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Guides to AMA and ICMJE Styles The American Medical Association Manual of Style provides instructions for authors and editors preparing research papers for review and publication (AMA Manual at Amazon.com). The latest edition (2007) is over 1000 pages. The Writer's Guide to AMA Style and AMA Medstyle Stat! apply AMA style features to craft papers in final format, the format appropriate for papers prepared for conferences and seminars. The AMA's style and "Vancouver" style, the style of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), are very similar. Developed to reduce the proliferation of styles in medical writing, ICMJE style has been adopted some leading journals, and is accepted by hundreds of others. |
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AMA style now requires giving conversion factors to SI units for conventional clinical measures. For example, "The blood glucose concentration of 126 mg/dL (to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.055) was used as a criterion for diagnosing diabetes" (AMA 2007, "New FAQ" Page). A conversion table from the AMA Manual can be downloaded below and at the JAMA website. This is the most important change to AMA style in the new edition of the Manual. There are slight changes to formats for references to online sources, and the dubious practice of "versioning" these same sources. AMAicus obscurantus? The style is afflicated with senseless complexity. For example, periods are not used with abbreviations or initials. But there is at least one exception. When the abbreviation for "saint" appears before a city, eg, St Louis, there is no period. But when the abbreviation appears before a name, eg, Robert St. James, a period is required! There is no way of knowing how many such exceptions lurk in these pages. You simply have to stumble onto them (read Doc's review for amazon.com). OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press publishes the AMA Manual. They have thoughtfully provided many excerpts from the manual, including the complete table of contents. AMA Manual of Style, 10th Edition, at the Oxford University Press (Index Page) An interesting page on the website documents the history of the AMA Manual, including publication figures for the eighth edition (1989, 33,000+) and ninth edition (1998, 44,000+). At $55.00 it is a bit pricey for students looking to format a research paper. The "Instructions for Authors" on the JAMA website help, but they are focused on writing for publication; the instructions for presenting tables and figures apply to copy manuscripts submitted in electronic format. These do not apply to papers presented in their final format for conferences and seminars. Note, AMA style continues to spell website as two words, Web site. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Citing Medicine. The National Library of Medicine has published a style guide, available free at their website. It is available only chapter by chapter in (uncompressed) pdf format, about a megabyte (MB) per chapter. The text is huge (1000 pages?) in excruciating detail. AMERICAN SCIENTIST The Science of Scientific Writing by George Gopen and Judith Swan. This article was first published in the pages of the American Scientist in 1990. It was originally developed in a faculty writing workshop at the Duke Medical School. It has worn well the test of time. For many years it was embargoed on the American Scientist website. The embargo has lapsed and Doc has made it available in PDF format: The Science of Scientific Writing (90 KB). |
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Trick or Treat! The new AMA Manual makes many small revisions or corrections, some devilishly difficult to find. For example, the old Manual required long quotes of dialogue, of any length, to be run-on in a text. That note is simply gone, at least where in the 1032 pages it might have moved to is a mystery. AMA Stat! is up to date; the Writer's Guide will take longer.
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ICMJE? Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) drafted the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals to help reduce the chaos in medical writing. This became known as the "Vancouver style."
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AMA Journal Editors. American Medical Association Manual of Style.
10th ed. Oxford University Press USA; 2007. Link to Amazon.com: (Hardcover: $55.00, 1000 pages). Read Doc's Review. |
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Taylor, BN. Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology; 1995. Special Publication 811. Available (free) at: http://physics.nist.gov/Document/sp811.pdf Free Style Guide for Numbers. The NIST is the official representative of the United States before the Convention du Metre which in turn is the body that defines the International System of Units (SI) for the world scientific community. A free 80 page style guide is available from their website. This link (click on the title above) is directly to the document which is in Adobe PDF format. To download rather than display the document click the right mouse button on the link and select "Save Target As" (400 KB). |
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National Library of Medicine. List of Journals Indexed for Medline. Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health; 2008. ??? pp. Available (free) at: ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/online/journals/ljiweb.pdf.
Download Page Special Terms & Conditions: (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/tsd/serials/terms_cond.html). List of Journal Abbreviations. Medical editors require the use of these abbreviations when citing journals in references. There are now two lists: the traditional list for Medline (formerly the Index Medicus list and abbreviations) and one for online serials. These are both available on the page linked above, or download the more extensive Medline document directly from the ftp site. To download the PDF document click the right mouse button on the link and select "Save Target As." This has become a huge file, about 14.2 MB. |
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Endnote (Bibliographies Made Easy?). Version XI. 2007. ISI Research Soft. Windows and Mac. Endnote automatically formats references for you--in standard AMA, APA, CBE, Chicago, ICMJE, and MLA styles, as well as a vast number of journal styles (over 1000). It is the standard of bibliographic software, required at many top universities. Surf for sources online; download bibliographic material from any online database or library catalog. The program comes with templates (for MSWord) that will set up your word processor for you! Endnote is your personal research assistant. Warning! Reviews of recent versions are poor! Older editions, versions 6 or 7, may be a better buy. These may be available at amazon, used. A free 30-day trial version is available at the Endnote website. |
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Reference Manager. Version 11. 2006. ISI Researchsoft. Windows 2000-XP. Links to Amazon.com: ( Retail Version $170) (Student Version $95).
Reference Manager is not the top seller that Endnote is, but some find it the more refined application. It is now part of the ISI empire of bibliographic software, and priced in line with Endnote (it was about twice as expensive). It is also now available in a student version for a dollar more than Endnote. I recall it as being especially suited for medical research (surf PubMed). |