ArticlePloS one2015
Potential conflicts of interest of editorial board members from five leading spine journals.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Conflicts of interest in clinical guidelines, advisory committee reports, opinion pieces, and narrative reviews: associations with recommendations.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- The disclosure of potential conflicts of interest among editors and members of editorial boards in leading ethics journals.Research integrity and peer review · 2025Article
- The art of peer review: Guidelines to become a credible and constructive peer reviewer.Seminars in vascular surgery · 2022Review
- Revisiting selected ethical aspects of current clinical in vitro fertilization (IVF) practice.Journal of assisted reproduction and genetics · 2022Review
- Reducing bias and improving transparency in medical research: a critical overview of the problems, progress and suggested next steps.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2020Review
- Relationships among commercial practices and author conflicts of interest in biomedical publishing.PloS one · 2020Article
- Editors Should Declare Conflicts of Interest.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2019Article
- Industry payments to physician journal editors.PloS one · 2019Article
- Conflicts of interest of editors of medical journals.PloS one · 2018Article
- Analysis of the conflicts of interest disclosed by the program reviewers of the scoliosis research society (SRS) congresses, 2010-2014.PloS one · 2018Article
- Payments by US pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers to US medical journal editors: retrospective observational study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2017Observational
- Bias in cervical total disc replacement trials.Current reviews in musculoskeletal medicine · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Conflicts of interest arising from ties between pharmaceutical industry and physicians are common and may bias research. The extent to which these ties exist among editorial board members of medical journals is not known. This study aims to determine the prevalence and financial magnitude of potential conflicts of interest among editorial board members of five leading spine journals. The editorial boards of: The Spine Journal; Spine; European Spine Journal; Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine; and Journal of Spinal Disorders & Techniques were extracted on January 2013 from the journals' websites. Disclosure statements were retrieved from the 2013 disclosure index of the North American Spine Society; the program of the 20th International Meeting on Advanced Spine Techniques; the program of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Scoliosis Research Society; the program of the AOSpine global spine congress; the presentations of the 2013 Annual Eurospine meeting; and the disclosure index of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. Names of the editorial board members were compared with the individuals who completed a disclosure for one of these indexes. Disclosures were extracted when full names matched. Two hundred and ten (29%) of the 716 identified editorial board members reported a potential conflict of interest and 154 (22%) reported nothing to disclose. The remaining 352 (49%) editorial board members had no disclosure statement listed for one of the indexes. Eighty-nine (42%) of the 210 editorial board members with a potential conflict of interest reported a financial relationship of more than $10,000 during the prior year. This finding confirms that potential conflicts of interest exist in editorial boards which might influence the peer review process and can result in bias. Academia and medical journals in particular should be aware of this and strive to improve transparency of the review process. We emphasize recommendations that contribute to achieving this goal.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.