Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions: NLM Style Citations

In NLM style, there are 3 different ways you can choose to format in-text citations and order your reference list. Just be consistent with whichever one you choose.

1. Citation-Sequence: Citations in the reference list are ordered as they appear in the text, then numbered. Numbers are used in-text to refer to citations.

   • Example: ...reference to Dunn's article¹.

2. Citation-Name: Citations in the reference list are ordered alphabetically, then numbered. Numbers are used in-text to refer to citations.

   • Example: ...reference to Dunn's article¹².

3. Name-Year: Citations in the reference list are ordered alphabetically. Parenthetical citation with author last name and year is used in-text.

   • Example: ...reference to Dunn's article (Dunn, 2015).

Author(s)

• Put last name followed by the first and middle initial.
• Do not put periods after initials. Do put commas between names.
• Include all authors regardless of the number.
• Example: Walters RL, Crane AD.

Title

• Capitalize the first word, proper nouns, names of clinical trials, and abbreviations that are normally capitalized (DNA, EKG, etc.)
• A colon and space separates the title and subtitle. Subtitles begin with a lowercase letter (unless it's a proper noun).
• Example: A brilliant case study: collecting images with MRIs, and CT scans.

Journal Names

• Journal names are abbreviated as found in the NLM catalog.
• Type the name of the journal at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals/ to find the correct abbreviation.
• Examples:
  • Am J Pharm
  • Toxicol Appl Pharmacol

All the Numbers

• Publication year month day;volume(issue):FirstPage-LastPage.
• Publication month should be abbreviated to 3 letters.
• If there is no issue number, you can omit it.
• Do not add spaces after punctuation. Do not repeat numbers in page ranges.
• Examples:
  • 2024 Jan 16;42(1):472-8.
  • 2005 Sep 5;15(4):64-77.

Complete Citation Examples

Roberts JA, Duncan A, Cairns KA. Pandora's box: Paxlovid, prescribing, pharmacists and pandemic. J Pharm Pract Res. 2022 Feb 10;52(1):1-4.

Ibrahim R, Nyska A, Dunnick J, Ramot Y. The toxicologic pathology aspects of selected natural herbal products and related compounds. J Toxicol Pathol. 2021 Mar 29;34(3):181-211.

When citing material accessed online:

• Add [Internet] after the title.
• Add the [date] you cited the article after the publication date.
• Include the URL where you accessed the article. Only put a period at the end of the URL if it ends in a /.
• If the article has a DOI or a PubMed ID, add it after the URL.

Complete Citation Example:

Iovino L, Tremblay ME, Civiero L. Glutamate-induced excitotoxicity in Parkinson's disease: the role of glial cells [Internet]. J Pharmacol Sci. 2020 Nov [2025 May 29];144(3):151-64. doi: 10.1016/j.jphs.2020.07.011. Retrieved from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32807662/. doi: 10.1016/j.jphs.2020.07.011. PubMed PMID: 32807662.

If you find an article in PubMed, you can click the Cite button on the right-hand side. Then, click the format button in the bottom-right corner of the window to choose NLM format. Click the copy button on the bottom-left to copy the citation. ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK YOUR COPIED CITATIONS! They are pretty good, but often get the capitalization wrong.

To cite books, websites, drug monographs, or other sources check out these guides:

Quick Guide for Citing in NLM - USC Libraries

Example Citations - National Library of Medicine

Research Guide from MUSC Libraries