During the final conference block at the 2008 British Columbia Library Association conference in Richmond, a session packed with many intriguing workshops, I had the privilege of convening a talk by Anita Palepu and Dean Giustini, titled Open Medicine: The first year of independent, open-access publishing. The session was cosponsored by the BCLA Intellectual Freedom Committee, BCLA Information Policy Committee, and the Health Library Association of BC.

Many librarians in BC and beyond will be familiar with Giustini’s work, ranging from his Google Scholar Blog to BMJ articles to his teaching activities at Langara and UBC . Dean is also an Associate Editor of Open Medicine, and writes the Open Medicine Blog.

Anita Palepu is one of the editors who left CMAJ over issues of editorial independence, to found Open Medicine. Dr. Palepu is an assistant professor of medicine at UBC and research scientist at CHEOS, focusing her research on urban health.

The presentation touched on the issues of editorial independence in medical journals that led up to the creation of Open Medicine as an editorially independent, “gold” open access, general medical journal, built and published with open source software. Palepu and Giustini tag-teamed their way through a brief history of open access in Canada as well as the steps in establishing an OA journal. A unique feature of the presentation was a highlight on the value a librarian can add to an editorial board, enhancing the journal’s impact.

Looking back on the first year of Open Medicine, the editors certainly have the right be to patting themselves on the back! With a respectable acceptance rate of 20% and reviewing turnaround of about 30 days, the journal published 42 articles (including non-peer review features) in the first year, and has 2893 registered website users. All of this success requires a significant commitment of both time and energy from the all-volunteer editorial board — not only for typical editing and management duties, but also for fundraising to support the journal.

Slides from the session are available on Slideshare.

There’s a great article in the current issue of Bitch magazine. “Paper Cuts: Saying R.I.P. to some of the best D.I.Y.” (p. 52-55) looks a pile of independent magazines that have gone out of business in the last year or two including: Punk Planet, LIP: Informed Revolt, Stay Free!, No Compromise: The Militant, Direct Action Publication of Grassroots Animal Liberationists and Their Supporters, On Our Backs: Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian, Clamor, Kitchen Sink: For People Who Think Too Much, and Rockrgrl.

The authors Debbie Rasumussen (Bitch’s publisher) and Josh Hooten (editor of Herbivore magazine) identify “increasing media consolidation, bankruptcies of small distributors, independent  bookstore closings, and riding costs for paper, printing and postage” as well as “general lack of funding available for grassroots media and a larger cultural evolution toward digital media” as the factors for these magazines disappearing.

While many of these magazines are survived by interesting blogs, for me it’s not really the same thing as holding and reading (and passing along) a magazine.