| Homepage |
| Search |
This editorial illustrates studies documenting the manipulation of study results, authors, editors, and reviewers by pharmaceutical and medical device industries. If this manipulation has occurred it is because physicians have allowed it to happen, and it is time to stop it. Journal editors also bear some of the responsibility for enabling companies to manipulate publications. Drastic action is essential, and cooperation of everyone involved in medical research, medical editing, medical education, and clinical practice is required for meaningful change to occur. Kulathuramaiyer NMH. Fighting plagiarism and IPR violation: why is it so important? Learned Publishing 2007;20:252–258. The revolutionary development of the web presents numerous opportunities for the spread of plagiarism and infringements of intellectual property rights (IPR). This situation creates the risk of introducing a “culture of mediocrity”. Tools to detect plagiarism are available. Ross JS, Hill KP, Egilman DS, Krumholz HM. Guest authorship and ghostwriting in publications related to rofecoxib: a case study of industry documents from rofecoxib litigation. JAMA 2008;299(15):1800–1812. (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/299/15/1800) Starting from recent litigation related to rofecoxib, the article examines guest authorship and ghostwriting, both practices that have been suspected in biomedical publication but for which there is little documentation. The objective was to determine the different types and the extent of guest authorship and ghostwriting in a case study. Using court documents and articles related to the topic, the authors showed that clinical trial manuscripts related to rofecoxib were authored by sponsors’ employees but first authorship was often attributed to academically affiliated investigators who did not always disclose financial support from the industry, and that review manuscripts were prepared by unacknowledged authors and authorship was subsequently attributed to academically affiliated investigators who often did not disclose industry financial support. Young JR. Elsevier agrees to let MIT use bits of journal articles online. The Chronicle of Higher Education 2008;March 10. (http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2805/elsevier-agrees-to-let-mit-use-bits-of-journal-articles-online) The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it has reached a deal with Elsevier to allow a limited amount of material from its journals to be used in MIT’s OpenCourseWare project, winning a major challenge for colleges that want to post lecture materials on the web. The vice president and general counsel at Elsevier declared that the company has also agreed to a new policy on copyright, set up by the International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical Publishers, allowing any college to post small bits of journal material online, even if the policy doesn’t allow quite as much as the deal with MIT does. © Copyright 2008 by European Association of Science Editors Top of Page |
|
|