Potential Conflicts of Interest of Editorial Board Members from Five Leading Spine Journals

Abstract

Conflicts of interest arising from ties between pharmaceutical industry and physicians are common and may bias research. The extent to which these ties exist among editorial board members of medical journals is not known. This study aims to determine the prevalence and financial magnitude of potential conflicts of interest among editorial board members of five leading spine journals. The editorial boards of: The Spine Journal; Spine; European Spine Journal; Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine; and Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques were extracted on January 2013 from the journals’ websites. Disclosure statements were retrieved from the 2013 disclosure index of the North American Spine Society; the program of the 20th International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques; the program of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Scoliosis Research Society; the program of the AOSpine global spine congress; the presentations of the 2013 Annual Eurospine meeting; and the disclosure index of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Names of the editorial board members were compared with the individuals who completed a disclosure for one of these indexes. Disclosures were extracted when full names matched. Two hundred and ten (29%) of the 716 identified editorial board members reported a potential conflict of interest and 154 (22%) reported nothing to disclose. The remaining 352 (49%) editorial board members had no disclosure statement listed for one of the indexes. Eighty-nine (42%) of the 210 editorial board members with a potential conflict of interest reported a financial relationship of more than $10,000 during the prior year. This finding confirms that potential conflicts of interest exist in editorial boards which might influence the peer review process and can result in bias. Academia and medical journals in particular should be aware of this and strive to improve transparency of the review process. We emphasize recommendations that contribute to achieving this goal.

Payments by US pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to US medical journal editors: retrospective observational study

“…However, compared with author conflict of interest, editorial conflict of interest has been infrequently studied. 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 …”

Bias in cervical total disc replacement trials

“…Although editorial-level conflict of interest has not been reported specifically in the context of TDR, editoriallevel COI is an underreported issue in the major spine journals. Over 30% of the editorial board members of the five major spine journals have financial conflicts of interest with industry [65]. Editorial-level conflicts are often reported online or on the journal website, but not on the specific article text.…”

Relationships among Commercial Biases and Author Conflicts of Interest in Biomedical Publishing

“…This issue is particularly acute regarding the relative inconsistency and opacity of editorial COI disclosures, a concern that often persists even when author and researcher disclosures become more transparent. [15][16][17][18] In addition to worries over personal COI that may be held by journal editors, there are also growing apprehensions over the potential effects of commercial publishing biases on biomedical research. Specifically, it has been suggested that journal-level financial relationships such as the acceptance of industry advertising revenue, reprint fees, and additional industry printing contracts held by journal parent companies may impact editorial decision-making, creating an environment more favourable to industry-sponsored research.…”