News from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

More than 20 years ago, a small number of medical journal editors began developing standards to improve the editorial quality of papers written for the biomedical literature. Known formally as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and informally as the Vancouver Group (in recognition of the city where it first met), the group produced its first standards document, the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (URM), in 1979. These standards have since been adopted by more than 500 journals worldwide. The group also subsequently developed a series of Statements on editorial policy issues ranging from conflict of interest to editorial freedom, confidentiality, and advertising policy. These documents are frequently cited; it's likely that their effect on the biomedical literature has been substantial.

Roughly every 4 years since 1979, the ICMJE has revised the entire Uniform Requirements document and Statements; the most recent version appeared in 1997 (1). The revisions have been widely published in print journals and are now available on many Web sites. In the intervals between revisions, the group has updated selected requirements and statements, but publication of these changes has been spotty. To make information about these editorial requirements more generally available, the ICMJE has now set up its own Web site (http://www.icmje.org) containing the definitive and most up-to-date version of the Uniform Requirements and the Statements.

Three recent changes to the Uniform Requirements deserve special mention: use of the concepts of race and ethnicity, authorship issues, and …