February 4, 2002

Dear Editor:

     Increasing concern about conflicts of interest in the scientific community, especially in the biomedical area, has prompted government and other institutional inquiries, discussions at scientific conferences (including the AAAS), and litigation. As a consequence of those activities, major scientific and clinical journals have strengthened their conflicts of interest policies and procedures.

     Most journals have long disclosed the funders of studies. Now, the British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Nature, and others have begun to disclose information about contributors’ stockholdings, consultancies, and other relationships that authors have with corporations or other entities. ⁽¹⁾Declaration of that information in the publication is becoming the norm.

     To allow scientists, the public, and policy makers to make more informed judgments about research reports, letters, commentaries, editorials, book and literature reviews, and news articles, and to further enhance the integrity of science, we respectfully urge your journal to adopt a more complete disclosure policy. Such a policy should require contributors to disclose to journal editors at least the following information:

• Sources of funding for the study, review, or other item being published
   
• Financial or other significant relations (e.g., consulting, speaker fees, corporate advisory committee memberships, expert testimony given in legal cases) of the author and the author’s immediate family in the last 5 years with companies, trade associations, unions, or groups (including civic associations and public interest groups) that may gain or lose financially from the results or conclusions in the study, review, editorial, or letter.
   
• Specific contribution of each author of the published paper (conception and design; analysis and interpretation of data; drafting of the article; critical revision of the article for intellectual contents; final approval of the article; statistical expertise; administrative, technical or logistical support; and collection and assembly of data ⁽²⁾)
   

     We urge your journal to adopt a policy whose presumption is that all relevant financial and authorial information will appear in the publication alongside the study, review, editorial, or letter.

     Financial and other relationships with businesses may introduce biases in the conduct or reporting of research or in letters or statements made in news articles. Disclosure, of course, does not nullify any biases, but it recognizes that relationships with third parties may influence the conduct, reporting, and oversight of research. Disclosure also reflects the need for transparency as a way of maintaining the public’s trust. Finally, disclosure of conflicts of interest enables readers to consider conclusions or contentions of the researchers’ statements in the light of that additional information.

     That said, a strong disclosure policy should be understood to be just one part of broader editorial oversight of conflicts of interest. Journal editors have an obligation to reject submissions where authors’ conflicts are incompatible with integrity in science and cannot be resolved by disclosure.

     We appreciate your consideration and look forward to hearing from you. Please respond via Virginia A. Sharpe, Ph.D., at (202)332-9110, ext. 331.

Sincerely,

2. See “Information for Authors,” Annals of Internal Medicine 2001;135:I6-9.