J Korean Med Sci.  2013 Jul;28(7):978-982. 10.3346/jkms.2013.28.7.978.

Current Levels of Conflict of Interest Disclosure in Medical Publications from Korea

• Kang BH
• Moon JY
• Chang Y
• Koo YM
• Koh Y

• KMID: 1777491
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2013.28.7.978

Abstract

Medical research should be fully transparent. The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of author-related conflict of interest (COI) policies and evaluate the actual state of COI disclosure in Korean medical journals. To determine the prevalence of author-related COI policies, we examined the 198 medical journals listed in the KoreaMed database. To investigate the actual state of COI disclosures in published papers, we analyzed the publications in a representative medical journal, the Journal of the Korean Medical Science, from the perspective of the relevance of the ethics of COI disclosure. A total of 164 (82.8%) journals required an author's statement of COI as a criterion for publication. Of these 164, most of them focused on financial COI, with 101 (61.6%) presenting the information related to COI disclosures as a separate paragraph with a clear title. We identified 114 articles published by the Journal of the Korean Medical Science over a seven-year period, from January, 2006 to December, 2012. Of these, 65 papers (57%) included an author's statement of COI. We found that the policies of Korean medical journals regarding the disclosure of author COIs are still behind the internationally suggested level.

Keyword

Conflict of Interest; Biomedical Research; Ethical Analysis; Editorial Policies

MeSH Terms

*Conflict of Interest
Disclosure/*ethics
Editorial Policies
Periodicals as Topic/ethics
Publishing/ethics
Republic of Korea

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