references

Looking Forward to the 11th Edition

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At the most recent annual conference of the American Medical Writers Association, we received a sneak peek at some of the changes to come with the AMA Manual of Style 11th edition. AMA Manual of Style Committee Members Cheryl Iverson, Stacy Christiansen, and Annette Flanagin gave an overview of some highlights, including changes to the way references are styled, updates taking into account the growing presence of social media, and changes to nomenclature. Other topics included updates to corrections processes, clarification of authorship guidelines, and data sharing rules.

In this post, I thought I’d share some of the changes that I’m most excited about as an editor, many of which promise to make the editing process easier and more intuitive. Several new guidelines for styling references caught my attention. For example, electronic references in the current edition mirror traditional references with the addition of a URL in the middle of the reference and a date accessed at the end. The new edition will put URLs at the end of a reference, similar to how DOIs currently appear. Another welcome change is the omission of publisher locations from references to books and reports, which seems sensible given the multinational nature of publishing and the increasing move toward digital formats.

An update to the style of tables and figures was also covered in the presentation. Starting with the 11th edition, column heads in tables and axis labels in graphs will appear in sentence case capitalization rather than title case. Table and figure headings and labels in scientific publishing often contain a great deal of text, making it all the more important to display that text in a way that’s as easy as possible for readers to parse. In addition to saving space, the use of sentence case capitalization throughout figures and tables will make these elements appear more standardized and easier to read.

The new edition also makes some helpful distinctions between AMA style preference and alternatives considered acceptable. For example, it is now acceptable to use of “they” as a singular pronoun. In addition to circumstances in which “they” is a person’s preferred pronoun, this construction can also be helpful in preserving patient confidentiality (eg, avoiding the disclosure of patients’ sex in a small sample size to preserve anonymity).

Many other exciting changes are anticipated with the upcoming 11th edition. Stay tuned for more!—Heather Green

 

 

Pharmaceutical Company Names

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The pharmaceutical industry is ever-changing, and it’s hard to keep up with new ownership and branding. When editing sections of manuscripts with a lot of pharmaceutical company names, such as the conflict of interest disclosures, I typically find all sorts of spellings of the names, even for the same company within the same paragraph. According to the Business Firms subsection (14.7) of the AMA Manual of Style, the name of the company should appear exactly as the company uses it but with omission of the period after abbreviations. Furthermore, terms such as Company and Corporation should be spelled out if the term is spelled out in the company name. The best way to determine how to spell a company’s name is to check the official company website. Following are a few examples of company names that I frequently see misspelled or misrepresented:

Boehringer Ingelheim

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Daiichi Sankyo (hyphenated in the logo but not elsewhere on the company website)

Eli Lilly and Company

GlaxoSmithKline

Merck & Co

Also keep in mind that some pharmaceutical companies have multiple business units (ie, biologics, medical devices) or different names depending on the country. In these cases, it may be necessary to query the author to ensure that the correct name is used.—Sara M. Billings

 

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: How should a photograph or illustration be cited in the reference list?

A: In the reference list, cite the article in which the figure you want to reference appears in the “usual” way of citing a journal article. In the text, where you cite the reference, use the following style:

As Christiansen and Fischer [add superscript citation here to the appropriate reference number…you could also include the number of the page on which the figure you are citing appears, in parentheses] illustrate in Figure 1 of their study….

—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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[Editor’s Note: I love the idea of referencing a sound!]

Q: How should a “free sound” from the website Freesound.org be cited in the reference list?

A: We would recommend the following for citation format, altering the accessed date to reflect the date it was accessed:

Crickets.  http://freesound.org/people/rfhache/sounds/52755/.  Posted May 2, 2008.  Accessed February 1, 2016.

We are revising our manual now for the 11th edition and will be including many more examples of electronic references.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: A colleague is adamant about citing page numbers even if the reference is used more than once in a paragraph. Is this necessary?

A: There is a little advice on citing page numbers in the manual, just above section 3.7.

If the author wishes to cite different page numbers from a single reference source at different places in the text, the page numbers are included in the superscript citation and the source appears only once in the list of references.  Note that the superscript may include more than 1 page number, citation of more than 1 reference, or both, and that all spaces are closed up.

Example: These pages showed no sign of proactive sphincteric adduction.3(p21),9

You’ll notice that it’s not mandatory and our style includes, “If the author wishes.”  Page number citation can be helpful to the diligent reader who wants to go to the source cited and find the exact mention of the quoted material.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: I would like to know how to reference a Kindle book.

A: This question was addressed on this very blog on May 7, 2012. We love questions, though, so feel free to send them in as well as using the search box on the top right corner of the blog home page. Also, we are working now on revising the manual for the next edition and we will be including lots more examples of online reference styles.

 

Q: How should an “e-pub ahead of print” reference be cited in the reference list?

A: There are a few examples in the current manual, but we plan to include many more examples of citing electronic documents in the next edition—and we are deep in discussions (some might say “arguments”) about a style change, so stay tuned!  See 3.15.1, examples 14 through 17. Note, however, that we have now dropped the words “ahead of print” in the phrase that appears in brackets.   Here is an example from JAMA Pediatrics:

Keren R, Shah SS, Srivastava R, et al. Comparative effectiveness of intravenous vs oral antibiotics for postdischarge treatment of acute osteomyelitis in children [published online December 15, 2014].  JAMA Pediatr.  doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.2822.

Q: How would I introduce an abbreviation that first appears in a compound word? For example, if my first use of traumatic brain injury was in TBI-related complications?

