Re: Rise in injury rates for older male motorcyclists: Authors reply

Thank you, Dr Munn, for your letter and the opportunity to further discuss the important issue of injuries among older male motorcyclists. We agree that a limitation of our study was our inability to include data on the number of motorcyclists on the road. We would also venture to say that the more useful figure would indicate not only the number and age of motorcyclists on the road, but also the time spent or distance traveled on the motorbikes, in order to indicate with greater accuracy whether injury rates are rising for older riders when controlling for exposure. This would require a different kind of study.

Regardless of these measurement issues, the fact remains that motorcycle-related injury hospitalization rates and associated costs are rising significantly among older males, while rates among younger males are dropping. It behooves the health community to do what we can to prevent these injuries. You point to the importance of education strategies for automobile and motorcycle drivers. We further recommend developing evidence-based injury prevention initiatives targeted at and sensitive to the needs of older male riders. 
—Mariana Brussoni, PhD
—Kendra Wong, BA
—Genevieve Creighton, PhD
—Lise Olsen, RN, PhD

Mariana Brussoni, PhD,, Kendra Wong, BA, Genevieve Creighton, PhD,, Lise Olsen, RN, PhD,. Re: Rise in injury rates for older male motorcyclists: Authors reply. BCMJ, Vol. 56, No. 10, December, 2014, Page(s) 474-475 - 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