Formatting APS Journal Articles :: Title Page
This line details the institutions that the authors are associated with, giving their research institutions some renown and credit for the study. It is also used in Europe to denote grant information (with the order of the institutions listed showing which ones provided more funding).
If the affiliation line is missing or incomplete, use the corresponding author's mailing address, edit it per style, and e-mail or query the author.
Every affiliation must include the city and state (if in the US) or city and country (if not in the US). Delete consecutive repetitions of states or countries. For Canadian institutions, include the province.
Spell out state and country names. Delete "United States" or abbreviations such as "USA", "U.S.", etc. at the end of the affiliation; foreign countries, however, should be retained and spelled out (e.g., United Kingdom). Note that Canada is a foreign country.
Retain and spell out any company abbreviations such as "Inc.," "Co.," or "Corp."
Delete street addresses.
Retain the use of "The" if it is capitalized in the manuscript, e.g., The Center for Hearing Science or The University of Chicago.
Spell out all acronyms for research institutions (use codes if they exist to avoid misspellings). Use the list of institutions as a guide or use the Internet search engine Google to find the institution. You can also query the author for any acronym used that is not on the list or not easily determined.
Do not abbreviate "University" to "Univ."; use "Department" instead of "Dept."
If a branch of a university includes the city name preceded by a comma, do not repeat the city in the address. For example, change
University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California
to
University of California, San Diego, California
Infrequently, an author may publish independently, that is, not as a member of an institution. In this case, use the author's city and state (or country).
Combining departments or divisions. If more than two individual departments from the same location are listed, you may combine them. For example, change
1Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and 2Department of Physiology, School of Medicine
to
Departments of 1Neurobiology and Anatomy and 2Physiology, School of Medicine
Arrangement of affiliations. Elements (such as university, city, state, etc.) that are shared between two or more affiliations may be listed only once to avoid redundancy, but only if the affiliations are grouped together in the list. Do not change the order of affiliations or the hierarchy of the affiliations as given by the author, even if the numbers listed on the author line are not listed consecutively.
Affiliations that are grouped together and share elements should be separated with commas; otherwise, separate affiliations or groups of affiliations with semicolons, even if there are only two. Use "and" to separate the last two affiliations in a series or if there are only two affiliations given.
If two or more affiliations are located in the same state, you may list the state only once.
Different locations (city, state or city, country):
1Department of Physiology, Albany Medical College of Union University, Albany, New York; and 2Department of Physiology, University of South Alabama School of Medicine, Mobile, Alabama
Different cities, same state:
Department of Medicine, 1Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston; and 2New England Regional Primate Research Center, Southborough, Massachusetts
Same city:
Departments of 1Physiology and 2Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, and 3Endocrine Research Laboratory, St. Luke's Hospital, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Foreign addresses. Use English names for foreign cities and countries. Do not "Americanize" the name of a university or institution, even if it contains the name of a foreign city, e.g., Universität München, Munich, Germany.
If the author requests that names in a foreign affiliation be set lowercase, we allow it; however, standard APS style is to capitalize all proper words in an affiliation line.
Be careful when deleting foreign street addresses. Look for numbers and words such as Rue, Calle, Strasse, Via, etc. Check a foreign dictionary if you are not sure. Japanese addresses may be particularly challenging.
Some tips for commonly made changes: London should always be followed by United Kingdom; Change Mexico DF (Distrito Federal) to Mexico City, Mexico.
Use the «aff» code to begin the affiliation line. The text of the affiliation line should be set in italics except for any superscripted numbers linking an affiliation to an author (these should be roman). CodeCheck will automatically make any adjustments as necessary, but you should check your own work in any case.