Biomedical ethics

If you are collecting references for a project, looking for information on how to cite within a particular discipline, or interested in using software to collect and automatically format your in-text citations and bibliography in the proper citation style, the following pages may be of use:

• Citation Guides - General information on citation as well as information on what's available at McGill (for example, EndNote, which is free for McGill staff and students, and Zotero, which we support) and how to get more information
• Life Sciences Citation Style - Information on citing in Vancouver (author-number system), APA (author-date style), CSE
• Citation Styles - Useful citation guides for other commonly used citation styles
• Citation Styles by Subject

If you are writing a paper for a course, ask your professors what citation style they recommend. If you are publishing a journal article in the health sciences, consult the instructions for authors in the health sciences database or the journal website to find out what citation style they require your references to be formatted in.

McGill students and staff may download EndNote free of charge onto their personal computers at home or at the university.

EndNote is installed on all library computers as well as other locations on campus.

FAQ for citation management questions

This FAQ is set up to accept natural language questions and to get you to the answer to your question as quickly as possible. For now, the FAQ is limited to questions related to EndNote, but this will be expanded in the future.

You can type your question below, or access the full FAQ. We welcome your feedback!

Sources for Background Information

Guidelines and Standards - Research

• Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (2022)
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Ethics in Research: A science lifecycle approach
• Fonds de recherche santé Québec - Ethics
• U.S. - National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Human Subjects Research
• UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights
• ClinRegs (Beta) Database of research regulations by country, including ethics committee oversight. From the National Institutes of Health

Guidelines and Standards - Clinical

• Good Clinical Practices (Health Canada) - Guidance documents, regulations, reports related to the inspection and investigation of clinical trials
• American Medical Assocation Code of Medical Ethics
• British Medical Association: Ethics
• CMA (Canadian Medical Association) Code of Ethics and Professionalism
• Canadian Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses
• World Medical Association International Code of Medical Ethics

• McGill University, Faculty of Medicine - Research Ethics Office (IRB)
• McGill University, Research and Innovation - Ethics and Compliance

Guidance specific to bioethics

• Kahrass H, Borry P, Gastmans C, Ives J, van der Graaf R, Strech D, et al. RESERVE - REporting of SystEmatic ReViews in Ethics: Development, explanations and examples. Bioethics Open Research. 2023;1(4).
• McDougall R. Systematic reviews in bioethics: Types, challenges, and value. The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine. 2013;39(1):89-97.
• McDougall, R. Reviewing literature in bioethics research: Increasing rigour in non-systematic reviews. Bioethics. 2015;29(7), 523-528. doi:10.1111/bioe.12149
• Parsons JA, Johal HK. In defence of the bioethics scoping review: Largely systematic literature reviewing with broad utility. Bioethics. 2022;36(4):423-33.
•  Strech D, Sofaer N. How to write a systematic review of reasons. Journal of Medical Ethics. 2012;38(2):121.
   

General guidance by McGill Libraries

• Systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and other knowledge syntheses - Guide produced by McGill librarians focusing on systematic reviews and scoping reviews
• Librarian Involvement in Systematic Reviews, Scoping Reviews, and Other Knowledge Syntheses - Information on services provided by McGill librarians to support the production of knowledge syntheses

Search filters developed by CADTH (Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technology in Health)

Ethics, legal and social issues (ELSI):

• MEDLINE (Ovid)
• PubMed
• CINAHL (EBSCOhost)
• APA PsycInfo (Ovid)
• Scopus

Accessing resources from off-campus

Finding full text

Here are the steps I usually take when tracking down full-text articles. 

First, I like to perform these steps with VPN running in the background if off campus, for Google or Google Scholar in particular (VPN may not be a viable option behind hospital firewalls though).

Given I use EndNote to collect my references (this may also be an option in other citation management software):

• I have usually exported my records/references from article databases (such as PubMed) to EndNote, so I use the Find Full Text feature in EndNote to automatically download as many full-text articles to my EndNote library as I can (usually in batches no greater than 20, but that's just a suggestion); they get added to the .Data folder but I don't usually access that folder as the article can be viewed and annotated directly from the EndNote reference
• It's estimated that this works for around 50% of references [1], but this also depends on the age of the references, the publishers, the quality of the references, etc.
• Instructions on setting up Find Full Text in EndNote (you'll need to do this if you're off campus)

If that doesn't work or you don't use EndNote:

• I do a quick Google Scholar search for the article title and see if I can quickly get to full-text that way (I set up Google Scholar with “Find full text” links, and/or I use Google Scholar with VPN running in the background when off campus); 
• If that doesn’t work, I copy and paste the full journal title (rather than the article title, although the article title can work too) into the Sofia Discovery Tool
  • ​I often use quotations around the exact journal title for more precise results
  • I recommend using the full journal title over the abbreviated format (to find the full journal title, check the NLM catalog, e.g., search for Br J Med Surg Urol")
  • I often limit the results by format in the left-hand column to Journal/Magazine
  • When I find the right journal record, I click on “Access Online" and select a link that covers the date I am looking for
    • For e-access, I might have to click on a few links before getting to the right place: Pay particular attention to the information about the time coverage available for each electronic source to avoid unnecessary clicking
    • If it’s not available online, I check our print holdings in all relevant records for the journal; if it is only available in print at McGill, I click on “Place hold or request article/chapter scan” (be sure to fill in the citation information for the article or chapter in the item description field), or, if the article is in a journal that's on open shelves, I can go make a copy of it in person
  • More information on Sofia: The Shared Library Search Tool
• If it’s seemingly not available at McGill:
  • I do a quick Google search, putting the exact article title in quotations for precise results (using VPN if off campus, although this may not be an option behind hospital firewalls)
  • If I can’t find it through Google, I submit an interlibrary loan request