---
title: "Conflicts of interest in academic publishing"
chunk: 1/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflicts_of_interest_in_academic_publishing"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:42:26.093387+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Conflicts of interest (COIs) often arise in academic publishing. Such conflicts may cause wrongdoing and make it more likely. Ethical standards in academic publishing exist to avoid and deal with conflicts of interest, and the field continues to develop new standards. Standards vary between journals and are unevenly applied. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, "[a]uthors have a responsibility to evaluate the integrity, history, practices and reputation of the journals to which they submit manuscripts".
Conflicts of interest increase the likelihood of biases arising; they can harm the quality of research and the public good (even if disclosed). Conflicts of interest can involve research sponsors, authors, journals, journal staff, publishers, and peer reviewers.

== Avoidance, disclosure, and tracking ==
The avoidance of conflicts of interest and the changing of the structure of institutions to make them easier to avoid are frequently advocated for. Some institutional ethics policies ban academics from entering into specific types of COIs, for instance by prohibiting them from accepting gifts from companies connected with their work. Education in ethical COI management is also a tool for avoiding COI problems. 
Disclosure of COIs has been debated since the 1980s; there is a general consensus favouring disclosure. There is also a view that COI concerns and some of the measures taken to reduce them are excessive.
Criticisms of disclosure policies include:

authors disclosing COIs may feel pressured to present their research in a more biased manner to compensate;
disclosure may discourage beneficial academic–industrial collaboration;
disclosure may decrease public trust in research;
researchers who have disclosed their COIs may feel license to behave immorally;
disclosure may be taken as a sign of honesty or expertise and thus increase trust;
some types of COI may be more likely than others to go unnoticed or unreported;
awareness of a COI does not make people immune to being influenced by bias; generally, people do not sufficiently discount biased advice;
disclosure discourages the judging of work purely on its merits;
disclosure causes more intense scrutiny for wrongdoing.
While disclosure is widely favoured, other COI management measures have narrower support. Some publications hold the opinion that certain COIs disqualify people from certain research roles; for instance, that the testing of medicines should be done only by people who neither develop medicines nor are funded by their manufacturers.
Conflicts of interest have also been considered as a statistical factor confounding evidence, which must therefore be measured as accurately as possible and analysed, requiring machine-readable disclosure.

== Codes of conduct ==
Journals have individual ethics policies and codes of conduct; there are also some cross-journal voluntary standards.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) publishes Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals, and a list of journals that pledge to follow it. The guideline lays down detailed rules for conflict-of-interest declaration by authors. It also says; "All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider their conflicts of interest when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest". These recommendations have been criticized and revised to remove loopholes allowing the non-disclosure of conflicts of interest.
The Council of Science Editors publishes a White Paper on publication ethics. Citing the ICMJE that "all participants in the peer-review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest", it highly recommends COI disclosure for sponsors, authors, reviewers, journals, and editorial staff.
The Good Publication Practice (GPP) guidelines, covering industry-sponsored medical research, are published by the International Society of Medical Publication Professionals.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publishes a code of conduct stating, "[t]here must be clear definitions of conflicts of interest and processes for handling conflicts of interest of authors, reviewers, editors, journals and publishers, whether identified before or after publication".
The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing is intended to separate legitimate journals from predatory publishers and defines a minimal standard; clear and clearly stated COI policies.
A 2009 US Institute of Medicine report on medical COIs states that conflict-of-interest policies should be judged on their proportionality, transparency, accountability, and fairness; they should be effective, efficient, and targeted, known and understood, clearly identify who is responsible for monitoring, enforcement, and amendment, and apply equally to everyone involved. Review by conflict-of-interest committees is also recommended, and the lack of transparency and COI declaration in developing COI guidelines criticized.
As of 2015, journal COI policies often have no enforcement provisions. COI disclosure obligations have been legislated; one example of such legislation is the US Physician Payments Sunshine Act, but these laws do not apply specifically to journals.

== COIs by agent ==

=== COIs of journals ===
Journals are often not transparent about their institutional COIs, and do not apply the same disclosure standards to themselves as they do to their authors. Four out of six major general medical journals that were contacted for a 2010 COI study refused to provide information about the proportion of their income that derived from advertisements, reprints, and industry-supported supplements, citing policies on non-disclosure of financial information.