Medical Writing Centre

Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals

This is an essential guide for biomedical authors. Over 500 journals have agreed to receive manuscripts prepared in accordance with these guidelines. Includes additional statements covering ethical concerns related to editorial, advertising, supplements, etc.

Guidelines for randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses and guidelines

• CMA Handbook on Clinical Practice Guidelines
• CONSORT checklist and flow diagram
• PRISMA checklist and flow diagram
• MOOSE statement 2000
• GRADE approach
• GPP2 guidelines (Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company Sponsored Medical Research)
• EQUATOR Network
• CONSORT 2010 Statement: Updated Guidelines for Reporting Parallel Group Randomised Trials (PLoS Med 7(3): e1000251. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000251
• Reporting Standards and the Transparency of Trials (article on the various statements guiding controlled trials and meta-analyses from Ann Intern Med 2001;134[2]:169-72)

Ethical guidelines

• The Nuremberg Code
• Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans
• World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki
  
• Bioethics for clinicians

Organizations for medical writers and editors

• American Medical Writers Association
  
• American Medical Writers Association Canada Chapter
  
• Council of Science Editors
  
• Editors' Association of Canada
  
• European Association of Science Editors
• European Medical Writers' Association
• Society for Scholarly Publishing
  
• World Association of Medical Editors

Selected writing resources elsewhere on the Web

• Instructions to Authors in the Health Sciences
  Instructions for hundreds of journals, including those published by the CMA
• Eurekalert! Your Global Gateway to Science, Medicine and Technology News
• Merriam-Webster Online
• OWL: Online Writing Lab, a service of Purdue University that provides online documents, pointers to other sources of writing help and email access to writing tutors
• Roget's Thesaurus
• The Word Detective, an online version of the syndicated column answering readers' questions about words and language begun by William Morris, editor-in-chief of the first edition of theAmericanHeritage Dictionary and continued by his son, Evan
• Word for Word, an online column about words and language, by Terry O'Connor
• Writer's Block, the online edition of a quarterly newsletter for writers

To suggest an online resource for this listing, please send details to pubs{at}cma.ca.