Journal title abbreviations should be eliminated in the digital age
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Ecology, Science Policy
- Keywords
- journal titles, abbreviations, scientific journals, publishing
- Copyright
- © 2014 Bond et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Journal title abbreviations should be eliminated in the digital age. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e445v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.445v1
Abstract
Journal title abbreviations in articles’ lists of citations are troublesome for authors, editors, librarians, and researchers. While the origin of these abbreviations in the mid-17th century, and their propagation to modern times was likely the result of a desire to save space in articles, or as shorthand, we argue that in the digital age, such practices should be changed. We show that a journal’s choice to abbreviate journal titles in its literature cited section is purely arbitrary, and that the costs of abbreviating outweigh the benefits. Scientific journals in particular are prone to abbreviate journal titles, and this could hamper interdisciplinary research by creating an “in-group” mentality, however small.
Author Comment
This was a side project that we submitted, unsuccessfully, to several journals back in 2010, and which we don't have time to update and resubmit. This is the definitive version.