AMA Manual of Style - Stacy L. Christiansen, Cheryl Iverson 2020

Collaborative Groups
Abbreviations

Collaborative groups usually include study groups, multicenter trials, task forces, expert and ad hoc consensus groups, and periodic national and international health surveys. Such an entity’s abbreviation should be provided in addition to its full name, even if it appears only once in a manuscript. Because some of these groups are better recognized by their acronyms than by their full names, the acronym can be placed first, with the expansion in parentheses, contrary to the order usually recommended.

To save space in titles, however, the acronym may be used alone if its expansion is provided early in the manuscript, for example, in the abstract and in the text. Alternatively, the acronym might be given in the manuscript’s title and the expansion in its subtitle, or if space permits and both the expansion and the acronym convey separate and essential concepts, both could be given in the title or subtitle. The collaborative group name may be used as the byline (see 5.1.9, Group and Collaborative Authorship; 2.2, Author Bylines and End-of-Text Signatures; and 2.10, Acknowledgments [Article Information]).

When choosing the form in which collaborative group information is presented, consider the manuscript’s context and audience, database searches, and ease of comprehension.