To acknowledge NCBI services in your writing, you can refer to (1) publications that NCBI staff publishes in peer-reviewed journals or (2) to the NCBI web site (internet) and individual services/records within the site.
1. Publications describing NCBI services in peer-reviewed journals:
- As a general reference, use the Database Resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information article published in Nucleic Acids Research (NAR). Use the Citation link on the right side of the PMC view of this article to obtain the citation in the desired format.
- Check through this PubMed listing to locate citations/papers on individual NCBI services of your interest.
- For the BLAST® services, use these BLAST references.
2. Citing the NCBI internet site and individual web pages and records:
- To cite the entire NCBI site, use this format:
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)[Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information; [1988] – [cited 2017 Apr 06]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
(The date within the square brackets represents your date of citing the site.)
- To cite an individual service or database, format your citation according to this example:
Gene [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information; 2004 – [cited YYYY Mmm DD]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/
- To cite an individual record, format your citation according to this example:
Nucleotide [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US), National Center for Biotechnology Information; [1988] – . Accession No. NM_001349333.1, Homo sapiens FYN binding protein (FYB), transcript variant 4, mRNA; [cited YYYY Mmm DD]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NM_001349333.1
Pay attention to the correct accession format when citing individual records.
For more details also see:
- The attached file that contains:
- examples for citing some of the popular NCBI services
- additional guidance on citing GenBank and RefSeq records
- Chapter 24 Databases/Retrieval Systems/Datasets on the Internet in the Citing Medicine guide.