Adherence to conflicts of interest policy in Cochrane reviews where authors are also editorial board members: A cross-sectional analysis

Ref ID 791
First Author R.L. Pacheco
Journal RESEARCH SYNTHESIS METHODS
Year Of Publishing 2022
URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jrsm.1507?casa_token=yYdbdaAW1tQAAAAA:uStCivZDWHJbDfny6ZOfuk1bch5EqDZYM8cEqMhkYO2BCwJbOxUNPwcLAvpjAN8vgzZ05K0CDBE35dWs
Keywords • Disclosure
• Allegiance
• Author
• Cochrane
Problem(s) • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Non-financial conflicts of interest of review authors
• Weaknesses identified in some Cochrane reviews
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country Brazil
Aim To assess adherence to Cochrane's editorial conflict of interest policy in 260 published Cochrane reviews in issues 1 to 6 from 2019 of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.
Level of Investigation Descriptive
Summary of Findings From 260 published Cochrane reviews in issues 1 to 6 from 2019 of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 133 (51.2%, 133/260) of Cochrane reviews had at least one author that was also listed as an editor in the Cochrane Review Group. Of these, only five (3.8%, 5/133) appropriately declared the conflict according to Cochrane policy. In 6.5% (17/133) Cochrane Reviews, the contact author had a leading editorial position within the Cochrane Review Group and in only four of 17 was this declared according to Cochrane policy. No Cochrane review with the contact author who also had a leading editorial position described methods to prevent any potential issues related to this scenario during the editorial process in accordance with Cochrane policy.
Number of systematic reviews included 260
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 260
Treatment impacted No
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Not Applicable
Interpretation impacted description