Lookback time evolution of metals: discarding the closed box model

We have gathered a representative sample of 88 intermediate mass galaxies at z~0.6 and have provided robust estimates of their gas phase metallicity based on the strong line method R23. We have found that these galaxies have undergone a strong evolution of their metal content during the last 8 Gyrs. We confirmed the shift about ~0.3dex to lower abundance of the M-Z relation at z~0.6 found by Liang et al. 2006. This result shows that the evolution of the gas phase is still active down to z=0.4 and that the close box model is not a valid scenario for local spiral progenitors.