High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical industry funding: case-control study

Abstract

The paper “High reprint orders in medical journals and pharmaceutical industry funding: case-control study” by Adam E Handel and colleagues ( BMJ 2012;344:e4212). Abstract Objectives —To assess the extent to which funding and study design are associated with high reprint orders. Design —Case-control study. Setting —Top articles by size of reprint orders in seven journals, 2002-9. Participants — Lancet , Lancet Neurology , Lancet Oncology (Lancet Group), BMJ , Gut , Heart , and Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (BMJ Group) matched to contemporaneous articles not in the list of high reprint orders. Main outcome measures —Funding and design of randomised controlled trials or other study designs. Results —Median reprint orders for the seven journals ranged from 3000 to 126 350. Papers with high reprint orders were more likely to be funded by the drug industry than were control papers (industry funding versus other or none: odds ratio 8.64, 95% confidence interval 5.09 to 14.68, and mixed funding versus other or none: 3.72, 2.43 to 5.70). Conclusions —Funding by the drug industry is associated with high numbers of reprint orders. The authors of this study set out to discover whether articles published in medical journals that had many reprints of the article purchased were more likely to be funded by the drug industry. (“Reprints” refers to purchased permission to reproduce journal articles in bulk, allowing the article to be distributed to a new audience. The money from reprint purchases is an important source of income for some journals). A second question in this study was whether those articles with high reprint orders were more likely to have a particular design. Articles published in medical journals, particularly the best known ones, can have considerable impact. A study showing a drug to be highly effective might, for instance, lead to a surge in …