Med student journal launched

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 51, No. 6, July August 2009, Page 245 Letters
By: Pamela Verma, BSc, Diane Wu, BSc, Ciara Chamberlain, MSc,

It is with great excitement that we announce the first edition of the UBCMJ! The University of British Columbia Medical Journal is a student-run, peer-reviewed academic journal. Currently, over 100 students at UBC from all levels and training and three distributed sites are involved in as writers, artists, reviewers, editors, layout designers, and ex­ecutive directors. The UBCMJ accepts articles in all areas of medicine, inclu­ding research, reviews, case reports, medical history, ethics, medical an­thropology, epidemiology, public health, and international health. The UBCMJ also features original artwork and photography created by medical students as its cover art. With financial support from the CMA, the BCMA, the UBC Faculty of Medicine, and the UBC Medical Undergraduate Society, the UBCMJ is available in print and online.

Please join us in celebration of our launch on 8 September 2009 at the Life Sciences Centre, UBC. E-mail med.journal@ubc.ca if you are interested in submitting student writing or placing an advertisement. Check out our web page at www.ubcmj.com for information on how to get involved with our second edition, and to download our first edition (available September 2009).

—Pamela Verma, BSc (Hons)
—Diane Wu, BSc (Hons)
Editors in Chief
—Ciara Chamberlain, MSc
—Bez Toosi, BSc
Communications Editors

Pamela Verma, BSc,, Diane Wu, BSc,, Ciara Chamberlain, MSc,. Med student journal launched. BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 6, July, August, 2009, Page(s) 245 - 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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