Resource of the Week #36: What Does That Abbreviation Mean?

Have you had the following experience?

You’re reading an article, and you see an unfamiliar abbreviation. The article doesn’t define the abbreviation. But to understand the article, you must know what the abbreviation means.

How frustrating!

In AuthorAID workshops, we advise researchers to define all abbreviations in their writing. But what if you’re reading something by an author who hasn’t followed such advice?

Fortunately, there are some websites devoted to defining abbreviations, including acronyms. (An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of the first letter, or letters, of each word in a phrase.)

Here are some of these websites:

• Acronym Finder—a site containing more than 1,000,000 definitions of acronyms and other abbreviations
• Medical Abbreviations Dictionary—a site defining more than 200,000 abbreviations, including acronyms, in medicine, biotechnology, and related fields
• Allie—a site, mentioned by an AuthorAID member this week, in which one can find definitions of abbreviations in the life sciences

Do you know of other websites devoted to defining abbreviations, either generally or in specific research fields? If there are some that you suggest, please post a comment.

Until the next post— Barbara