Conflicts of interest declared

[Declaring conflict of interest in scientific publications. Time for the spotlights and stenographers in the backroom of research financed by the industry?]

The term conflict of interests is applied to those situations in which the research validity and integrity may be influenced by a secondary interest, typically an economic benefit, but also an ideological, personal or professional interest. In this work we describe some ways of conflict of interests--particularly those related with the publication of clinical and epidemiological research supported by the industry--and the regulation of this problem from medical journals, including references to the situation in Spain. The conflict of interest is not synonymous of scientific fraud neither malpraxis in research, but in the medical literature there exists enough evidence to consider it as an important source of biases. The usual form of facing the conflict of interests is to make it public, so that readers can judge its importance. The editorial policies of the Spanish journals are, in general, far from giving importance to this problem, an aspect which could favor an attitude of the investigators, to maintain funding or to obtain new contracts, unnecessarily subordinated to the interests of the companies.

Determining authorship

When publishing research in journals, a number of ethical and practical issues arise that need to be addressed by editors. These issues range from a bias towards including only positive results in articles submitted for publication to a requirement for authors to provide signed statements of financial involvement with commercial organisations.

Maintaining integrity

Wound care is a specialty that involves partnerships: between professionals, between manufacturers and professionals and between professionals and patients, to name a few. Add the journals to the list, and the number increases dramatically: between authors and editors, authors and referees, authors and manufacturers, referees and manufacturers, editors and readers.