Author and Affiliation Transliteration Policy for Cyrillic-Script Journals

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is updating its policy for author name and affiliation transliteration in Cyrillic-script journals indexed for MEDLINE.

For many years indexers have used the ALA-LC Romanization Tables to transliterate (convert to the Roman alphabet) author names in Cyrillic-script journals, which publish articles in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, and other Cyrillic-script languages. Publishers of Roman-alphabet journals may or may not follow the ALA-LC Romanization Tables; they often accept the author’s transliteration or use other transliteration standards. Therefore it has been possible for a Russian author, for example, to have his or her name appear in PubMed/MEDLINE in multiple transliterated formats.

Example:

Kaliuzhnaia OV (From a Russian language journal; see PMID: 25474883.)

Kaluzhnaya OV (From an English language journal; see PMID: 23831449.)

In response to expectations of authors who wish to see their names consistently transliterated in PubMed/MEDLINE records, and to clarify the NLM policy for Cyrillic-script author affiliations, the transliteration policy is being updated as follows:

New Policy for Author Names in Cyrillic-Script Journals
Author names will be presented in PubMed/MEDLINE records exactly as they are transliterated and published by Cyrillic-script journals.

If author names are published by the journal only in Cyrillic script they will be transliterated into Roman script according to the transliteration rules outlined in the ALA-LC Romanization Tables.

Clarification of Policy for Author Affiliations in Cyrillic-Script Journals
Author affiliations in Cyrillic-script journals will be presented in PubMed/MEDLINE citations as they are published by the journal, that is, transliterated, translated into English, or in Cyrillic script.

Effective Date of New Policy
The new policy was effective for citations with a publication date of 2015 and later that have not been processed when the policy is announced.