Legal regulation of the Croatian Medical Journal: model for small academic journals.

During the last few years, the questions of editorial independence and journal governance have come into the focus of scholarly journals. There is little data on the legal regulation of journals outside mainstream science, although they constitute the largest body of biomedical literature. The Croatian Medical Journal functioned for more than 10 years without much legal regulation but with lot of enthusiasm and hard work. This Editorial presents our attempt to make legal provisions for the current status of the Journal and its future work. We defined our owners, main participants in making of the journal, and their responsibilities and benefits. The Agreement will be signed by all four medical schools in Croatia, which will become owners of the Journal. We hope that our experiences and solutions for strengthening the legal status of the Journal will help other editors from small scientific communities to think about their journal and its governance.