J.H. MacDermot Writing Award

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 60, No. 7, September 2018, Page 369 News

The BCMJ invites writing submissions from student authors, and each year awards a prize of $1000 for the best medical student submission accepted for print and online publication. Students are encouraged to submit full-length scientific articles and essay pieces for consideration.

The J.H. MacDermot Writing Award, sponsored by Doctors of BC, honors Dr John Henry MacDermot, who served as editor for 34 years (1932–1968), overseeing the publication’s transition from the Vancouver Medical Association Bulletin to the BCMJ in 1959. Dr MacDermot also served as BCMA president in 1926.

To encourage med students to take their first foray into medical writing, the BCMJ awards an additional writing prize of $250 twice per year for the best 200- to 400-word blog submission accepted for online publication.

For submission guidelines and contest deadlines, please visit https://www.bcmj.org/submit-article-award.

. J.H. MacDermot Writing Award. BCMJ, Vol. 60, No. 7, September, 2018, Page(s) 369 - 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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