Contents 

Journal Name Formatting

General Considerations

Some publishers require full journal names be given while others require abbreviations. For a majority of publications found in PubMed, the standard Medline Abbreviation (Med Abbr) is used (i.e Nature Genetics => Nat Genet). CiteSmart is able to resolve names for over 19,000 journals currently in PubMed (as of October, 2006).

When using a (modified) predefined style or creating a new style, CiteSmart allow users to choose between 4 types of journal name formats:

  1. As in library : The name will not be modified and will appear as in the library. If the reference was downloaded from PubMed, this name is equivalent to the Med Abbr.
  2. Full Title : Displays the full title of the Journal. Note: Occasionally, this can lead to long names.
  3. Med Abbr : The standard PubMed abbreviation. All journals have a Med Abbr and occasionally it is identical to the Full Title (i.e. Science).
  4. Iso. Abbr. : Another abbreviation type similar to Med Abbr, except that periods follow each abbreviation. Currently, 87% of the 19,000+ journals in PubMed do not have an Iso. Abbr.
Example
Full Name
Med Abbr
Iso. Abbr
1
Nature Structural Biology
Nat Struct Biol
Nat. Struct. Biol.
2
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.
3
BMC biotechnology [electronic resource]
BMC Biotechnol
BMC Biotechnol.
4
PLoS clinical trials [electronic resource]
PLoS Clin Trials
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Notes:

  • If CiteSmart cannot find an abbreviation for a chosen name format, it will use the journal name in the library.
  • Journal names are not formatted in the Preview Panel. The formatting will be identical to their appearance in the library. They are only formatted in the Word document.
  • The list of PubMed journals supported by CiteSmart can be viewed here (Microsoft Excel is required. You can also consider OpenOffice Calc, part of the OpenOffice suite, that is a great FREE software program).

Searching for a Particular Style

A style manager utility is available to help you find styles. This utiliy is accessible from the Fold Panel or via the main menu Toolbox>Journal Styles>Find Style. This utility will quickly retrieve styles for a particular journal. Enter the abbreviated name(s) or keyword(s) of the journal and CiteSmart will look for the style(s) than contain these words. Note that additional options allow to narrow down the search to numbered or harvard styles.

Styles are named after the PubMed abbreviation. When searching for a style, the trick is to enter the 2 or 3 letter of any word contained in the name:

"eng" would retrieve the style for N Eng J Med

"Car" would retrieve the styles for Cardiology, Cardio Res

"Nat" would retrieve the styles for Nature series.

If a particular journal style is unavailable, browse the styles. The same style maybe adopted for another journal. Note that is is also possible to search styles by Citation type (Numbered or Harvard). Use the Preview Panel to see if there is a matching style. Additionally, the user can create a style.