Bio-Medical Library

Writing Guides

Books

Books available on the topic of Medical Writing

Catalog search results on the topic of medical/healthcare writing

Books available on the topic of Publishing

Catalog search results on the topic of medical/healthcare publishing

Books available on the topic of Authorship

Catalog search results on the topic of medical/healthcare authorship

Books available on the topic of Data Display

Catalog search results on the topic of data display

Books available on the topic of Research Methods

catalog search results on the topic of research methods or methodology.

Internet Resources

This popular book is an indispensable and entertaining guide for writers, proofreaders, editors, managers, clerical staff, teachers, and students. Use this site to find the answers to your questions concerning proper English grammar and punctuation.

The electronic version of the classic work by William Strunk, Jr. that includes rules of grammar and usage, principles of composition, and commonly misused and misspelled words.

Mary K. McCaskill, Langley Research Center.

Maintained by Charles Darling, Professor of English at Capital Community College, Hartford CT. Includes sections on words & sentences; paragraphs; essays & research papers; peripheral & PowerPoint. Check the Index to find more "online resources."

This brief manual provides useful suggestions for today's authors. By Kwan Choi, Editor, RIE.

An online course in English grammar.

Authors: Leslie C. Perelman, Edward Barrett, and James Paradis ; ESL Consultant: Erika Mitchell

The Web-based version of The Mayfield Handbook of Scientific and Technical Writing is the result of more than ten years of collaborative development at MIT. The Handbook is the first hypertextual reference work designed specifically for technical and scientific writing. MIT authors Leslie Perelman, James Paradis, and Edward Barrett offer information and advice on grammar and usage, strategies for planning and producing documents, and common document formats and citation styles.

Covers the dynamic process of thinking; structure; evidence; mechanics of writing and finishing. By Professor Michael Hackett of Washington College, MD

"21 chapters of web links to writing, grammar, punctuation & research inclucing links to arguments, literature & sample student papers of many types."

From the Guide to Grammar & Writing. An online textbook on basic writing

Center for Writing.

-Reading, research & writing strategies; - U Writing requirements; - Writing resources & more ...

Revised ed., 2010

guide by Tomislav Hengl & Mike Gould (2006). Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Freely downloadable guide that covers in 54 pages all aspects of scientific writing.

guide by S. Joseph Levine, Michigan State University

From Colorado State University. Covers the writing process, types of documents, researching sources and using sources.

From the Expository Writing Program. Covers integrating sources into a paper; misuse of sources and when/when not to cite.

Checklists and Other Tools

The EQUATOR Network is an international initiative that seeks to enhance reliability of medical research literature by promoting transparent and accurate reporting of research studies.

Library for health research reporting contains a comprehensive list of the available report guidelines, listed by study type:

SPRIRIT, PRISMA, WIDER, REMINDE, HRQoL, RECORD, STROBE-RDS, CIRCLe SMT

"CONSORT comprises a checklist and flow diagram to help improve the quality of reports of randomized controlled trials. It offers a standard way for researchers to report trials. The checklist includes items, based on evidence, that need to be addressed in the report; the flow diagram provides readers with a clear picture of the progress of all participants in the trial, from the time they are randomized until the end of their involvement. The intent is to make the experimental process more clear, flawed or not, so that users of the data can more appropriately evaluate its validity for their purposes."

Meta-analysis of Observational Studies (MOOSE)

Standards for Reporting of Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD)

"STROBE stands for an international, collaborative initiative of epidemiologists, methodologists, statisticians, researchers and editors involved in the conduct and dissemination of observational studies, with the common aim of STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational studies in Epidemiology."

Style Manuals - Health Sciences

ACS Style (American Chemical Society)

Books

Describes the writing and citation style recommended by the American Chemical Society. A selection of sample references for more common types of citations is available online.
Call number: QD8.5 .A25 1997 WALTER Sci/Eng Reference; MAGRATH Reference;Bio-Med WZ345 A187 1997

Internet Resources

UW-Madison Chemistry Library

Chapter one from The ACS Style Guide: A Manual for Authors and Editors Second Edition Janet S. Dodd, Editor

AMA Style (American Medical Association)

