Policies for posting biomedical journal information on the Internet
CMAJ 1997;157:1378
© 1997 Canadian Medical Association
Electronic publishing (which includes the Internet) is publishing. Authors, editors, and publishers of biomedical journals who post medical and health information on the Internet connected to these publications should follow the policies established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors as "Uniform Requirements for Authors Submitting Articles to Biomedical Journals" (CMAJ 1997;156[2]:270-7) and related statements.
The nature of the Internet requires some special considerations within these well-established and accepted policies. As a minimum, sites should indicate the names of editors, authors, and contributors and their affiliations, relevant credentials, and relevant conflicts of interest; documentation and attribution of references and sources for all content; information about copyright; disclosure of site ownership; and disclosure of sponsorship, advertising, and commercial funding.
Linking from one health or medical Internet site to another may be perceived as a recommendation of the quality of the second site. Journals thus should exercise caution in linking to other sites. If links to other sites are posted as a result of financial considerations, such should be clearly indicated. All dates of content posting and updating should be indicated. In electronic layout, as in print, advertising and promotional messages should not be juxtaposed with editorial content. Any commercial content should be clearly identified as such.
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors*
Adopted as policy May 7, 1997.
This document is not covered by copyright. It may be copied and distributed without charge for not-for-profit purposes.
*Members (at the time this statement was adopted: Linda Hawes Clever, Western Journal of Medicine; Lois Ann Colaianni, US National Library of Medicine; Frank Davidoff, Annals of Internal Medicine; John Hoey, Canadian Medical Association Journal; Richard Horton, Lancet; George Lundberg and Richard Glass, Journal of the American Medical Association; Magne Nylenna, Tidsskrift for Den Norske Laegeforening; Richard Smith, British Medical Journal; Robert Utiger, New England Journal of Medicine; Martin VanDer Weyden, The Medical Journal of Australia; and Patricia Woolf, Princeton University.
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