Critical Tools for Medical Editing

To be a great medical editor, you need great copyediting skills: a sharp eye, attention to detail, and a drive to get things right. You also need to master the special conventions that govern medical publishing. Here are the resources you need to do that.
You can download the PDF version here.

Style guides

AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors, 10th edition
Primary style guide for editing all manner of medical publications
amamanualofstyle.com
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th edition
Default guide for editing material in the social and behavioral sciences
apastyle.org/manual
Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers, 8th edition
Reference for editors in science and related fields
scientificstyleandformat.org
The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition
Comprehensive style guide that should address any questions not covered in the above guides.
chicagomanualofstyle.org

Medical dictionaries

Stedman’s Medical Dictionary
Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary
Two gold-standard dictionaries for the healthcare field, each listing 100,000+ medical terms and their definitions
stedmansonline.com
dorlandsonline.com

Medical spellcheckers

Stedman’s Plus Medical/Pharmaceutical Spellchecker
Plug-in for MS Word and other word processors that enhances the spellchecker with some 500,000 medical, pharmaceutical, and biological terms
shop.lww.com
Inductel Medical Spellchecker
Plug-in spellcheckers for medical content; scientific and technical content; and combo medical, legal, scientific, and technical content
inductel.com
Spellex Universal Medical Spellchecker
Spellchecks medical, surgical, chemistry, and laboratory terms across platforms (MS Word, email, websites, social posts, etc.)
spellex.com

Resources for getting references right

PubMed Citation Matcher
References, abstracts, and DOIs for articles on life sciences and biomedical topics
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/citmatch
Index Medicus
Standard abbreviations for medical journals, such as “N Engl J Med” for the New England Journal of Medicine
bg.ump.edu.pl/czasopisma/medicus.php?lang=eng
Library of Congress Online Catalog
Catalog records for the library’s 162 million books, periodicals, manuscripts, and other resources
catalog.loc.gov
Google Scholar
Niche search engine that allows you to search a broad array of scholarly literature
scholar.google.com
ClinicalTrials.gov
U.S. National Library of Medicine database of research studies being conducted around the world
clinicaltrials.gov

General medical references

Cleveland Clinic Health Library
my.clevelandclinic.org/health
Merck Manual
merckmanuals.com/professional
The Mayo Clinic Patient Care & Health Info
mayoclinic.org/patient-care-and-health-information

Information on ethics

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
Recommendations for best practices and ethical standards in the publication of medical research
icmje.org
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Advice to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics, particularly how to handle research and publication misconduct
publicationethics.org

Professional associations and certifications

American Medical Writers Association
Members can become Medical Writer Certified (MWC)
amwa.org
Association of Health Care Journalists
healthjournalism.org
Board of Editors in the Life Sciences
Offers Editor in the Life Sciences (ELS) certification
bels.org
Council of Science Editors
councilscienceeditors.org
International Society for Medical Publication Professionals
Members can become Certified Medical Publication Professionals (CMPP)
ismpp.org
National Association of Science Writers
nasw.org

Additional resources

AMA SI Conversion Calculator
Enables instant conversions between metric units and conventional units
amamanualofstyle.com/page/si-conversion-calculator
HGNC
Listing of standard nomenclature for human genes and gene families
genenames.org
PlagScan
Allows you to scan for plagiarized text
plagscan.com