10 steps to an eco-friendly BCMJ

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 50, No. 1, January February 2008, Page 11 Letters
By: Doug McGhee, MD

Congratulations for using 30% recycled and FSC paper (see www.fsc.org) and vegetable-based ink. Please follow your further advice (BCMJ, 2007;49[9]:501): align the BCMJ with the current epoch in environmental health and make it the most Earth-friendly medical journal on the globe.

1. Use 100% post-consumer recycled, unbleached (or at least chlorine-free bleached) paper (BCMJ now uses 30% recycled paper).

2. Use local paper to reduce the carbon costs of transportation (the paper of this journal is trucked from Wisconsin).

3. Use no-clay paper (the 30% to 35% clay-content paper this is printed on increases recycling and transportation costs).

4. Find a local source for your vegetable-oil ink (which avoids the heavy metals and volatile solvents). 

5. Eliminate plastic wrapping. I re­peat, eliminate plastic wrapping.

6. Staple inserts into magazine; inserts that cannot be stapled in as a pull-out should be eliminated; the same environmental standards must apply to any inserts.

7. Offer members incentives to de­cline inserts (reducing carbon transportation costs).

8. Offer members incentives to re­ceive BCMJ online (I admit it, I love reading your paper version).

9. Revise your BCMJ mission statement to include Earth-respecting values.

10. Model these to the world and celebrate your achievements by including a monthly eco-awareness section; this section shall highlight successive Earth-respecting achievements of the BCMA/BCMJ and a monthly eco-tip for hospitals and offices.

-Doug W. McGhee, MD
Victoria

Doug McGhee, MD. 10 steps to an eco-friendly BCMJ. BCMJ, Vol. 50, No. 1, January, February, 2008, Page(s) 11 - Letters.


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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