UBCMJ launch event

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 51, No. 8, October 2009, News
By: Ciara Chamberlain, MSc, Pamela Verma, BSc, Diane Wu, BSc,

On 8 September 2009 at the beautiful Life Sciences Centre, UBC celebrated the release of the first issue of the UBC Medical Journal, the official student peer-reviewed publication of the Faculty of Medicine. Dean Gavin Stuart and Dr Timothy Rowe of the BCMJ gave guest speeches. In attendance were members of all four years and three distributed sites of UBC medical students, as well as faculty members and special guests from the BC medical community.

The UBCMJ landed in the national spotlight when it was awarded the CMA Leadership Innovation Award in June. The first edition features student-generated research, case reports, and opinion pieces. Articles are peer reviewed by teams of medical students and professionals and undergo a rigorous editing process.

With the support of the CMA, BCMA, BCMJ , UBC Faculty of Medicine, and Medical Undergraduate Society, the UBCMJ is having a first print run of 700 in addition to its online version. Copies of the first issue are being distributed free of charge to all first- and second-year UBC medical students across the province. The journal will be published twice annually; the recruitment of articles and reviewers for the second edition is already underway. Clinicians can support the publication by volunteering as faculty reviewers, sponsors, or advertisers.

Please e-mail med.journal@ubc.ca if you are interested in submitting an article, becoming a reviewer, subscribing to the journal, or placing an advertisement. Check out our web page at ubcmj.com for information on how to get involved with our second edition, or to download our first edition.

—Ciara Chamberlain, MSc
—Pamela Verma, BSc (Hons)
—Diane Wu, BSc (Hons)

Ciara Chamberlain, MSc,, Pamela Verma, BSc,, Diane Wu, BSc,. UBCMJ launch event. BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 8, October, 2009, Page(s) - News.


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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