CMAJ says it is "open access", too. No so fast, says its upstart, online rival

The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) would clearly, really like to put its past problems behind it by using its editorial page to congratulate its upstart rival online journal Open Medicine on its launch.

You may recall that the CMAJ went through a serious crisis last year when the publisher of the journal fired its editor and the second-in-command quit as a result. The crisis came as a result, in part, of a move by the Canadian Medical Association to privatize the journal in an effort to make it a profit centre.

A large part of the magazine's editorial board quit over issues of editorial freedom and integrity. (Ultimately, the CMAJ appointed a new editorial team and effectively agreed to the kind of editorial freedom that the original editor had been asking for.)

One of the outcomes of the affair was that a lot of people who had backed the previous editorial board and team started Open Medicine, an online medical journal.

It would be fair to say that there has been little love lost between the two sides ever since.

Now, however, in the July 3 issue of the CMAJ makes an attempt to mend fences, going so far as to say, in effect, 'We're very much alike' and congratulating Open Medicine for its launch. The CMAJ authors attempt to associate themselves with the upstart as fellow practitioners of "open-access".

Starting up a new medical journal from scratch poses tremendous challenges that are not for the faint of heart. Open Medicine is fortunate to have an experienced editorial team of talented and creative people. We at CMAJ know this first-hand because many of these same individuals, we are proud to acknowledge, are former members of our team. Indeed, it was the prudent decisions and hard work of some of these individuals that made CMAJ the world's leading open-access general medical journal.

We congratulate our friends at Open Medicine on their achievement and wish them the very best of luck with this new venture.

Not so fast, said the editors of Open Medicine in a published response, accepting the praise but making it clear that their definition of "open access" and the CMAJ's are very different.

Although the endorsement by CMAJ’s editors of open access medical publishing is welcome, we would like to take this opportunity to clarify several points raised in their commentary. First, there is an important distinction between open versus free-access publication. Open Medicine has not only adopted the principle of free access, that is,making content fully available online, but endorses the definition of open access publication drafted by the Bethesda Meeting on Open Access Publishing. This definition stipulates that the copyright holder grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute works derived from the original work, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship. Given that CMAJ holds copyright and charges reprint and permission fees, it is not in fact an open access journal.

In comparison, Open Medicine does not assume the copyright of our authors’ work. We believe that it is only fair and just that authors retain the ownership of their work; as such, Open Medicine does not charge reprint or permission fees, and our work is available for reproduction for educational and teaching purposes without copyright limitations or charges. We use a Creative Commons Copyright License that also ensures derivative works are available through an open access forum. It is through this creative and unlimited use of published material, with due attribution, that we believe scientific discourse can flourish. This truly open access forum also has a contribution to make to a journal’s integrity, independence, and freedom.

So, still some fences to be mended, then?

The conversation about the editorial, the CMAJ's interpretation of what "open access" really means and Open Medicine's response is bound to continue. See the comment in the Public Library of Science blog by Chris Surridge.