A Memoir of a Sojourn as Editor of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry

Abstract

I am delighted and honoured to be part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. It is also an honour to accompany the recollections of former editors Fred Lowy and Quentin Rae-Grant. One of my enduring memories of my time as editor was the assistance that I could call on from members of the Canadian psychiatric community, the Editorial Board, and the previous editor, Fred Lowy. My time as editor, which spanned more than a decade and a half, was a period of activity, work, and fulfillment. Let me first discuss the structure of the Journal and its relation to the Association as it was when I started and as it was when I left. To begin with, the editor had full control over what happened at the Journal: a glass wall existed between the Journal and the Association, although both bodies occupied small offices in an area about the size of a 1 - or 2-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a small apartment house-cumoffice building in the centre of Ottawa. I must point out that the Association itself was still quite young and feeling its way, numbers in psychiatry had not yet begun to swell, and the place of psychiatry in medicine was still being worked out and was often felt to be problematic. Where editorial issues were concerned, the relation between the Journal and the Board was always cordial and respectful. That is to say, the Association never took any sort of proprietary approach to material published in the Journal. The Board chair at the time was Stan Greben, and he always respected our autonomy. Next in line were the managing editor of the Journal and the executive secretary of the Association. A certain amount of jostling went on as to whether the Association's executive had a supervisory position vis-a-vis the Journal. However, this never affected the editorial process. My predecessor, Fred Lowy, gave me several insights into the relation between the Journal and the Association. Fred told me that, despite any disputes with the Association, there was never any attempt to influence the Journal 's direction, policy, and decisions. In all the years during which I was associated with the Journal and the Association, this continued to be true-which is not to say that this relatively hands-off policy kept the Board chair, the president, other members of the Association, and the executive director from giving advice. Moreover, that advice was almost always positive. In addition to our managing editor, we had an assistant who acted as a copy reader as well as a secretary. There was also a book review editor who was chosen from Ottawa because of the need to visit the office and assign book reviews. When I began my tenure as editor, the Journal dimensions were less than three-quarters those of the current publication, and there was little variation in the cover colour. No headlines appeared on the cover, which was, as I recall, a conservative grey. The matter of the publication's size preoccupied the creative efforts of the editor, the managing editor, and the printing house. The current dimensions were finally adopted to position the Journal as a contemporary journal. With a change in dimensions, its appearance became more consistent with that of other evolving journals. The increased size also improved the readability of figures and tables. As well, the name was changed. The Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, La Revue de l'Association des Psychiatres du Canada became The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, La Revue Canadienne de Psychiatrie. The name change was accomplished without any difficulty and introduced at the beginning of the publishing year. In time, cover space was used to identify and highlight an issue's articles and themes; small changes followed in accordance with evolving trends in the field of publishing. For a long time, a big problem was the need to have the Journal 's cover appear in consistent colours from issue to issue; for some reason this was not an easy task, but eventually, standardization was achieved. …