The costs associated with producing CMAJ (and most other general medical journals) are largely offset by advertising by pharmaceutical firms. Occasionally readers complain about the number of ads in CMAJ, and some suggest that we cut advertising completely. But this is not a reasonable option for an association journal that is received as a benefit of membership by more than 50 000 CMA physicians and wants to remain affordable to subscribers such as libraries, researchers and physicians in other countries. Without advertising the only alternative would be to increase CMA membership dues and journal subscription prices.
Information on the types and numbers of physicians who see their advertisements in various journals helps companies to decide how to spend their advertising dollars. CMAJ participates in 2 surveys a year to get feedback from readers on both advertising and editorial content. The latter gives us some information on the types of articles that CMAJ readers like and dislike. We value this feedback, and thank those of you who have participated for your comments (positive or otherwise).
The surveys are conducted by Harvey Research of Fairport, NY; no Canadian company offers a comparable program. The firm's decision to offer CMAJ readers a US$1 bill as a token of thanks for participating in the survey is unfortunate. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We thought of asking the firm to use a Canadian loonie, but this would be clunky. (Or we could suggest a Canadian $5 bill, which might shortly be equivalent to a US$1 bill ... but I digress.) We've forwarded your comments to Harvey Research.
You've each returned to us the US dollar you received. We've included them in our contribution to a local charity.