Re: Child maltreatment

The Journal is to be commended for its excellent two-part theme issue on child maltreatment, and Dr Marie Hay’s article, “Commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth” (BCMJ 2004;46(3):119-122) is particularly timely and should help to increase physician awareness of this oft-overlooked form of child abuse.

I would like to draw my colleagues’ attention to a more recent initiative not mentioned in Dr Hay’s list of BC resources. This is the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Youth (CSEP) program of the McCreary Youth Foundation (MYF). This initiative provides funds to community-based, nongovernmental organizations for projects in their own region of BC (see www.myfoundation.ca).

The MYF is a new organization and its program uses a multidisciplinary, multisectoral positive youth development approach with emphasis on early intervention in early adolescents. Its work is guided by a provincial CSEP Advisory Committee that assesses applications that address community awareness, prevention and education strategies, family support, and exiting initiatives. The project secretariat identifies gaps in provincial programs (e.g., for aboriginal youth, for parent support, and for males). Any BC organization may apply for funding and readers are referred to the foundation web site for application forms and submission details.

—Roger S. Tonkin, MD
Managing Director, McCreary Youth Foundation

Roger S. Tonkin, MDCM, FRCPC, OBC. Re: Child maltreatment. BCMJ, Vol. 46, No. 5, June, 2004, Page(s) 217 - 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