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 is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
, preparation and formatting of
manuscript
A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...
s submitted to
biomedical
Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine) 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]
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 cit ...
in
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
. 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 releva ...
''
* ''
BMJ
''The BMJ'' is a fortnightly peer-reviewed medical journal, published by BMJ Publishing Group Ltd, which in turn is wholly-owned by the British Medical Association (BMA). ''The BMJ'' has editorial freedom from the BMA. It is one of the world' ...
''
* ''
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 1948. Articles are published in English and abstracts are available in Arabic, Chinese, Englis ...
''
* ''
Deutsches Ärzteblatt''
* ''Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences''
* ''
Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences''
* ''
Journal of the American Medical Association
''JAMA'' (''The Journal of the American Medical Association'') 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 ...
'' (JAMA)
* ''
New England Journal of Medicine
''The New England Journal of Medicine'' (''NEJM'') is a weekly medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. Founded in 1812, the journal is among the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals. Its 2023 impact factor was ...
''
* ''
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 launched its ...
''
* ''Journal of Korean Medical Science''
* ''
Revista Médica de Chile''
* ''
The Lancet
''The Lancet'' is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal, founded in England in 1823. It is one of the world's highest-impact academic journals and also one of the oldest medical journals still in publication.
The journal publishes ...
''
* ''
The U.S. National Library of Medicine''
* ''
The New Zealand Medical Journal''
* ''
The World Association of Medical Editors''
* ''
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 incre ...
''
Citation style
The citation style recommended by the ICMJE Recommendations, which is also known as the
Vancouver system
The Vancouver system, also known as Vancouver reference style or the author–number system, is a citation style that uses numbers within the text that refer to numbered entries in the reference list. It is popular in the physical sciences and is ...
, 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. I ...
(NLM), codified in ''
Citing Medicine''.
References are numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text – they are identified by
Arabic numerals
The ten Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers. The term often also implies a positional notation number with a decimal base, in particular when contrasted with Roman numera ...
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. They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their n ...
.
Example of a journal citation:
* Leurs R, Church MK, Taglialatela M. H
1-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) 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
A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in whi ...
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 Sa ...
for the production of scientific and technical
reports
A report is a document or a statement that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are usually given in the form of written documen ...
included in the wider category of
grey literature
Grey literature (or gray literature) is material and research produced by organizations outside of the traditional publishing, commercial or academic publishing and distribution channels. Common grey literature publication types include reports (a ...
. 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 for the format of a document. IMRaD is the most prominent norm for the structure of a scientific journal article of the o ...
*
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly method, scholarly conduct and ethics, ethical behavior in the publication of professional science, scientific research. It is the violation of scientific integrity: violati ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
About ICMJEThe ''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
Medical journalism