Box 72Organizations as author/editor

An organization such as a university, society, association, corporation, or governmental body may serve as an author or editor.

  • Omit "The" preceding an organizational name
    • The American Cancer Society   becomes   American Cancer Society
  • If a division or another part of an organization is included in the publication, give the parts of the name in descending hierarchical order, separated by commas
    • American Medical Association, Committee on Ethics.
    • International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry Division.
    • American College of Surgeons, Committee on Trauma, Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Outcomes, Working Group.
  • When citing organizations that are national bodies such as government agencies, if a nationality is not part of the name, place the country in parentheses after the name, using the two-letter ISO country code (see Appendix D)
    • National Academy of Sciences (US).
    • Royal Marsden Hospital Bone-Marrow Transplantation Team (GB).
  • Separate two or more different organizations by a semicolon
    • Canadian Association of Orthodontists; Canadian Dental Association.
    • American Academy of Pediatrics, Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine; American College of Emergency Physicians, Pediatric Committee.
  • If both individuals and an organization or organizations appear on the title page of a book as authors, use the names of the individuals as the author. Give the organization at the end of the reference as a note, if desired.
    • Prepared for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.
  • For names of organizations not in English:
    • Give names in languages using the roman alphabet (primarily European languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, etc.) as they appear in the publication. Whenever possible follow a non-English name with a translation. Place all translations in square brackets.
      • Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica del CNR.
      • Universitatsmedizin Berlin.
      • Nordisk Anaestesiologisk Forening [Scandinavian Society of Anaesthesiologists].
    • Romanize (write in the roman alphabet) or translate names of organizations in Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, or Korean. A good authority for romanization is the ALA-LC Romanization Tables. Whenever possible follow a non-English name with a translation. Place all translations in square brackets.
      • Rossiiskoe Respiratornoe Obshchestvo [Russian Respiratory Society].
      • or
      • [Russian Respiratory Society].
    • Translate names of organizations in character-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese. Place all translations in square brackets.
      • [Chinese Medical Society].
    • Ignore diacritics, accents, and special characters in names. This rule ignores some conventions used in non-English languages to simplify rules for English-language publications.
      • Treat letters marked with diacritics or accents as if they are not marked
        • Å   treated as   A
        • Ø   treated as   O
        • Ç   treated as   C
        • Ł   treated as   L
        • à   treated as   a
        • ĝ   treated as   g
        • ñ   treated as   n
        • ü   treated as   u
      • Treat two or more letters printed as a unit (ligated letters) as if they are two letters
        • æ   treated as   ae
        • œ   treated as   oe

From: Chapter 2, Books

Cover of Citing Medicine
Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers [Internet]. 2nd edition.
Patrias K, author; Wendling D, editor.
Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007-.

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