Re: We the people

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 48, No. 10, December 2006, Page 494 Letters
By: Margaret McGregor, MD,

In response to JAW’s op-ed (BCMJ 2006;48[7]:310-312) claiming that the recent challenge to Dr Brian Day’s presidency was an affront to the democratic process, I would like to put forward another point of view.

A substantial number of BC physicians, including myself, found the prospect of the particular candidate in question sufficiently unpalatable to devote our energies to finding and supporting a challenge candidate. We are extremely grateful that the election for CMA president did not go uncontested. The challenge sent a message to the rest of the country that not all doctors here are comfortable with BC’s choice to represent the public face of Canadian doctors. The constitutional “loophole” referred to by JAW was an important safeguard that allowed our message to be voiced.

—Margaret McGregor, MD
Vancouver

Margaret McGregor, MD,. Re: We the people. BCMJ, Vol. 48, No. 10, December, 2006, Page(s) 494 - 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