The Open Medicine Paradigm

Here's a paradigmatic tale:

The editors who were fired or resigned over the editorial-independence controversy at the Canadian Medical Association Journal have reunited to start their own free, online medical journal.

Open Medicine will be a peer-reviewed, independent open-access journal that does not accept advertising from pharmaceutical or medical-device companies.

Until now, the big publishing houses have held all the cards: do it our way, or you don't do it. No longer. If you don't like it, leave and start your own.

The issues at stake are important:

As a medical librarian, I believe that information (in all its forms, good and bad) is central to human health.

It is also essential to the health of democracies. Without free, open access to information - particularly from a global perspective - our freedoms are limited, and more specifically physicians are unable to practice evidence-based medicine.