Books

Sect. 1. Preparing an article for publication. Types of articles -- Manuscript preparation -- References -- Visual presentation of data -- Ethical and legal considerations -- Editorial assessment and processing -- Sect. 2. Grammar -- Punctuation -- Plurals -- Capitalization -- Correct and preferred usage -- Non-english words, phrases, and accent marks -- Medical indexes -- Sect. 3. Terminology. Abbreviations -- Nomenclature -- Eponyms -- Greek letters --Sect. 4. Measurement and Quantitation. Units of measure -- Numbers and percentages -- Study design and statistics -- Mathematical composition -- Sect. 5. Technical information. Typography -- Manuscript editing and proofreading -- Glossary of publishing terms -- Resources. Rev. ed. of: American Medical Association manual of style. 9th ed. c1998.
Call number: TC Bio-Medical Library Reference WZ345 A511 2007

Internet Resources

Samford University, Birmingham, AL

University of Evansville

From docstyle.com; Dr. Abel Scribe's Guide to Research Style and Documentation

APA Style (American Psychological Association)

Books

1. Concise and bias-free writing -- 2. Punctuation, spelling, and capitalization -- 3. Italicizing and abbreviating -- 4. Numbers, metrication, and statistics -- 5. Tables -- 6. Figures -- 7. Footnotes and appendixes -- 8. Quotations, reference citations in text, and reference list -- 9. Reference examples.
Call number: Bio-Medical Library Reference WZ345 C743 2005; Magrath Library Reference BF76.7 .C66 2005

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition) is the style manual of choice for writers, editors, students, educators, and professionals in psychology, sociology, business, economics, nursing, social work, and justice administration.
Call number: Bio-Medical Library Reference WZ345 P976 2010

Introduction: the laypeople and you -- Some generalizations about how psychologists write -- Preparing the introduction section and the literature review paper -- Preparing the method section -- Preparing the results section -- Preparing the discussion section -- Preparing the abstract -- Preparing the references section -- Preparing a title page and formatting your manuscript -- Grooming tips for psychology papers -- Preparing a presentation -- Wrapping it up.
Call number: TC Bio-Medical Library BF76.8 S998w 2008

Internet Resources

By Russ Dewey, Georgia Southern University.

From the Lydia M. Olson Library, Northern Michigan University

Covers all reference formats. Includes new 2007 Electronic Reference formats: " Referencing online journal articles and some other materials has changed to emphasize using an assigned DOI (digital object identifier). Date of retrieval is no longer included for materials that are unlikely to be changed or updated (PDF/page images). "

A tutorial of APA style, 5th ed., from the University of Southern Mississippi

From the American Psychological Association.

The following web pages are excerpted from the APA Style Guide to Electronic References (© 2007) and the fifth edition of the Publication Manual (© 2001).

The material provided covers commonly asked questions regarding how to cite electronic media.

Please note that there have been changes in APA's style guidelines for electronic resources with the release of the APA Style Guide to Electronic References.

Because electronic media change rapidly, we will update this page regularly as there are additions, changes, or clarifications to APA style.

OWL Online Writing Lab, Purdue University.

Chapter 6 from Online! A reference guide to using Internet resources by Andrew Harnack, Eugene Kleppinger, 2003.

CSE Style (Council of Science Editors)

Books

Published by the Style Manual Committee, Council of Science Editors.
Call number: T11 .S386 2006 Magrath Library Reference; Walter Sci/Eng Library Reference; Natural Resources Library Reference; Plant Pathology Library Reference

Internet Resources

Washington State University

Ohio State University

Monroe Community College

From Research & Documentation Online. This section covers CBE number system, reference list, manuscript format and samples pages.

Harvard Style

Monash University

University of Western Australia

University of Canterbury

Anglia Ruskin University

NLM Style (National Library of Medicine)

Books

Includes recommended citation format styles for journals, books, conference publications, patents, audio visuals, electronic information, maps, legal materials, newspaper articles, bibliographies, dissertations, and scientific reports.
Call number:

Internet Resources

2nd ed., 2007

"Citing Medicine gives information on constructing citations at three levels:

• 1. Diagrammed Citation - Many people need to format a non-complex citation and want to know how to format a citation, without learning why it should be structured that way. The picture of the sample citation and the broad guidelines (what we're calling the Introduction) will be enough for many people in this group.
• 2. General Rules and Examples - A smaller number of people will need to view the General Rules and Examples sections to get more information. They either will have a specific problem to solve or their work requires them to build a general knowledge of citation that they can later apply to specific cases. For this group we lay out why citations are structured the way they are and show them what types of citations exist (Examples) and what special, difficult cases they may encounter (Specific Rules).
• 3. Specific Rules - A yet smaller number of people will need to enter the Specific Rules section to solve a specific problem, such as handling non-English citations.

