Governance of conflicts of interest in the publication of health research – perspectives on ways forward from a journal

Abstract

Abstract Identifying corporate influence and biases in the publication of academic research is fraught with difficulty, as this presentation explores. Journals often rely on authors' own disclosures of interests, which may intentionally or unintentionally omit relevant conflicts. Financial conflicts of interests may be easier for authors and editors to identify, allowing some mitigation, but non-financial conflicts of interest and corporate influence can be harder to tease out. Both authors and journals make multiple judgements on which interests are relevant and it is easy for opaque conflicts to slip through the cracks. Even if these conflicts of interests are declared, moreover, many journals rely on transparency to inform their policy on publishing research by authors with links to industry; this transparency assumes that readers are able to discern the potential bias arising from these relationships. However - while we know that readers consider research papers written by authors with declared financial links to industry to be less important, relevant, rigorous, and believable - this may lead readers to place unwarranted trust in research from authors whose conflicts are less clearly visible. For example, from authors aligned with academic institutions whose departments may experience corporate influence, but in a manner too indirect to be declared. In order to consider these issues in context, delegates will be asked to make judgements on whether particular conflicts of interest statements would exclude authors from publishing with one leading journal, the British Medical Journal. They will hear how journals are now moving beyond transparency in order to better engage with these themes: via such initiatives as, for example, registries of interests; the re-definition of competing interests as relationships; and increasingly widespread policies that entirely exclude authors with financial ties to industry from publishing.