RE: Does BMC's business model conflict with Editorial Independence?

["Peter Banks" <pbanks@diabetes.org>]

If it were the case that the simple act of taking any money from 
a pharma firm made a researcher "a shill for the corporations," 
we could believe next to nothing published in journals. Richard 
Smith and Richard Horton like to argue that journals are 
"money-laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry," a 
clever phrase and soundbite, but an insult to the majority of 
authors and editors who struggle mightily to uphold ethical 
standards.

There are ethical standards for the disclosure of conflicts such 
as those of the International Committee of Medical Journal 
Editors (http://www.icmje.org/#conflicts). Does disclosure fail 
at times? Of course. Eric Topol of the Cleveland Clinic is making 
a career of exposing the failures of disclosure and peer review 
for drugs like Vioxx. Still, the solution is not to throw up 
one's hands and say that everyone is tainted and no one can be 
believed. The solution is to make the peer review and editing 
process even more rigorous for drugs (as with the recent 
requirement for clinical trials to be entered in 
clinicaltrials.gov).

I certainly do not think that editors of OA journals can't in 
theory handle these conflicts as well as other journal editors. 
But they have two additional burdens: 1)  some of these models so 
underfund peer review or depend on volunteers so heavily that it 
is unlikely the resources are there to increase the rigor of 
review, and 2) the editor is put in the position of taking money 
from the sponsor of the paper he must decide to accept or reject. 
The OA system needs its own special set of ethical guidlines, 
which might include an outright ban on pharma advertising, or 
careful mechanisms for separating the editing and funding 
processes.

Peter Banks
Publisher


>>> Karl Bridges <Karl.Bridges@uvm.edu> 05/14/06 8:43 PM >>>

I don't know about journals, but I know in the normal publishing 
business it is considered extremely unethical to make charges for 
editorial work. You simply don't charge the authors for work that 
needs to be done e.g. editing, production.  The only people who 
would do this are vanity publishers. Money is supposed to flow 
from the editors to the writers.  Personally, I think academic 
writers should be charging journals for their writing rather than 
simply giving it away to for profit publishers, but that's a 
topic for another day.

The real problem here is that, once you start taking money from 
outside sources e.g. drug companies you have compromised 
completely your honesty and objectivity. You are no longer doing 
objective scientific reason, but becoming a shill for the 
corporations.  I don't disagree that people do have connections 
with these organizations, but every (and I mean every) article 
should have a full disclaimer of what connections (financial and 
otherwise) that the writers and editors have.  Colleges and 
universities should also require yearly statements of conflict of 
interest that are publicly available. If I'm reading an article 
praising a new drug I have a right to know whether the author has 
a financial interest in promoting the product.


Quoting Peter Banks <pbanks@diabetes.org>:

> I think Phil is correct--the editorial inducements of page
> charges are not the same as those of author's fees. Our editors
> are paid a contracted amount for managing peer review operations.
> That doesn't go up with the number of submissions, so the editor
> has no financial motivation to accept more papers. Indeed,
> contrary to the absurd proposition that we encouarge editors to
> increase their acceptance rate so that we can make more profit,
> in recent past we have actually done the opposite--in the face of
> soaring submission rates, we required them to REDUCE the
> acceptance rate both so costs and subscription prices could be
> controlled and quality could be maintained.
>
> For example, these are the acceptance rates for Diabetes Care for
> the past three years
>
> 2003   30.3%
> 2004  29.6%
> 2005 20.4%
>
> To Phil's concern about the ethics of editors being compensated
> from processing charges, I will add another one: In clinical
> medicine, a lot of the funding for drug studies comes from
> pharmaceutical companies. Almost any senior researcher worth
> having as an editor will have relationships with one or more drug
> companies (whether consulting, speaking, or grant support). The
> granter-pays model now creates a situation in which the editor
> has a difficult dual interest--both a financial relationship with
> the pharma firm and potential recipient of a portion of
> manuscript fees paid by that firm. Of course, editors of
> traditional journal also have relationships with firms, but the
> money the editorial honoraria they receive from the publisher has
> no direct connection to the firm and the decision to accept or
> reject a manuscript has no personal financial aspect.
>
> I think the OA model for clinical medical journals is going to
> require a great deal more thought about how to isolate the editor
> from pressure by pharmaceutical firms. Anyone who doesn't think
> that pharmaceutical brand managers aren't salivating over the
> chance to pay for manuscripts (chump change for these companies),
> with its attendant potential to influence content, hasn't met
> many brand managers.
>
> Peter Banks
> Publisher