Boston University Medical Center Alumni Medical Library

Vancouver Style (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)

Books

Covers guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. In addition, discusses retraction of research findings, order of authorship, definition of a peer-reviewed journal, and conflict of interest
Call number: Bio-Medical Library WZ345 U58 1994

Internet Resources

Web-based version

Monash University Library

Extensive guide from the University of Queensland.

Other Citation Guides & Styles

How to cite Onine Mendelian Inheritance in Man references.

The standard work and most comprehensive of the style manuals. All chapters are written for the electronic age, with advice on how to prepare and edit manuscripts online, handle copyright and permissions issues raised by new technologies, use the latest methods of preparing mathematical copy, and cite electronic and online sources.

DocsCite is a step-by-step guide to putting government publication citations into proper APA or MLA style format. From the Arizona State University Libraries.

NIST Special Publication 811 2008 edition.

Ambler Thompson and Barry N. Taylor

International Council for Science (ICSU). Committee on Dissemination of Scientific Information. 3rd ed. 1999

International Standard that specifies the elements to be included in bibliographic references to published monographs and serials, to chapters, articles, etc. in such publications and to patent documents. ISO 690-2 covers electronic resources.

Guidelines for bibliographic references and citations to information resources

Excerpts

Web-page that contains links to U of M logos, suggested style manual, templates and more.

U.S. Census Bureau

Creating by the Government Publications Department. Regional Depository Library. University of Memphis. Provides examples of the most common examples of government documentation.

30th edition, 2008.

Instructions for Authors

Each journal entry contains publisher's address, aim and scope, and information on manuscript information and format. Includes instructions for authors for submission of articles to English-language life sciences journals.
Call number: Bio-Medical Library Reference WZ345 A881a 1996; Ent/Fish/Wild Library Reference R119 .A85 1995; Magrath Library Reference R119 .A85 1995; Veterinary Medical Library Reference R119 .A85 1995

"The SPARC Author's Addendum is a form you use to amend the document that your publisher asks you to sign. Developed for SPARC by Michael Carroll of the Villanova University School of Law, the addendum is designed to be filled out and attached to the agreement supplied by the journal publisher. By using the SPARC Author's Addendum you will, for example, retain the right to make your article available in a non-commercial open digital archive on the Web (such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central or your institution's open digital archive) or to make copies of your article for use in the classes you teach."

Instructions for authors for manuscript submission

These pages provide links to Web sites which provide instructions to authors for over 3,500 journals in the health and life sciences. All links are to "primary sources" - that is, to publishers and organizations with editorial responsibilities for the titles. Maintained by the Raymon H. Mulford Library, Medical College of Ohio.

Publisher copyright policies and self-archiving.

This site can be used to find a summary of permissions that are normally given as part of each publisher's copyright transfer agreement. Searchable by journal title or publisher name. Can also be browsed by RoMEO colors, which differentiate between different archiving policies.

• green: can archive pre-print and post-print
• blue: can archive post-print
• yellow: can archive pre-print
• white: archiving not formally supported

Office of the Vice President for Research. University Policies

Instructions for the use of the University of Minnesota's author's addendum

NIH Public Access Policy

Email address for library staff help with public access policy compliance. public-access

Information on

• Journals that [automatically]submit to PubMed Central
• submission policies
• frequently asked questions
• policy details

Entry page for manuscript submission to PubMed Central

Available as Quicktime videos, html slides or pdf downloads

If an article is in PubMed and in PMC, it will have both a PubMed ID (PMID) and a PMC ID. Use this converter to translate one type of ID to the other.

Open Access Publishing

by Peter Suber

PubMed Central (PMC) is the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) free digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature.

"SHERPA is investigating issues in the future of scholarly communication. It is developing open-access institutional repositories in a number of research universities to facilitate the rapid and efficient worldwide dissemination of research."

Journal Information

Registry of web resources that list or provide access to the full title of journal abbreviations.

Genamics JournalSeek is the largest completely categorized database of freely available journal information available on the internet. Presently contains 60,458 titles. Journal information includes the description (aims and scope), journal abbreviation, journal homepage link, subject category and ISSN.

Web of Science Journal abbreviation list.

JANE helps authors find journals to submit articles to, similar papers to cite or helps editors locate potential reviewers.

From the website: Just enter the title and/or abstract of the paper in the box, and click on 'Find journals', 'Find authors' or 'Find Articles'. Jane will then compare your document to millions of documents in Medline to find the best matching journals, authors or articles.

