Conflicts of interest: call for new editorial policies in European national journals

Excerpt

During the past decade, disclosure of conflicts of interest (COIs) has been considered the key to ensure the credibility of the scientific process [1, 2]. Biases in design, analysis, and interpretation of studies may rise when authors or sponsors have entrusted interests. Therefore, COIs should be made clear to the readers to facilitate their own judgement and interpretation of their relevance and potential implications. Authors are responsible for fully disclosing potential COIs. Failure to do so will upset the confidence of the public, health professionals and scientists in the peer-reviewed medical literature [3]. Efforts to improve transparency and protect the integrity of research, including specific recommendations and guidelines to disclose COIs, have been proposed by many organisations [4, 5]. However, ensuring adequate reporting of all sources of financial support is becoming increasingly challenging for editors as a result of the growing complexity of funding mechanisms. Furthermore, journals have different policies about COI disclosure which can cause confusion as the same author may report different information in different journals which, in turn, might jeopardise the confidence of the readers. In addition, publication of large industry-supported trials may generate many citations and journal income through reprint sales and thereby be a source of COIs for journals. …