Saturday, April 28, 2007

New open access journal will increase the transparency of pharmaceutical industry studies

Wiley-Blackwell publishing has announced the launch of Archives of Drug Information. The journal will publish inconclusive and negative trials as well as positive trials.

C. Michael Stein, M.D. of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, the editor of the new journal, was interviewed in the March 23 edition of the Vanderbilt Reporter.
“’The pharmaceutical industry is under a lot of pressure to publish information about the studies they perform,’ said Stein, professor of Medicine and Pharmacology, and associate director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology.
‘But it's actually very difficult for them to do so because most scientific journals select the highest impact articles for publication, and many of the studies performed in drug development do not have a high scientific priority for medical journals.’

As a result, ‘whenever there are problems with a drug later on, there are often allegations that information was in some way hidden,’ he said.”

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