[Vancouver Style or NLM Format: Towards citation standardization]

Area of Science:

• Bibliometrics
• Scientific Communication
• Health Sciences Publishing

Background:

• Bibliographic accuracy is crucial in health sciences for knowledge traceability, impacting clinical, ethical, and educational aspects.
• Current citation practices, particularly the Vancouver style's implementation, present limitations leading to errors and inconsistencies.
• Deficiencies in academic training and the proliferation of citation styles contribute to referencing inaccuracies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the limitations of the Vancouver style in editorial practice.
• To advocate for the standardization of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) format as a common technical framework.
• To propose solutions for improving accuracy and consistency in biomedical referencing.

Main Methods:

• Critical review of existing literature on citation styles and referencing errors.
• Analysis of empirical studies on reference manager accuracy and editorial citation criteria.
• Identification of frequent problems arising from multiple citation styles.

Main Results:

• Frequent referencing errors, ambiguous editorial policies, and inadequate academic training were identified.
• Empirical data show low accuracy of unsupervised reference manager use and inconsistent editorial citation criteria.
• The multiplicity of citation styles exacerbates these issues in scientific communication.

Conclusions:

• Standardizing to the NLM format offers a common technical framework for improved referencing.
• Institutional actions, including revised evaluation rubrics and formalized librarian roles, are proposed.
• Enhanced training focusing on critical understanding of citation ethics and strategy is essential for reliable biomedical publishing.