Support from the Library

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 63, No. 1, January February 2021, Page 40 College Library
By: Paula Osachoff

College registrants planning to catch up on reading or working on projects can look to the College Library for support. The Library participates in several sharing networks with both larger and smaller institutions throughout North America to provide registrants with access to as many evidence-based resources as possible.

Locally, the eHLbc (Electronic Health Library of BC) consortium provides many health libraries access to databases, e-books, and journal packages that, individually, many libraries could not afford. Consortia are essential to allow libraries to maximize the impact of often limited budgets and to act as a negotiating bloc with publishers.

The College Library provides access to over 6000 journal titles, but we are not able to subscribe to everything. Through consortia membership and membership in larger lending networks such as Docline (through the US National Library of Medicine), the College Library can access specialty journals, historical materials, books, and other resources from other participating libraries throughout North America on registrants’ behalf.

If we don’t have an article, journal, or book, just ask! In most cases requested articles can be obtained within a day or two. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is limited access to many print collections, both locally and further afield. Most newer journal articles and online book titles are easily accessed, but print-only materials may still take a bit longer to source for digitized copies or may not be available at all right now. Please contact the College Library at medlib@cpsbc.ca for assistance. If requested materials are not available, we are always happy to help find alternatives. 
—Paula Osachoff
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This article is the opinion of the Library of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC and has not been peer reviewed by the BCMJ Editorial Board.

Paula Osachoff. Support from the Library. BCMJ, Vol. 63, No. 1, January, February, 2021, Page(s) 40 - 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.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


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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