The former editors and editorial board members who left the Canadian Medical Association Journal during a dispute over editorial indepedence from drug companies have launched a new medical journal called Open Medicine, which features a completely new approach to peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. John Hoey and Anne Marie Todkill, two former top editors at the CMAJ,  were fired after they published an editorial criticizing editorial changes made to the journal. The Canadian Medical Association made the changes to an article about the morning after pill, subsequent to complaints from the Canadian Pharmacists Association.

After the pair were fired, most of the editorial board resigned in protest, leading to international coverage of the issue.

"Once it became clear that the Canadian Medical Association wasn't going to act appropriately, it became more obvious that there would be a need for an independent journal," Dr. P.J. Devereaux, a former board member who now sits on the Open Medicine board, told the Victoria Times Colonist.

The new online journal, launched last month, promises a unique approach to peer-reviewed publishing. A central difference to traditional medical journals is their pledge to only accept what they call "ethical advertising." To prevent conflicts of interest, they will not accept advertisements from pharmaceutical or medical equipment companies.

In an opening editorial, James Maskalyk wrote, “Too much of the revenue that sustains medical journals comes from pharmaceutical advertising that attempts to influence physicians into making decisions based on brand recognition rather than on discerning scholarship.”

The journal is published independently from any association or commercial publisher. Maskalyk writes, “There are also several important instances where information and debate have been stifled over private and political concerns over making knowledge public.”

Open Medicine is also unique in that it has pledged to make information available to anyone for free, whereas most medical journal subscriptions are quite expensive. The editors note that by putting the onus on the end-user to cover publishing costs, knowledge is often not reaching professionals in poor countries, health care providers who don’t have access through a university, and patients who depend on the research.

Instead, they argue that the costs of publishing medical journals should be built into the grants that fund the research in the first place. “Without dissemination, knowledge cannot truly be said to exist,” they write.

In the near term, the journal will be funded by voluntarism, donations, and ethical advertising.

The final characteristic that differs from the traditional medical journal is their goal of embracing collaborative peer review, using wiki technology. Having used wiki to edit their first issue, they found that it “captured combined efforts.” They are now discussing ways to add a wiki to the public part of the site.