''Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers'' is the

style guide A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...

of the

United States National Library of Medicine The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...

(NLM). Its main focus is

citation A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose o ...

style and bibliographic style. The citation style of ''Citing Medicine'' is the current incarnation of the

Vancouver system The Vancouver system, also known as Vancouver reference style or the author–number system, is a citation style that uses numbers within the text that refer to numbered entries in the reference list. It is popular in the physical sciences and is ...

, per the ''References > Style and Format'' section of the ICMJE Recommendations (formerly called the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals). ''Citing Medicine'' style is the style used by

MEDLINE MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering med ...

and

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintai ...

. The introduction section of ''Citing Medicine'' explains that "three major sources are utilized in compiling ''Citing Medicine'': the

MEDLARS MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medi ...

Indexing Manual of the National Library of Medicine (NLM); pertinent

NISO The National Information Standards Organization (NISO; ) is a United States non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and library applications. It was fou ...

standards, primarily ANSI/NISO Z39.29-2005 Bibliographic References; and relevant standards from the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in A ...

(ISO), primarily

ISO 690 ISO 690 is an ISO standard governing bibliographic references in different kinds of documents, including electronic documents. This international standard specifies the bibliographic elements that need to be included in references to published ...

Documentation - Bibliographic References."

References

External links

* {{Official website, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine Style guides for technical and scientific writing Medical publishing Bibliography