ETHICAL ISSUES IN MEDICAL PUBLISHING
Abstract
Background. Medical publishing has a key role in guidance of medical practice and research. It is essential to avoid systematic biases on all steps from formulating a research proposal to the editorial evaluation of a submitted manuscript. With this in mind, we will attempt to assess the responsibilities of the five key persons: sponsor, clinical investigator, author, editor, and reviewer.
Sponsor. To an increasing degree, pharmaceutical companies and other commercial sponsors initiate, support, and define priorities of clinical research. To avoid a systematic bias, a substantial proportion of medical research should be supported through public resources.
Clinical investigator. Since patients’ autonomy is rarely complete, formal adherence to ethical codes is not enough. In addition to patients in research who are often offered substantial benefits, attention should be paid also to patients not included in research who may be discriminated.
Author. The author is the one who is most often responsible for delayed or missing publication of results of a negative trial. The author should respect rules for co-authorship, be honest presentation of results, and retain an appropriate degree of scientific scepticism.
Editor. The editorial work is time-consuming and should be paid. In order to avoid bias against publication of negative trials, we propose a special category of short reports not included in the assessment of impact factor of a journal.
Reviewer. Due to annonymity, reviewers have little interest and do not feel responsible for their work. For the accepted papers, we propose to publish the name of the reviewer, along with an optional short comment.
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References
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