Box 9Organizations as author

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

• 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 opening screens of a database/retrieval system 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. For example:

  • Authors are members of the Washington Genetics Database Team.
• For names of organizations in languages other than 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. Follow a non-English name with a translation when possible. 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. Follow a non-English name with a translation when possible. 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