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 ...

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'' * '' Bulletin of the World Health Organization'' * '' 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)''

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. 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) 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 for the production of scientific and technical reports 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

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 Medical journalism