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.