Table 2 Section by section: strengths and weaknesses of the ICMJE Recommendations as a barrier to marketing bias (December 2015 Recommendations)
Section | Strengths | Weaknesses | |
|---|---|---|---|
IIA1 | Contributor listings | • Bookkeeping of author accountability. • Helps enforce integrity of publication. | • Do not separate academic and company coauthors. • Small print, vague language assist attribution bias. |
II A2 | Authorship formula | • Encourages high scientific standards. • Encourages rigorous checking by authors. • Bans guest authorship. | • Facilitates byline avoidance. • No advice on author order. • No company-level authorship or accountability. |
II A3 | Acknowledgements | • Bookkeeping of non-author contributions, accountability. | • Omit key commercial information. • Small print, vague language assist attribution bias. |
II A3 | Writers barred from coauthorship | • None. | • Supports commercial production of ghostwritten manuscripts. • Facilitates and downplays commercial content influence. |
II B | Conflict of interest | • Comprehensive net for author financial interests. | • Salient interests not highlighted. • No contributor interests. • No corporate interests. |
II B | Role of funding source | • Company role in conducting research, decision to publish reported. | • No requirement to report company instigation, database ownership or identity of marketed product. |
II B | Access to data | • Discourages restrictions on author access to data. | • No requirement for independent statistical analysis. • No demand for contractual rights to data access and unrestricted usage. |
IIB | Right to publish | • Authors discouraged from agreeing limitations to their right to publish. | • Should insist on contractual rights guaranteeing publishing rights for academic coauthors. |
IIID | Overlapping publications | • Reduces discourse bias by identifying / reducing duplicate articles. | • Limited ability to prevent repetition of commercial content. |
IIIG | Supplements and series | • Editorial control defended. • Notification of product being marketed. | • None – but should apply to all commercially financed articles. |
III L | Trial registration | • Helps locate published commercial trials. • Helps expose non- or inadequate publication. | • None. |
IV A2 | Reporting guidelines | • CONSORT compliance required. • Minimal methodological standards supported. | • Readers referred to EQUATOR and National Library of Medicine (NLM) listings of guidelines - these include trade guidelines compatible with marketing. |
IV A3b | Funding source, trial identifier listed in Abstract | • Visibly identifies presence of company in PubMed-searchable format. | • The terms “funding,” “support” and “sponsorship” misrepresent actual instigating/proprietary role of commerce. |
IV A3d | Role of “contracted organization” described in Methods | • Reveals involvement of company to readers. • Also identifies contract research organizations. | • Stipulation is vaguely worded and omits key details e.g. company instigation, database ownership, identity of marketed product. |