Departments

Correct Terminology in Science: Industry Glossary of Abbreviations

Many new acronyms and other abbreviations have entered the scene in the last several years, so to help you stay on top of it, here are a couple of lists of some that are relevant to the scientific and technical publishing world. Some have been around for many years, but they may have gotten buried in your lexicon with all the new ones piled on top. These lists are certainly not exhaustive, but they are meant to serve as either a refresher for veterans in the field or a go-to guide for those new to the academic publishing community.

Organizations and Initiatives

AAAS = American Association for the Advancement of Science

AAP = Association of American Publishers

AJPP = African Journals Partnership Project

ALA = American Library Association

ALPSP = Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers

AMA = American Medical Association

AMWA = American Medical Writers Association

BELS = Board of Editors in the Life Sciences

CC = Creative Commons (copyright licensing)

CHORUS = Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States

CONSORT = Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials

COPE = Committee on Publication Ethics

DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act

DOAJ = Directory of Open Access Journals

DORA = San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

DPLA = Digital Public Library of America

EASE = European Association of Science Editors

EQUATOR Network = Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research

ETDEWEB = Energy Technology Data Exchange World Energy Base

IRB = institutional review board

ISMTE = International Society of Managing and Technical Editors

MLA = Modern Language Association or Medical Library Association

NCBI = National Center for Biotechnology Information

NISO = National Information Standards Organization

NLM = National Library of Medicine

ORCID = Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier

ORI = Office of Research Integrity

OSTP = Office of Science and Technology Policy

PMC = PubMed Central

SSP = Society for Scholarly Publishing

Terms

CLOCKSS = Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe

CMOS = Chicago Manual of Style

DOI = digital object identifier

DRM = digital rights management Dryad = online data repository

DTD = document type definition

DTM = digital terrain map

EPUB = electronic publication

FTP = file transfer protocol

HTML = hypertext markup language

ISBN = International Standard Book Number

ISSN = International Standard Serial Number

JIF = journal impact factor

LOCKSS = Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe

MOOC = massive open online course

OA = open access

POD = print on demand

RSS = rich site summary or really simple syndication

Scopus = abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature

SSF = Scientific Style and Format

STIX = Scientific and Technical Information Exchange

STM = scientific–technical–medical

TDM = text- and data-mining

XHTML = extensible hypertext markup language

XML = extensible markup language


LINDSEY BUSCHER is managing editor, Allen Press, Lawrence, Kansas.