The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and its subsidiary, CMA Holdings, have accepted all 25 recommendations of a governance panel that has called for sweeping changes in how the association's journal, CMAJ, has been run.

The association set up the panel after a dispute about the dismissal of two senior editors, which led to the resignation of most members of the journal's editorial board and drew widespread international criticism. Proposals even included replacing the journal with a new completely independent one (BMJ 2006;332:687).

The panel's recommendations included the transfer of direct ownership back to the association, to which 90% of Canadian doctors belong. The restructuring is designed to ensure the editorial independence of CMAJ and to avoid a repetition of the kind of dispute that resulted in the dismissal of the editor in chief, John Hoey, and his deputy, Anne Marie Todkill (BMJ 2006;332:503).

In an implicit reference to that dispute, the …