The Vancouver Protocol
Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals ("The uniform requirements"). Issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
By: Johanne Severinsen and Lise Ekern, 2017. Updated by Ingrid Torp, 2022.
The ICMJE is a small working group of general medical journal editors representatives of selected related organizations who meet annually and fund their own work on the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.
The document, previously known as the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (URMs), was first published in 1978 as a way of standardizing manuscript format and preparation across journals. Over the years, the scope of the document became broader and a new name was adopted to reflect this.
Among other things, the recommendations states that the Declaration of Helsinki must be followed and that the research project must be advised by an independent ethics committee. According to the ICMJE website, more than 7500 journals state that they apply to the recommendations (2022).
Updated version is available at the ICMJE homepage, http://www.icmje.org/