Is It Enough? Disclosure of Medical Industry Payments to Orthopaedic Surgery Journal Editors and the Need for Transparency.

Abstract

Financial conflicts of interest (COIs) are arguably a powerful form of COI in scientific journal publishing. The purposes of this paper were to explore the financial COIs of the 6 most highly ranked U.S.-based orthopaedic surgery journals, to more thoroughly examine financial COIs in the journal with the highest industry payments, and to discuss possible approaches to mitigating the potential negative impact of financial COIs. Two publicly available sources of data were used to characterize editor industry funding: the websites or mastheads of high-impact U.S.-based journals and the Open Payments database from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. From 2021 to 2023, the median General and Research Payments per editor varied substantially, from a low of $0 to Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research editors to $2,735,566 to The Journal of Arthroplasty editors. Financial COIs existed for some editors at each of the 6 most highly ranked U.S.-based orthopaedic surgery journals. For The Journal of Arthroplasty, the sixth-highest-ranking journal, the majority of the editors and editorial board members had financial COIs. Adverse journal consequences related to financial COIs could be mitigated by enhancing the transparency of disclosures and prominently displaying journal policies for handling COIs on journal websites.