Are ICMJE and Vancouver style the same thing? : Inera Support

Yes and no ;)

“Vancouver” Styles

“Vancouver style” can refer simply to the practice of citing sources by number and listing them in order of citation. Items in a Vancouver-style reference list are numbered and are listed in the order in which they’re cited in the text (rather than alphabetically, as in an author-date reference list or a bibliography). The first citation will always be citation #1, and reference #1 will always be the first source cited in the text.

Vancouver-style citations in the text always use Arabic numerals, but these may be superscript or at baseline and may be used alone or enclosed in (parentheses) or [brackets].

Note: superscript numbered citations may look like footnote/endnote numbers, but you will notice that unlike note numbers, citation numbers can be used more than once (when the same source is cited repeatedly) and, after the first instance, may appear out of numerical order.

Similarly, Vancouver-style reference entries are always Arabic-numbered, but the numbers may be superscript or at baseline; may appear alone or enclosed in (parentheses) or [brackets]; and may be followed by a period plus a tab, a period plus a space, or a tab alone.

Note: using numbered citations and listing references in citation order does not require any specific format for reference entries, except of course that each reference must have a unique number.

A number of specific editorial styles exist that fall under the umbrella of “Vancouver (numbered) citation style.” Edifix-supported editorial styles that use Vancouver-style references include the following:

AMA

1. Smith AB, Jones CD. Reference styles and other musings. J Citation Res. 2014;1:200-215.

ACS (numbered):

1. Smith, A.B.; Jones, C.D. Reference styles and other musings. J Citation Res 2014, 1 (4), 200–215.

CSE (citation-sequence):

1 Smith AB, Jones CD. Reference styles and other musings. J Citation Res. 2014 Dec 15;1(4):200-215.

ASM Press:

1. Smith AB, Jones CD. 2014. Reference styles and other musings. J Citation Res 1:200-215.

Vancouver/ICMJE Style

There is also a specific editorial style, commonly called “Vancouver style,” that is endorsed in the ICMJE Recommendations and is used by MEDLINE, PubMed, and many other scientific publications. This specific style is also known as “Citing Medicine”, “ICMJE style,” and “PubMed/NLM style.”

This style is supported by Edifix and appears on the style menu as Vancouver/ICMJE. A reference Edifixed in Vancouver/ICMJE style looks like this:

Vancouver/ICMJE:

1. Smith AB, Jones CD. Reference styles and other musings. J Citation Res. 2014;1:200–215.

In other words, Edifix supports both numbered (“Vancouver”) reference styles and the Vancouver Style – or ICMJE – as well as “Harvard” (author-date) and other styles. If your references are numbered, the numbers will not be removed, regardless of the style you select.

Note: some styles, including Chicago and ACS, can be used with both Harvard and Vancouver citations, and removing reference numbers may cause unintended confusion later when matching your bibliography to your project's citations.