CMAJ editorial board members vent anger at lack of openness

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7542.624-a

BMJ 2006;332:624 (18 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7542.624-a

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CMAJ editorial board members vent anger at lack of openness

David Spurgeon

Quebec

Several members of the editorial board of CMAJ, the journalof the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), were set to resignon Tuesday, as the BMJ went to press, claiming that the associationhas not been open about its firings of the journal's editorand deputy editor, John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill.

Philip Devereaux, an assistant professor of medicine at McMasterUniversity and a member of the board, announced the developmentafter the editorial board met on Monday evening.

Earlier, relations between the editorial board and the journal'spublishers, the association and CMA Holdings, appeared to bemoving toward an agreement that would have ensured the journal'seditorial independence.

After the board rejected a governance plan offered by the associationon 7 March, saying that the association was merely trying toretain its ability to meddle with editorial content, Larry Ehrlichresigned as chair of the journal oversight committee. That wasseen as a positive move by the editorial committee, becauseDr Ehrlich was felt to be compromised by the fact that he wasalso on the association's board of governors.

The editorial board saw the first four points in the governanceplan proposed by the association as positive and conveyed thisto the association, but it believed the next six points couldbe improved. Since then, the CMA has changed some of its governanceplan in what the editorial board saw as the right direction,and it discussed these changes at its meeting on Monday.

At the same time that it proposed the governance plan, the CMAappointed Antonio Lamer, the retired chief justice of the SupremeCourt of Canada, as head of a panel that would study the CMAJ'sgovernance structure. It also named Noni MacDonald, a Halifaxpaediatrician who has served on the journal oversight committee,as interim editor of the journal. Bruce Squires, a retired formereditor of the journal, was named editor emeritus. Dr Squiresis a founder of the World Association of Medical Editors.