Bose Debdipta, Nasta Shagun, Ravi Renju, Thatte Urmila M, Gogtay Nithya J
Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Perspect Clin Res. 2020 Oct-Dec;11(4):168-173. doi: 10.4103/picr.PICR_85_19. Epub 2020 May 7.
A conflict of interest (COI) in publication exists when the primary interest of publication is influenced by a secondary interest (financial or non-financial). International guidelines are available that can be used by journal editors to formulate their own COI policies. The present study was carried out with the objective of evaluating COI policies existing among Indian biomedical journals.
MEDLINE/PubMed and MedIND/IndMed databases were searched. Inclusions were journals that were active and indexed. Outcome measures were proportion of journals: (a) mentioning COI disclosure statement for authors, reviewers, and editors, (b) adequately explaining COI, (c) referring to three international guidelines, and (d) the proportion of PubMed/other than PubMed indexed journals mentioning COI policy for authors, reviewers, and editors and providing an adequate explanation for COI. Apart from descriptive statistics, associations between indexing and COI Policy for all three stakeholders were evaluated.
A total of n = 106 journals formed the final sample. Among them, 82 (77%) were PubMed and 24 (23%) were MedIND/IndMed indexed. COI disclosure statement was mentioned in 93 (87.7%) journals for authors, 10 (9.4%) for reviewers, and 06 (5.6%) for editors. Only 35 (33%) journals adequately explained COI. A total of 61 (57.5%) journals endorsed all the three international guidelines. PubMed indexing was found to be associated with approximately 19 times the odds of COI policies being present on the journal's home page relative to the journals indexed with other indexing agencies (crude odds ratio - 18.8, 95% confidence interval [4.6, 77],P < 0.0001).
Very few Indian biomedical journals have COI policies for reviewers and editors and most did not explain it adequately. Nearly, a fifth of the journals we evaluated did not follow any guideline for disclosing COI.
当发表的主要利益受到次要利益（财务或非财务）影响时，就存在发表中的利益冲突（COI）。国际指南可供期刊编辑用于制定自己的COI政策。本研究旨在评估印度生物医学期刊中现有的COI政策。
检索MEDLINE/PubMed和MedIND/IndMed数据库。纳入的是活跃且被索引的期刊。结果指标是期刊的比例：（a）提及作者、审稿人和编辑的COI披露声明，（b）充分解释COI，（c）参考三项国际指南，以及（d）PubMed索引期刊/非PubMed索引期刊中提及作者、审稿人和编辑的COI政策并对COI提供充分解释的比例。除描述性统计外，还评估了所有三个利益相关者的索引与COI政策之间的关联。
最终样本共有n = 106种期刊。其中，82种（77%）被PubMed索引，24种（23%）被MedIND/IndMed索引。93种（87.7%）期刊提及了作者的COI披露声明，10种（9.4%）提及了审稿人的，6种（5.6%）提及了编辑的。只有35种（33%）期刊充分解释了COI。共有61种（57.5%）期刊认可了所有三项国际指南。发现相对于由其他索引机构索引的期刊，PubMed索引与期刊主页上存在COI政策的几率约高19倍（粗比值比 - 18.8，95%置信区间[4.6, 77]，P < 0.0001）。
很少有印度生物医学期刊有针对审稿人和编辑的COI政策，而且大多数没有充分解释。我们评估的期刊中近五分之一没有遵循任何COI披露指南。
