Answered By: Caltech Research Librarians
Last Updated: Nov 12, 2025     Views: 3572

There are two ways that Zotero citation styles choose journal abbreviations.

  1. Citation styles that use journal abbreviations have an option to use standard MEDLINE journal abbreviations. You can select this option when choosing a citation style for a document.

Screenshot of Zotero Document Preferences highlighting Use MEDLINE Journal Abbreviations.

See Zotero's documentation about journal abbreviations for more information about how Zotero plans to incorporate other abbreviation lists in the future.

  1. All Zotero styles have an option to enter a journal abbreviation for each citation:

Screenshot of Zotero information panel highlighting a journal abbreviation.

If you select using MEDLINE abbreviations (option 1 above), these abbreviations will not be used. Also they will not be used if the citation style specifies that full journal names be used in citations.

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