Term limits for Doctors of BC committees. The editor replies

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 58, No. 4, May 2016, Page 189 Letters
By: David R. Richardson, MD
Related To:

Term limits for Doctors of BC committees

Thank you for your interest in the BCMJ and for your kind words regarding the efforts of our Editorial Board.

The BCMJ’s terms of reference were reviewed and updated in 2015. To maintain editorial independence, which is an accepted standard for scientific publications, a case was made to the Governance Committee that the BCMJ Editorial Board should remain at arm’s length from the Doctors of BC Board. After input and support from the Governance Committee, the current BCMJ terms of reference were put forward to and accepted by the Board of Doctors of BC.

We continue to review ways to maintain the journal’s independence while reflecting the diversity of our readership, including lengths of service for Editorial Board members.
—ED.

David R. Richardson, MD. Term limits for Doctors of BC committees. The editor replies. BCMJ, Vol. 58, No. 4, May, 2016, Page(s) 189 - 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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