title: Ethics requirements and impact factor.
abstract: Do all clinical research publications show strong application of ethics principles and respect for biomedical law? We examined, for the year 2009, the ethics requirements displayed on the website of 30 leading medical journals with an impact factor (IF) >10, and 30 others with an IF <10. We carried out a short study looking at the relationship between the IF of a journal and the ethics requirements in its instructions to authors. We show that the IF of a biomedical journal bears a direct relationship to its ethics requirements. Such results should improve the ethics requirements of all biomedical journals, especially those with low IF, so that they are internationally standardised to the higher standard required by journals with higher IF.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Ethicsand Legal Medicine, University Paris 5, 45 Saints-Pe`res street, F-75005 Paris, France. ph_charlier@yahoo.fr
authors.forename: Philippe
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Charlier
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bridoux
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Watier
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ménétrier
authors.forename: Geoffroy Lorin
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: de la Grandmaison
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hervé
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000941:ethics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D035081:Editorial Policies; D006801:Humans; D055811:Journal Impact Factor