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.
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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
Reference managers
Software tools for managing and publishing citations, bibliographies, and references
EndNote (endnote.com)
Zotero (zotero.org)
Mendeley (mendeley.com)
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