title: Current levels of conflict of interest disclosure in medical publications from Korea.
abstract: Medical research should be fully transparent. The aims of this study were to determine the prevalence of author-related conflict of interest (COI) policies and evaluate the actual state of COI disclosure in Korean medical journals. To determine the prevalence of author-related COI policies, we examined the 198 medical journals listed in the KoreaMed database. To investigate the actual state of COI disclosures in published papers, we analyzed the publications in a representative medical journal, the Journal of the Korean Medical Science, from the perspective of the relevance of the ethics of COI disclosure. A total of 164 (82.8%) journals required an author's statement of COI as a criterion for publication. Of these 164, most of them focused on financial COI, with 101 (61.6%) presenting the information related to COI disclosures as a separate paragraph with a clear title. We identified 114 articles published by the Journal of the Korean Medical Science over a seven-year period, from January, 2006 to December, 2012. Of these, 65 papers (57%) included an author's statement of COI. We found that the policies of Korean medical journals regarding the disclosure of author COIs are still behind the internationally suggested level.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea.
authors.forename: Bo Hyoung
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Kang
authors.forename: Jae Young
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Moon
authors.forename: Youjin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Young-Mo
authors.initials: YM
authors.lastname: Koo
authors.forename: Younsuck
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Koh
mesh_terms: D016265:Conflict of Interest; D030881:Disclosure / Q000941:ethics*; D035081:Editorial Policies; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000941:ethics; D011643:Publishing / Q000941:ethics; D056910:Republic of Korea
keywords: Biomedical Research; Conflict of Interest; Editorial Policies; Ethical Analysis