What’s happening at the Canadian Medical Association Journal should be of concern to anyone. Given how much news is determined by what is published in medical journals, this is a troubling story.
As an article in the New England Journal of Medicine states this week, “Canada is now the epicenter of the ongoing struggle over the scope and limits of editorial freedom at association-owned journals.”
Canadian journalists report that 14 members of the 19-member editorial board of the Journal quit yesterday, joining Dr. Jerome Kassirer, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine who resigned earlier this week.
Those who quit did so in protest of last month's firings of the journal’s editor and senior deputy editor.
“We believe your recent actions and pronouncements regarding establishing editorial autonomy are largely cosmetic and unlikely to lead to an independent and free voice for health related issues in Canada,” they said.
The squabble has drawn international attention from the world’s leading medical journals: The Lancet, the British Medical Journal, PLoS Medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
An editorial in The Globe and Mail of Toronto develops the issues more fully.