IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0197141.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Conflicts of interest of editors of medical journals

Author

Listed:
  • Waqas Haque
  • Abu Minhajuddin
  • Arjun Gupta
  • Deepak Agrawal

Abstract

Background: Almost all medical journals now require authors to publicly disclose conflicts of interests (COI). The same standard and scrutiny is rarely employed for the editors of the journals although COI may affect editorial decisions. Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study to determine the prevalence and magnitude of financial relationships among editors of 60 influential US medical journals (10 each for internal medicine and five subspecialties: cardiology, gastroenterology, neurology, dermatology and allergy & immunology). Open Payments database was reviewed to determine the percentage of physician editors receiving payments and the nature and amount of these payments. Findings: 703 unique physician editors were included in our analysis. 320/703 (46%) received 8659 general payments totaling $8,120,562. The median number of payments per editor was 9 (IQR 3–26) and the median amount per payment was $91 (IQR $21–441). The median total payment received by each editor in one year was $4,364 (IQR $319–23,143). 152 (48%) editors received payments more than $5,000 in a year, a threshold considered significant by the National Institutes of Health. COI policies for editors were available for 34/60 (57%) journals but only 7/34 (21%) publicly reported the disclosures and only 2 (3.%) reported the dollar amount received. Interpretation: A significant number of editors of internal medicine and subspecialty medical journals have financial COI and very few are publicly disclosed. Specialty journal editors have more COI compared to general medicine journal editors. Current policies for disclosing COI for editors are inconsistent and do not comply with the recommended standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Waqas Haque & Abu Minhajuddin & Arjun Gupta & Deepak Agrawal, 2018. "Conflicts of interest of editors of medical journals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-12, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0197141
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197141
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197141
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0197141&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0197141?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roy H Perlis & Clifford S Perlis, 2016. "Physician Payments from Industry Are Associated with Greater Medicare Part D Prescribing Costs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(5), pages 1-12, May.
    2. Daylian M. Cain & George Loewenstein & Don A. Moore, 2005. "The Dirt on Coming Clean: Perverse Effects of Disclosing Conflicts of Interest," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(1), pages 1-25, January.
    3. Stein J Janssen & Annelien L Bredenoord & Wouter Dhert & Marinus de Kleuver & F Cumhur Oner & Jorrit-Jan Verlaan, 2015. "Potential Conflicts of Interest of Editorial Board Members from Five Leading Spine Journals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(6), pages 1-11, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. S Scott Graham & Zoltan P Majdik & Dave Clark & Molly M Kessler & Tristin Brynn Hooker, 2020. "Relationships among commercial practices and author conflicts of interest in biomedical publishing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-11, July.
    2. Muel Kaptein, 2023. "A Paradox of Ethics: Why People in Good Organizations do Bad Things," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 297-316, April.
    3. Ek, Claes, 2017. "Some causes are more equal than others? The effect of similarity on substitution in charitable giving," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 45-62.
    4. Lamar Pierce & Jason Snyder, 2015. "Unethical Demand and Employee Turnover," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 131(4), pages 853-869, November.
    5. Danilov, Anastasia & Biemann, Torsten & Kring, Thorn & Sliwka, Dirk, 2013. "The dark side of team incentives: Experimental evidence on advice quality from financial service professionals," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 266-272.
    6. Anju Murayama & Sae Kamamoto & Hiroaki Saito & Kohki Yamada & Divya Bhandari & Iori Shoji & Hanano Mamada & Moe Kawashima & Erika Yamashita & Eiji Kusumi & Toyoaki Sawano & Binaya Sapkota & Tetsuya Ta, 2022. "Pharmaceutical Payments to Japanese Board-Certified Infectious Disease Specialists: A Four-Year Retrospective Analysis of Payments from 92 Pharmaceutical Companies between 2016 and 2019," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(12), pages 1-13, June.
    7. Katherine Cullerton & Jean Adams & Oliver Francis & Nita Forouhi & Martin White, 2019. "Building consensus on interactions between population health researchers and the food industry: Two-stage, online, international Delphi study and stakeholder survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(8), pages 1-17, August.
    8. Kriss, Peter H. & Nagel, Rosemarie & Weber, Roberto A., 2013. "Implicit vs. explicit deception in ultimatum games with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 337-346.
    9. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    10. Roy H Perlis & Clifford S Perlis, 2016. "Physician Payments from Industry Are Associated with Greater Medicare Part D Prescribing Costs," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(5), pages 1-12, May.
    11. Lucas C. Coffman & Alexander Gotthard-Real, 2019. "Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3904-3927, August.
    12. Kartal, Melis & Tremewan, James, 2018. "An offer you can refuse: The effect of transparency with endogenous conflict of interest," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 44-55.
    13. Ismayilov, Huseyn & Potters, Jan, 2013. "Disclosing advisor's interests neither hurts nor helps," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 314-320.
    14. Effron, Daniel A. & Raj, Medha, 2021. "Disclosing interpersonal conflicts of interest: Revealing whom we like, but not whom we dislike," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 68-85.
    15. Toon van der Gronde & Carin A Uyl-de Groot & Toine Pieters, 2017. "Addressing the challenge of high-priced prescription drugs in the era of precision medicine: A systematic review of drug life cycles, therapeutic drug markets and regulatory frameworks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-34, August.
    16. Deversi, Marvin & Ispano, Alessandro & Schwardmann, Peter, 2021. "Spin doctors: An experiment on vague disclosure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    17. Rebitzer, James B. & Taylor, Lowell J., 2011. "Extrinsic Rewards and Intrinsic Motives: Standard and Behavioral Approaches to Agency and Labor Markets," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 8, pages 701-772, Elsevier.
    18. Bazerman, Max H. & Sezer, Ovul, 2016. "Bounded awareness: Implications for ethical decision making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 95-105.
    19. Daniel Stone, 2011. "A signal-jamming model of persuasion: interest group funded policy research," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(3), pages 397-424, September.
    20. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0197141. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.