Classic and accessible (just like me)

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 61, No. 6, July August 2019, Page 233 Editorials
By: David R. Richardson, MD

Life is like that sometimes—one minute you’re sitting around the Editorial Board table and the next someone is saying how it’s time to make the BCMJ more like its editor—classic, durable, and meant to last another 10 to 15 years.

That’s not how it really happened, but it was time to give our esteemed journal an updated, more contemporary look. This last happened in 2000, perhaps as a celebration of our computers not imploding with the feared Y2K bug. Our web redesign, completed in 2018, focused on providing a simple, clean look, and it was time to bring similar objectives to our print BCMJ. Therefore, starting in this July/August issue, every section, page, headline, and byline has been redesigned to reach our goal of providing a fresh look while improving readability. We know you enjoy reading and aren’t intimidated by text-heavy pages, but still, we’ll be introducing more photos and illustrations where the budget allows.

We hope you enjoy the three-quarter-inch increase in width, which allows the designers more space to visually open up the pages without adding length to the BCMJ. (For you budget hounds, be assured that this change doesn’t increase mailing costs.) The layout will remain a three-column grid, which allows the designers plenty of flexibility and good line length for text. Short lines make text choppy to read and everyone finds long lines monotonous (particularly at Disneyland). After a lengthy and exhaustive consultative process, we also decided to change the fonts. Gone is Helvetica Neue for the headers, replaced by Myriad Pro, which as many of you know has clean, open shapes while being readable and accessible (just like me). The font decision for the body text was more complicated, but once a world-renowned mystic stepped in it became clear that Adobe Caslon Pro was our baby. Times New Roman was a thing of the past, replaced by this widely used font (it can be found in The New Yorker, so it must be good).

That’s probably a little too much about fonts, but we hope you enjoy the changes. We want your reading experience to be a pleasant, educational, and calming. We are so proud of our little magazine, and will continue to make the changes necessary to keep the BCMJ the go-to source for the doctors of BC, written by the doctors of BC.
—DRR

David R. Richardson, MD. Classic and accessible (just like me). BCMJ, Vol. 61, No. 6, July, August, 2019, Page(s) 233 - Editorials.


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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