Gordon H. Guyatt, Kari A.O. Tikkinen, Jason W. Busse, Per Olav Vandvik, Ramon Saccilotto, Francois Lamontagne, Yuki Tomonaga, Elie A. Akl, Heiner C. Bucher, Heike Raatz, Erik von Elm, Lorenzo Moja, Matthias Schwenkglenks, Theresa Bengough, Anette Blümle, Shanil Ebrahim, Mihaela Stegert, Dirk Bassler, Bernard Burnand, Stefan Schandelmaier, Matthias Briel, Bradley C. Johnston, Xin Sun, John J. You, Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Viktoria Gloy, Dominik Mertz, Benjamin Kasenda, Markus Faulhaber, Lars G. Hemkens, Alain Amstutz, Ignacio Ferreira-González, Sohail M. Mulla, Martin A. Walter, Kelechi K Olu, Ignacio Neumann, Alain J Nordmann, Joerg J Meerpohl, University of Zurich, von Elm, Erik, Lexchin, Joel, HUS Abdominal Center, Urologian yksikkö, Clinicum, and Department of Public Health
Background Little is known about publication agreements between industry and academic investigators in trial protocols and the consistency of these agreements with corresponding statements in publications. We aimed to investigate (i) the existence and types of publication agreements in trial protocols, (ii) the completeness and consistency of the reporting of these agreements in subsequent publications, and (iii) the frequency of co-authorship by industry employees. Methods and Findings We used a retrospective cohort of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) based on archived protocols approved by six research ethics committees between 13 January 2000 and 25 November 2003. Only RCTs with industry involvement were eligible. We investigated the documentation of publication agreements in RCT protocols and statements in corresponding journal publications. Of 647 eligible RCT protocols, 456 (70.5%) mentioned an agreement regarding publication of results. Of these 456, 393 (86.2%) documented an industry partner’s right to disapprove or at least review proposed manuscripts; 39 (8.6%) agreements were without constraints of publication. The remaining 24 (5.3%) protocols referred to separate agreement documents not accessible to us. Of those 432 protocols with an accessible publication agreement, 268 (62.0%) trials were published. Most agreements documented in the protocol were not reported in the subsequent publication (197/268 [73.5%]). Of 71 agreements reported in publications, 52 (73.2%) were concordant with those documented in the protocol. In 14 of 37 (37.8%) publications in which statements suggested unrestricted publication rights, at least one co-author was an industry employee. In 25 protocol-publication pairs, author statements in publications suggested no constraints, but 18 corresponding protocols documented restricting agreements. Conclusions Publication agreements constraining academic authors’ independence are common. Journal articles seldom report on publication agreements, and, if they do, statements can be discrepant with the trial protocol., In a document analysis of trial protocols and publications, Erik von Elm and colleagues investigate the potential impact of publication agreements between industry sponsors and academic investigators., Author Summary Why Was This Study Done? Many randomized trials are designed and sponsored by for-profit companies that contract academic investigators to recruit and manage patients. Clinical research under these circumstances is a business transaction that bears the potential for conflicts of interest, in particular with respect to trial publication. Besides evidence from a small sample, it was unclear how often trial protocols included publication agreements between industry and academic investigators, whether these agreements constrained the investigators’ publication rights, and how consistent such agreements stated in trial protocols were with those reported in corresponding publications. What Did the Researchers Do and Find? We investigated publication agreements in 647 randomized trial protocols approved in 2000–2003 by six research ethics committees in Switzerland, Canada, and Germany, and in 388 corresponding journal publications. Seventy percent of protocols mentioned an agreement on publication rights between industry and academic investigators; in 86% of those agreements, industry retained the right to disapprove or at least review manuscripts before publication. Seventy-four percent of agreements documented in protocols were not mentioned in corresponding journal articles. What Do These Findings Mean? Publication agreements constraining academic investigators’ independence are incompletely reported in publications; this may compromise the scientific evidence base established by randomized clinical trials. More transparency on publication constraints is warranted. Half of the included journal articles were published before 2008, leaving open the possibility that these findings do not reflect current reporting practice.