance for citing 26 types of published and unpublished material, ranging from print books and journal articles to blogs and wikis.

Authors will find this a great resource for producing reference lists as they prepare articles and books for publication. Editors and librarians now have easy access to authoritative citation information, and publishers may discover useful guidelines to incorporate into their instructions for authors.

Citing Medicine updates and supersedes two previous NLM publications, National Library of Medicine Recommended Formats for Bibliographic Citation published in 1991 and its Internet Supplement published in 2001. These publications will be archived on the NLM Web site.

This new edition:

• Covers more types of publications, including a variety of Internet publications
• Contains more introductory material for each type of publication
• Includes more example citations which users consistently requested
• Is published in HTML format and will be printable from Adobe Acrobat pdf format later this fall.

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Last reviewed: 11 October 2007
Last updated: 11 October 2007
First published: 10 October 2007
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