Methodology

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MPIP sent an electronic survey of 23 questions to 6,013 journal editors; 293 met the eligibility criteria for completing the survey. No financial incentive was provided for taking the survey.

The primary endpoints were journal editors’ perceptions of the degree of change in transparency and credibility of industry-sponsored clinical trial publications.

• Editors ranked their perceptions of the degree of change in the primary endpoints in a positive, negative, or neutral manner, as applicable.

• Editors who saw an improvement in transparency evaluated eight “publication best practices” to determine the impact of each publication best practice on the change.

• Editors were additionally asked to rank each of the MPIP “Ten recommendations” (View List) in importance, and the extent to which each recommendation was adopted.

Results Overview

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• 63.5% of respondents indicated “slightly to substantially better levels” of transparency
• 53.2% of respondents indicated “slightly to substantially better levels” of credibility
• The publication practices that ranked as the greatest influence on improved transparency were
  • “Disclosure of study sponsor” and
  • “Registration of results of clinical trials”
• The MPIP recommendation ranked most important was
  • “Make public all results, including negative/unfavorable ones”

Future Plans

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Improving credibility includes making progress with publishing negative results, disclosing conflicts of interest, and promoting data sharing.

Publication

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Recently published, Transparency and Credibility of Industry-Sponsored Clinical Trial Publications: A Survey of Journal Editors, showcases the full results of this survey, developed by MPIP to assess how medical journal editors perceived changes in transparency and credibility of industry-sponsored clinical trial publications over a 5‑year period (from 2010 to 2015).