E-books for e-medicine

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 55, No. 7, September 2013, Page 323 College Library
By: Robert Melrose

E-books accounted for 20% of the entire book industry in 2012 according to the As­sociation of American Publishers. The College Library reflects this trend: over 270 medical e-books are available to registrants through the College’s website (www.cpsbc.ca/library). E-books are available from Access Medicine, EBSCO, and MD Consult, and include titles such as Braunwald’s Heart Disease and an electronic version of the classic Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine known as Harrison’s Online. Some e-books, including these two titles, contain supplemental multimedia content such as videos and images that are not available in the original paper book.

College registrants can now directly participate in the acquisition of College e-books as the library launches a new acquisition model known as Patron Driven Acquisi­tion (PDA). Patron usage directly in­fluences the selection process—perusal of an e-book by patrons over a predetermined threshold (e.g., a certain number of pages read, or the book is used for 10 minutes or more) triggers the purchase of the book which then becomes a permanent part of the library’s collection. 

Registrants may engage in PDA selection by exploring either the list of e-books on the books and journals page on the library website or by searching for e-books in the online catalogue at szasz.cpsbc.ca. These PDA e-books are in PDF format and require no additional software to view. They can be viewed on personal computers, as well as on an iPad and most other e-reader platforms.
—Robert Melrose
College Librarian

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This article is the opinion of the Library of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC and has not been peer reviewed by the BCMJ Editorial Board.

Robert Melrose. E-books for e-medicine. BCMJ, Vol. 55, No. 7, September, 2013, Page(s) 323 - College Library.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
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For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

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