Publishing is a volatile and competitive business. The Australian Medical Association the owner of the Medical Journal of Australia rightly wants to ensure the highly trusted journal is produced with maximum efficiency while satisfying its editorial objectives.
The MJA’s twin objectives, expressed in the first issue 101 years ago, are to inform the medical community about recent advances and provide an evidence base to inform health policy for the nation.
I took the job as editor-in-chief because those goals are congruent with my 50-plus years of health research, management and leadership. But the recent decision to outsource production of the journal to international publishing company Elsevier – and the route it took to get there – made my position untenable.
Ethical concerns
Elsevier is highly successful but has an approach to business that worries many academics and researchers. From 2000 to 2005, the company’s Australian office created“custom publications” paid for by pharmaceutical companies to present favourable data on its drugs.
Elsevier created the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, for instance, for pharma company Merck to promote Fosamax, a drug for osteoporosis, and Vioxx, an arthritis drug that was recalled for increasing users’ risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Professor Paul Zimmet, one the 19 (out of 20) editorial advisory committee members to sign a letter of resignation over the MJA’s decision to outsource production to Elsevier, explained to the ABC:
My concern is that the next step could be to follow up with appointing editorial staff that follow Elsevier’s agenda.
Readers can make their own assessments of Elsevier’s reputation. I made mine and concluded that I did not take the MJA job to work with Elsevier. This put me at odds with the board of the Australian Medical Publishing Company (AMPCo), the AMA’s publishing company, and my three-year contract was terminated a week ago, one year early.
Costs and quality
AMA president Brian Owler said in a press release the decision to outsource production was financial, describing AMPCo’s financial position as “perilous” and “on the brink”:
… to keep AMPCo on a sound long-term footing, and to ensure the ongoing publication of the MJA, further changes had to be made, including outsourcing some production functions and making AMPCo less dependent on the AMA to remain viable.
The audited circulation of the MJA is about 30,000. It costs the AMA A$2.35 million to deliver the MJA to all its members (almost 30,000, though this number is kept under wraps). The A$78 each member pays for a year’s subscription is cheaper than any other medical journal, and certainly a bargain compared with The New Yorker or The Economist.
Nevertheless, the publisher ought to investigate and scrutinise the many ways to save money. Giving AMA members a choice of receiving the MJA only online is just one example of many.
The MJA is printed and posted out-of-house. The new outsourcing plan includes production, some administrative functions and sub-editing. Brian Owler describes this as:
essentially … rearranging words on a page or making sure things sit together.