A: I would recommend the following: traumatic brain injury (TBI)–related injuries. (That’s an en-dash before related.)—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: If the author of a manuscript has died, where in the byline do you place the death dagger? Should it follow the name or should it follow the degrees held by the author?

A: It would follow the author’s name and degrees. There is an example of this in the manual in section 2.3.1.

Q: How should you cite a reference that requires a subscription to access?

A: When we prepared this edition of the manual, we wrestled with the question of whether, in the reference list, it should be noted if a site required a subscription, password, etc. We decided against it. So,  here’s an example of how such a reference might be cited:

Rogol AD. Diagnostic approach to children and adolescents with short stature. UpToDate. http://www.uptodate.com/contents/diagnostic-approach-to-children-and-adolescents-with-short-stature. Accessed July 7, 2015.

Q: What is the correct way to show the name of an institution (as an author’s affiliation) when the name of the institution has changed?

A:  There are several options:

  • …the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (formerly UCLA Medical Center)
  • UCLA Medical Center (now the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA)

I have a slight preference for the second option.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: I am putting together an annotated bibliography for a manuscript. What is the correct order recommended by the AMA Manual of Style for citing multiple articles by the same author? Is it by date of publication or article title?

A: The JAMA Network journals do not use a name-date style of reference citation. Instead they use a superscript reference citation system. If you look in the 10th edition of the Manual of Style, section 3.6 (Citation), you will see further information on this. So, it matters not the date of publication or the article title. What is key is the order in which the reference is cited in the paper, eg, the first reference to be cited would be reference 1, the second would be reference 2. (And if reference 1 is cited again later in the paper, it would still remain reference 1.)

Q: What do you tell authors who object to the house style your publications follow by saying that “Everybody does X [rather than what you recommend].”?

A: When people respond like this, I find that it’s helpful to look at what a few key style manuals or journals in the field (based on their Instructions for Authors) do in areas in which people have complaints or concerns. If you can put together a little chart (nothing fancy) showing that indeed maybe it is not EVERYBODY who does X, real data can sometimes calm the fevered brow. And sometimes you may find that indeed most others do have a different policy than what your house style recommends. Then it may be time to reconsider your policy. Sometimes this is how style policies change, and that can be a good thing. We learn from our authors just as we hope they learn from us.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: I am writing on behalf of my editorial department. We are all very curious to know when we should follow the style outlined in 3.13.2, which calls for headline caps and italics for the publication’s title vs the style outlined in 3.15. 5, which in most cases calls for the title to be set in roman and title case. Why, in example 6 in 3.15.5, is the title set like those for 3.13.2? Is there a distinction between bulletins and reports?

A: Perhaps the line here is fine.  In 3.13.2, the examples are all bulletins. These are more like books, hence the cap and italic style you asked about. In 3.15.5, the examples are all reports. These might be booklike but they often are more like journal articles. The advice right before the examples is to use journal style for articles and book style for monographs. Reference 6, which you ask about, seems more booklike as it has a volume number. Sometimes it is really difficult to know what something is. If it is available online, you might look at it and be more easily able to determine what sort of “beast” it is.

Q: To adhere to the guidelines in the AMA Manual of Style must an author document all sources with footnotes in the text in chronological order? It’s my understanding that doing so serves, in essence, as a form of fact checking. Does your manual offer any other other guidance on fact checking?

A: Yes, we recommend that all sources cited in a manuscript be included in the reference list for the manuscript (with a few exceptions, which we recommend citing parenthetically in the text). These are not, however, cited chronologically (if by that you mean from the earliest published to the most recently published) but rather in order of citation in the manuscript (ie, the first reference cited would be reference 1, that cited second would be reference 2, etc; and if a reference is cited several times, it would each time retain its original reference number, so that if reference 2 is not only cited second but also appears later in the manuscript, it would still remain reference 2).

Whether this citation of references constitutes “fact checking” is a bit trickier to be sure of. As our manual states in the chapter on references, “References serve 3 primary purposes—documentation, acknowledgment, and directing or linking the reader to additional resources.” Citing a reference, and thereby crediting another source for the material cited, and also linking the reader to additional resources, is related to fact checking in that a reader could follow that link (ie, go to the reference cited) and make sure that it has been cited accurately. Whether that constitutes fact checking, though, is unclear. It does ensure that the original source has been cited/quoted correctly. But it doesn’t tell a reader if in fact that source is correct.—Cheryl Iverson, MA

Questions From Users of the Manual

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Q: I know that when citing an editorial from a journal, you insert “[editorial]” after the title and before a period. If the editorial’s title ends with a question mark, would you still insert “[editorial]” before the question mark? It seems more appropriate to insert it afterward since the question mark is integral to the title.

A: The short answer to your question is yes. You would insert “[editorial]” before the question mark that ends the title. (See the first example under section 3.11.10, which illustrates this.) I understand that the question mark is integral to the title, but the enclosure of the department name/feature (ie, editorial) in brackets makes it clear that this is not a part of the title.

Q: I am uncertain whether to use a hyphen or an en dash for negative values in a table within an abstract.

A: For negative values, AMA style is to use minus signs, not en dashes or hyphens. There is a minus sign symbol in Word. Under Insert Symbol, it’s called Minus Sign and it’s Unicode number 2212. For ranges, we would use the word to as in −70 to −60.

Q: Does JAMA Network style recommend listing candidate degrees?

A: No, it does not. If the degree has not yet been earned, we do not publish it. Our rationale is that the candidate might not complete the degree for some reason (death, failure) and so we recommend waiting until the degree is conferred before listing it.—Cheryl Iverson, MA