The ICMJE recommendations (full title, "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals") are a set of guidelines produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for standardising the
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns m ...
, preparation and formatting of
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...
s submitted to
biomedical journals for publication.
Compliance with the ICMJE recommendations is required by most leading biomedical journals. Levels of real compliance are subject to debate. As of 9 January 2020, 5570 journals worldwide claim to follow the ICMJE recommendations.
[International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Journals that have Requested Inclusion on the List of Publications that follow the ICMJE's Uniform Requirements For Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals omepage on the Internet Philadelphia: ICMJE; c2005 pdated 27 May 2006; cited 30 May 2006 Available from]
http://www.icmje.org/journals.html
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The recommendations were first issued in 1979 under the title "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" (abbreviated URMs and often shortened to "Uniform Requirements"). After a series of revisions, they were given their current name in 2013.
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) was originally known as the Vancouver Group, after the location of their first meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
in Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. members of the ICMJE are:
* ''Annals of Internal Medicine
''Annals of Internal Medicine'' is an academic medical journal published by the American College of Physicians (ACP). It is one of the most widely cited and influential specialty medical journals in the world. ''Annals'' publishes content relevan ...
''
* ''BMJ
''The BMJ'' is a weekly peer-reviewed medical trade journal, published by the trade union the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world's oldest general medical journals. Origina ...
''
* ''Bulletin of the World Health Organization
The ''Bulletin of the World Health Organization'' is a monthly public health journal published by the World Health Organization that was established in 1947. Articles are published in English and abstracts are available in Arabic, Chinese, Englis ...
''
* ''Deutsches Ärzteblatt
The ''Deutsches Ärzteblatt'' is a weekly German-language medical magazine published in Germany.
Profile
''Deutsches Ärzteblatt'' is published by the Deutscher Ärzte Verlag, which is co-owned by the German Medical Association (''Bundesärztekam ...
''
* ''Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences''
* ''Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences
The ''Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences'' is a bimonthly medical journal established in 1970 as the ''Pahlavi Medical Journal'', obtaining its current name in 1979. The editor-in-chief is Younes Ghasemi.
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is i ...
''
* ''Journal of the American Medical Association
''The Journal of the American Medical Association'' (''JAMA'') is a peer-reviewed medical journal published 48 times a year by the American Medical Association. It publishes original research, reviews, and editorials covering all aspects of bio ...
'' (JAMA)
* ''New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals as well as the oldest continuously published one.
His ...
''
* ''Public Library of Science
PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and launc ...
''
* ''Journal of Korean Medical Science''
* '' Revista Médica de Chile''
* ''The Lancet
''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal and one of the oldest of its kind. It is also the world's highest-impact academic journal. It was founded in England in 1823.
The journal publishes original research articles, ...
''
* ''The U.S. National Library of Medicine
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
''
* ''The New Zealand Medical Journal
''The New Zealand Medical Journal (NZMJ)'' is a peer review, peer-reviewed medical journal. It is the official journal of the New Zealand Medical Association.
Description
The ''NZMJ'' was established in September 1887 by the New Zealand Branch of ...
''
* ''The World Association of Medical Editors
The World Association of Medical Editors (abbreviated WAME, pronounced "whammy") is an international, virtual organization of editors of medical journals. It was originally founded in 1995 by a group of members of the International Committee of Me ...
''
* ''Ugeskrift for Læger (Danish Medical Journal)
''Ugeskrift for Læger'' (English: ''Weekly Journal for Physicians'') is a Danish medical journal published every Monday. It is written in Danish, and publishes original research
Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to inc ...
''
Citation style
The citation style recommended by the ICMJE Recommendations, which is also known as the Vancouver system, is the style used by the United States National Library of Medicine
The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is an institute within the National Institutes of Health. Its ...
(NLM), codified in '' Citing Medicine''.
References are numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text – they are identified by Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...
enclosed in parentheses
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
.
Example of a journal citation:
* Leurs R, Church MK, Taglialatela M. H1-antihistamines: inverse agonism, anti-inflammatory actions and cardiac effects. Clin Exp Allergy 2002 Apr;32(4):489–498.
Manuscripts describing human interventional clinical trials
URM includes a mandate for manuscripts describing human interventional trials to register a trial in a clinical trial registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov) and to include the trial registration ID in the abstract of the article. The URM also requires that this registration is done prior enrolling the first participant. A study of five high impact factor journals (founders of ICMJE
The ICMJE recommendations (full title, "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals") are a set of guidelines produced by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for stan ...
) showed that only 89% of published articles (articles published during 2010–2011; about trials that completed in 2008) were properly registered prior enrolling the first participant.
Disclosure of Competing Interests
The ICMJE also developed a uniform format for disclosure of competing interests in journal articles.
Grey literature
The ''Uniform Requirements'' were adapted by the Grey Literature International Steering Committee GLISC The Grey Literature International Steering Committee (GLISC) was established in 2006 after the 7th International Conference on Grey Literature (GL7) held in Nancy (France) on 5–6 December 2005.
During this conference, the Istituto Superiore di S ...
for the production of scientific and technical reports
A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage
In ...
included in the wider category of grey literature
Grey literature (or gray literature) is materials and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (annual, rese ...
. These ''GLISC Guidelines for the production of scientific and technical reports'' are translated to French, German, Italian and Spanish and are available on the GLISC websit
See also
* Conflicts of interest in academic publishing
Conflicts of interest (COIs) often arise in academic publishing. Such conflicts may cause wrongdoing and make it more likely. Ethical standards in academic publishing exist to avoid and deal with conflicts of interest, and the field continues to ...
*
* IMRAD
In scientific writing, IMRAD or IMRaD () (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) is a common organizational structure (a document format). IMRaD is the most prominent norm for the structure of a scientific journal article of the original r ...
* Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. A '' Lancet'' review on ''Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countrie ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
About ICMJE
The ''Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals''
* ttp://www.icmje.org/journals.html ''Journals Following the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts''
Use of ''Uniform Requirements'' for scientific and technical reports
Bibliography
Style guides for technical and scientific writing
Medical publishing
Scientific documents
Metascience
Science policy