Using data from the Open Payments database from 2014 and information gleaned from a survey of journal editors-in-chief, Liu et al. discovered the following:
- Among 713 editors, 50.6% received some “general payments” (i.e, money deposited directly into personal bank accounts) from pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturers in 2014.
- The median general payment to journal editors was $11, while the mean general payment was $28,136.
- The highest median payments were found among journal editors in the specialties of endocrinology ($7,207), cardiology ($2,664), gastroenterology ($696), rheumatology ($515), and urology ($480). The median payment among orthopaedics editors was $121.
- The two highest payments to individual editors were >$1 million, and those editors were in the specialties of cardiology and—you guessed it—orthopaedics.
Beyond the dollar-and-cents data, the authors discovered that only one-third of the 52 journal websites had readily accessible statements of conflict-of-interest (COI) polices. Among the journals with COI policies, 75% said they have formal recusal processes that exclude an editor from handling manuscripts where he/she has a conflict.
According to an accompanying appendix, among the 34 JBJS editors included in the analysis (i.e., the US-based editor-in-chief, deputy editors, and associate editors), six had received general payments >$50,000 in 2014. The JBJS COI statement asserts that if conflicts are disclosed that might affect an editor’s ability to adjudicate a manuscript fairly, “the paper will be reassigned to another editor.” It also states that “the Editor-in-Chief has no known conflicts of interests or competing interests and makes the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of all manuscripts submitted.”