RE: Does BMC's business model conflict with Editorial Independence?

["Peter Banks" <pbanks@diabetes.org>]

"on occasion the marketing department wields greater control over 
content than the editor"

If you can cite a specific occasion of where this is true for any 
major medical journal, you should say so. Any journal that allows 
itself to controlled by its marketing department deserves to be 
outed, and mercilessly.

I can speak only for ADA, but the editor in chief never has 
contact and is never contacted by the marketing department. I 
certainly don't claim that peer review is above any hint of bias, 
only that for any reputable journal it is extremely unlikely to 
rise to the level suggested by Horton's grandstanding. (I am 
unsure whether he thinks the Lancet alone is above reproach, or 
whether he is condemning himself along with other editors. 
According to PERQ-HCI, the Lancet last year had almost $1.9 
million in pharmaceutical advertising. If all advertising is 
information laundering, that's a lot of laundry.)

Peter Banks
Publisher

>>> david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk 05/15/06 9:13 PM >>>

Of course, some people believe that already "Journals have 
devolved into information laundering operations for the 
pharmaceutical industry" and massive reprint and advertising 
budgets have meant that on occasion the marketing department 
wields greater control over content than the editor.  I don't 
think that this is a uniquely open access problem.

(The quote is from Richard Horton, Editor of the Lancet and is 
included in an article Medical Journals Are an Extension of the 
Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies by Richard Smith, ex- 
Editor of the BMJ:

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/
journal.pmed.0020138)

Best wishes

David C Prosser PhD
Director
SPARC Europe
E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
http://www.sparceurope.org