President responds

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 50, No. 4, May 2008, Page 185 Letters
By: Geoffrey Appleton, MB,

Through the Council of Public Affairs and Communication (CPAC), the BCMA Board did review the options for video conferencing the upcoming AGM that will be held in Prince George. Video conferencing a meeting of many hours presents some technical challenges. No supplier could commit to being able to maintain a video link for the duration of the meeting. So, for purely technical reasons video conferencing is not a viable alternative.

But the larger issue CPAC and the Board considered relates to singling out Vancouver as a place that needs special treatment as it relates to the AGM. 

The vast majority of AGMs are held in Vancouver and that requires members from across the province to travel if they want to attend. On the rare occasion when the AGM moves to another location the Board felt the same terms should apply. Any member wanting to attend the AGM has to travel to where the meeting is being held.

I believe the Board’s decision was a fair one.

—Geoffrey Appleton, MB
BCMA President

Geoffrey Appleton, MB,. President responds. BCMJ, Vol. 50, No. 4, May, 2008, Page(s) 185 - 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

Leave a Reply