A. Sample Citation and Introduction to Citing Conference Proceedings Vancouver Style

The general format for a reference to a conference proceedings, including punctuation:

– with a title for the book of proceedings as well as a conference title:

– with only a conference title:

Conference proceedings are a collection of the papers presented at a conference, symposium, congress, or other meeting. They share many characteristics with books; the major difference in citing them lies in their titles and in the provision of information about the dates and places of the conferences.

Conference proceedings always have a conference title. They often have two titles: the title of the book of proceedings (often the name of the specific conference) and the title of the conference. Many organizations hold annual numbered meetings, each of which has a specific topic or theme. For example, "Addressing patient needs: access, parity and humane care." is the name (book title) of the160th Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (conference title). When both titles are present, give the book title first.

Confusion arises if people preparing references to conference proceedings believe that the date and location of the conference take the place of the date and place of publication. Proceedings are frequently published a year or more after the conference was held, and there is often no correlation between the location of the publisher and the location of the conference. Sponsors of the conference are also often not the publisher.

Citations to conference proceedings involve placing information about the conference in a prescribed format and order, with prescribed punctuation, regardless of the order and punctuation given in the text. For example, if the title page reads:

Society for Laboratory Animal Welfare

Forty-third Annual Meeting

San Francisco

June 3-5, 2005

The format and order for the citation should be:

43rd Annual Meeting of the Society for Laboratory Animal Welfare; 2005 Jun 3-5; San Francisco.

In addition, because conference proceedings are a collection of papers, they have editors, not authors. Editors are usually considered secondary authors and placed after the title, but since no authors are present in proceedings, place their editors in the author position at the beginning of the reference.

The chief source for information about a proceedings is its title page. The back of the title page, called the verso or copyright page, and the cover of the book of proceedings are additional sources of authoritative information not found on the title page.

Conference papers are cited in the same way as contributions to books. See Chapter 3B Conference Papers for details. For information on citing papers presented at conferences but never published, see Chapter 12 Papers and Poster Sessions Presented at Meetings. For a proceedings appearing on the Internet, see Chapter 18 Books and Other Individual Titles on CD-ROM, DVD, or Disk and Chapter 22 Books and Other Individual Titles on the Internet.

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Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers [Internet]. 2nd edition. Chapter 3: Conference Publications