Abbreviation - Index Medicus

If you have ever scrolled through a PubMed reference list or tried to format a bibliography for a medical journal, you have encountered a small but mighty puzzle: the journal title abbreviation.

Bookmark the NLM Journals Database. It will save you hours of formatting headaches and ensure your next submission is accepted the first time. Do you have a favorite (or most confusing) journal abbreviation? Let us know in the comments below! index medicus abbreviation

To save space on physical library cards and printed pages, librarians developed a strict system of abbreviations for every journal they indexed. Instead of writing out The New England Journal of Medicine , they condensed it to N Engl J Med . Today, Index Medicus is gone, but its abbreviation system lives on through its digital successor: PubMed and the NLM Catalog (National Library of Medicine). If you have ever scrolled through a PubMed

These aren’t random shorthand. They follow a specific, historic standard known as the . What is Index Medicus? Before we had the internet, we had Index Medicus . Launched in 1879 by the legendary physician John Shaw Billings, this was a massive monthly compilation of medical articles and journals. For over 120 years (until its final print edition in 2004), Index Medicus was the Google of medicine. Do you have a favorite (or most confusing)