To Use or Not to Use Abbreviations is the Question

Category: Education

Using abbreviations is vital in academic papers, and rarely do we find a scientific article without it. Technical fields are overloaded with abbreviations and acronyms because subject area experts assume that everyone understands their meaning. Using abbreviations may be particularly tempting for academic writers when they have a word count to meet and to enhance the readability of an otherwise lengthy sentence. But, overusing abbreviations hinders readability, forcing a non-subject area reader to backtrack to or hunt for its definition. The deciding factor on using an abbreviation depends on the following questions: How frequently is the abbreviation used in your field? Several journals do not require you to define abbreviations included in their respective list of standard abbreviations. These lists often provide standard abbreviations, along with standard units of measure that are not required to be defined at any given instance (e.g., DNA). If a list is not provided by your target journal, refer to its previously published papers for understanding which abbreviations are treated as standard. Ironically, highly specific abbreviations used in a particular field and those that you coin only for your manuscript are treated as non-standard. How often is the abbreviation used in your manuscript? In general, if an abbreviation is used three or more times in an article, then use the abbreviation; if its mention is less than that, then do not use the abbreviated term. Which part of your manuscript is the abbreviation used? Various journals discourage the use of abbreviations in titles, abstracts, and/or keywords section of a paper to avoid lack of clarity, because these words are used to retrieve your article when a reader is searching and browsing for articles. You may use an abbreviation in your manuscript title when the spelled out term is long and would make the title really long. When using a particular abbreviation, it should be defined at the first instance of use in the abstract and the main text, and then used consistently through the entire manuscript. If you have a tendency of using several abbreviations and your target journal allows it, try and include a list of abbreviations and their expanded forms in the manuscript, but do not substitute them instead of the expanded forms in the text itself. Is the abbreviation necessary? Unnecessary abbreviations can increase the difficulty in reading your article. Therefore, they are best avoided. Abbreviations in figures are specifically problematic for journal reviewers when they receive articles with the figure legends but without the figures.