JANE first searches for the 50 articles that are most similar to your input. For each of these articles, a similarity score between that article and your input is calculated. The similarity scores of all the articles belonging to a certain journal or author are summed to calculate the confidence score for that journal or author. The results are ranked by confidence score. Created by the Biosemantics Group (www.biosemantics.org)

Companion database to the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

The purpose of the website is to provide an aid for the researcher in the selection of journal for publication. Provides information on accessibility (open access or not), cost (price per article / price per citation / profit status), quality (where indexed, journal eigenfactor), etc.

National Library of Medicine MEDLINE journal list

Search by title keyword or part of a word. Provides MEDLINE journal abbreviation, complete journal title, publisher and ISSN. Also has link to webpage containing list of PubMed journals that provide links to full text articles (all full-text, not just free full text)

A portal that includes the journals and country scientific indicators developed from the information contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.). These indicators can be used to assess and analyze scientific domains. This platform takes its name from the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicatorpdf, developed by SCImago from the widely known algorithm Google PageRank™. This indicator shows the visibility of the journals contained in the Scopus® database from 1996.

Lists information for over a quarter-million serial records such as newspapers, popular and trade magazines, and academic and scholarly journals. Includes active, ceased, and forthcoming publications. Search by title, subject and more.

Dictionaries / Acronyms / Abbreviations

Searchable database of more than 317,000 abbreviations and acronyms about computers, technology, telecommunications, and military acronyms and abbreviations

Online Biology Dictionary is a free, concise, illustrated dictionary of biology and medicine.

Macrovolution.net is a website focusing on biology and evolutionary theory.

National Cancer Institute

Besides metric and other units of measurement, covers Apgar scoring, Glasgow coma scale, SI units for medical data and nutritional daily values.

Over 70,000 medical, pharmaceutical, biomedical & healthcare acronyms and abbreviations.

From MedicineNet.com

MEDLINEplus

-an English dictionary of 1,830 medical terms, frequently used in written drug information - nine glossaries of 1830 scientific and popular medical terms, one in each of the nine official languages of the European Union. - an electronic database of the dictionary and glossaries - a user-friendly software interface as an Internet application, installed at the World-Wide Web server of the University of Gent, Belgium

YourDictionary.com. Links to many general & speciality dictionaries in the health sciences

This list focuses on abbreviations and acronyms commonly used in veterinary practice and supplements the standard and widely available reference sources such as Gale's Acronyms, Initialisms & Abbreviations Dictionary. It is intended for use by veterinary students, researchers, practitioners, and librarians. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Veterinary Medicine Library

Plagiarism

From the OWL Onine Writing Lab, Purdue University.

Commoncraft.com

While Plagiarism can be intentional, it is more often caused by misunderstanding. Avoiding it means understanding the role of intellectual property and what makes plagiarism wrong. This video teaches:

University of Alberta

Tutorial from the University of Maine at Farmington

Georgetown University

Copyright Guidelines

From the American Library Association's Office for Information Technology

An interactive tool to help determine whether or not a work is protected by copyright or not. Set the arrow at the correct date and read the information is the windows

Use your mouse to turn the wheel chart to the desired section. Helps determine whether or not a particular reproduction is covered by Section 108

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.

Prepared by Stanford University Libraries this is a very useful site.

Here you can get permission to reproduce copyrighted content such as articles and book chapters in your journals, photocopies, coursepacks, library reserves, Web sites, e-mail and more.

The Copyright Crash Course Online Tutorial will help you learn about how ownership of copyrighted materials works, what is fair use and when and how to get permission to use someone else's materials.

The site of the University of Minnesota Libraries' Copyright Information and Education Initiative, which supports an informed and educated University community on matters of copyright and its application in teaching, research, and scholarship. Includes tools such as a Fair Use Analysis Tool and Copyright Decision Map.

This is a section of a larger main site covering all aspects of the law from the Cornell Law School (http://www.law.cornell.edu/). It is from the "Law about. . . " section of the main site.

This office, secures permission for copyrighted materials use for instructional or other academic purposes by U of M faculty and staff. Photocopying guidelines are also provided.

YouTube video that uses clips from Disney films to illustrate the concept of "Fair Use."

Key publications, including informational circulars; application forms for copyright registration; links to the copyright law and to the homepages of other copyright-related organizations; news of what the Office is doing, including business-process reengineering plans, Congressional testimony and press releases, regulations; a link to online copyright records cataloged since 1978; and much more.