ISO TA Element Removed from NLM Files

Prior to 2007, separate title abbreviations were assigned for GENBANK and PubMed. GENBANK carried International Organization for Standardization (ISO) title abbreviations (TAs) and PubMed had National Library of Medicine (NLM) TAs. Beginning March 1, 2007, the ISO and NLM TAs have been identical, but both were still carried in PubMed and NLM Catalog citations (see NLM Accepts ISSN Centre Title Abbreviation Assignments for more information).

Rather than continue to provide two separate fields containing the same information, NLM has decided to simplify record maintenance and use a single NLM TA that will apply to GENBANK as well as to PubMed. On September 24, 2020, NLM updated the pre-2007 legacy ISO TAs to remove punctuation and capitalize the first letter of each word (about 2.5% of all the TAs). In some cases, other changes were made to the ISO TA to make it match an existing NLM TA. Users will no longer see the element ISO TA in citations and should substitute the NLM TA as needed.