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Policies, practices, and attitudes of North American medical journal editors.
- Source :
- JGIM: Journal of General Internal Medicine; Aug1995, Vol. 10 Issue 8, p443-450, 8p
- Publication Year :
- 1995
-
Abstract
- <bold>Objective: </bold>To describe U.S. and Canadian medical journals, their editors, and policies that affect the dissemination of medical information.<bold>Design: </bold>Mailed survey.<bold>Participants: </bold>Senior editors of all 269 leading medical journals published at least quarterly in the United States and Canada, of whom 221 (82%) responded.<bold>Main Measures: </bold>The questionnaire asked about characteristics of journal editors and their journals and about journals' policies toward peer review, conflicts of interest, prepublication discussions with the press, and pharmaceutical advertisements.<bold>Results: </bold>The editors were overwhelmingly men (96%), middle-aged (mean age 61 years), and trained as physicians (82%). Although 98% claimed that their journals were "peer-reviewed," the editors differed in how they defined a "peer" and in the number of peers they deemed optimal for review. Sixty-three percent thought journals should check on reviewers' potential conflicts of interest, but only a minority supported masking authors' names and affiliations (46%), checking reviewers' financial conflicts of interest (40%), or revealing reviewers' names to authors (8%). The respondents advocated discussion of scientific findings with the press (84%), but only in accord with the Ingelfinger rule, i.e., after publication of the article (77%). Fifty-seven percent of the editors agreed that journals have a responsibility to ensure the truthfulness of pharmaceutical advertisements, and 40% favored subjecting advertisements to the same rigorous peer review as scientific articles.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The responding editors were relatively homogeneous demographically and professionally, and they tended to support the editorial status quo. There was little sentiment in favor of tampering with the current peer-review system (however defined) or the Ingelfinger rule, but a surprisingly large percentage of the respondents favored more stringent review of drug advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 08848734
- Volume :
- 10
- Issue :
- 8
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- JGIM: Journal of General Internal Medicine
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 71573123
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02599916