Back to Search
Start Over
Industry Payments to United States Rheumatologist‐Authors of Publications in High‐Impact Rheumatology Journals.
- Source :
- ACR Open Rheumatology; Nov2023, Vol. 5 Issue 11, p609-618, 10p
- Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- Objective: A skewed percentage of industry payments goes to "key opinion leaders" (KOLs) whose prominence and influence has increased with time. Given that KOL is neither precisely defined nor quantifiable, we turned to the level of industry payments as a surrogate quantifiable metric and assessed the associations between industry payments to US rheumatologists and their authorships of publications in high‐impact rheumatology journals. Methods: Payments to US rheumatologists during the 2015‐2020 interval were obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments database, and authorships were tallied for calendar year 2021 publications in the four rheumatology journals (Lancet Rheumatol, Nat Rev Rheumatol, Ann Rheum Dis, Arthritis Rheumatol) with the highest 2021 journal impact factors and journal citation indicators. Differences between groups were determined by chi‐squared test, unpaired Student's t‐test, one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Mann–Whitney rank sum test, and Kruskal–Wallis one‐way ANOVA on ranks. Correlations were calculated using Spearman rank order. A P value ≤0.05 was considered significant. Results: There were 278 individual US rheumatologists who received industry payments and served as authors of publications in the four high‐impact rheumatology journals. Non–research‐associated payments to these individuals strongly correlated with research‐associated payments. Payments to male US rheumatologists were greater than those to their female counterparts, and payments strongly correlated with the number of publications among male authors but only weakly, and often not significantly, among female authors. Conclusion: A substantial fraction of the authorships in calendar year 2021 publications in four high‐impact rheumatology journals arose from a very small percentage of all US rheumatologists who had received industry payments during the 2015‐2020 interval. Payments to male US rheumatologist‐authors were strikingly different from those to female US rheumatologist‐authors, and further investigation is needed to explain the glaring difference in payments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- NONPARAMETRIC statistics
KRUSKAL-Wallis Test
STATISTICS
RHEUMATOLOGY
ONE-way analysis of variance
INDUSTRIES
MANN Whitney U Test
RHEUMATOLOGISTS
T-test (Statistics)
CHI-squared test
ENDOWMENTS
ELECTRONIC publications
MEDICAID
PERIODICAL articles
DATA analysis
MEDICARE
AUTHORSHIP
IMPACT factor (Citation analysis)
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 25785745
- Volume :
- 5
- Issue :
- 11
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- ACR Open Rheumatology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 173586989
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1002/acr2.11609