Talk:Conflicts of interest in academic publishing

NOTESSAY

Hello, GigglesnortHotel. Could you please explain how this article could be changed to avoid falling into WP:NOTESSAY? I took pains to verify and be neutral, and I'd be glad of pointers as to how I've fallen short. I am aware that the lede is pretty weak; I'm not sure how to summarize it better. HLHJ (talk) 19:15, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

I have taken out one explanatory sentence in the lede that I felt was unnecessary, and have edited the whole lede to summarize most of the article. I hope that helps somewhat. I think the whole article would benefit by merging some of the bullet-points and short paragraphs into larger paragraphs. Derek Andrews (talk) 21:09, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you, Derek Andrews. My lede was awful. Yours is a drastic improvement. The writing style of the rest of the article is awful, too. I was concentrating on the fact-citing, WP:RELTIME for statements about a rapidly-changing culture, and WP:DUE, and the result is a hideous overcategorised mess. I've amalgamated some paragraphs and removed some sections at your suggestion. One set of bullet-points is a direct quote, so I can't change it; the other one is a list of criticisms, and I'll try and think of ways to improve it. Thank you for your edit and your advice. HLHJ (talk) 23:20, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I was asked to comment: Without going into details, I agree that merging into larger sections would be beneficial Perhaps this should be rgarded as a summary article, as each of the major concepts could eventually be expanded into a separate article. In particular, this would provide the opportunity for some more historical perspective--to clarify how how the current state of things hasa developed from the even less responsible earlier practices. DGG ( talk ) 01:12, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

I'll merge some more. I seem to recall that one of the existing sources gives a bit of historical perspective, but I can't remember anything pre-~1990. I'll see if I can find something for a bit more of a historical treatment. Expansion into sub-article should get easier with time, as better sources come out. There is a heavy bias towards medical sources, too, but it's not as if there are no COIs in other fields. I've DYK-nommed this article, so hopefully the prose will benefit from some more eyes. Thank you for commenting. HLHJ (talk) 02:53, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

HI HLHJ. If you have an article which is factually sound and reasonably sourced, but with one or more of spelling, grammar, flow, MoS or structure needing attention then you might consider requesting a copy edit at GoCE Requests. Gog the Mild (talk) 00:55, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Citing for Headbomb

Headbomb, thank you very much for going over this again. You tagged the statement "Journals are often not transparent about their institutional COIs, and apply stricter disclosure standards to authors than to themselves" as not being in the sources cited; I'm assuming that it's the second clause you couldn't cite. Looking back, I think I cited it to the editor's summary: "Nevertheless, the researchers suggest, journals should live up to the same principles related to conflicts of interest as those that they require from their authors". Should I use the "rp" template to make this clear? I've provisionally done this, feel free to revert if you prefer. The first sentence of the "COIs of journals" section ("These are institutional COIs. They cannot, therefore, be altered simply by replacing the people facing them") was me clumsily attempting to define the scope of the section. Can you suggest a way to do this without uncited synthesis? Maybe "The institutional COIs of journals..."? HLHJ (talk) 02:59, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

First this is purely the opinion of the authors on what journals ought or ought not to do. Second a suggestion that they do XYZ because they don't currently do XYZ does not mean that they apply stricter/weaker standards than XYZ, it simply means that they have different standards. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 04:09, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Headbomb, I changed the statement on standards, but did not remove the tag, least you feel that that problem is still unresolved. Any suggestions on defining the section scope? HLHJ (talk) 02:39, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

It's fine now, yes. There whole article is still a bit alarmist / YOU CAN'T TRUST ANYTHING in general. I got no specific suggestion on how to address that, save that the article right now doesn't seem very balanced. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:47, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

One thing I'd change is instead of the current structure of

• COIs by agent
  • COIs of journals
    • Owners and governing bodies
    • Reprints
    • Impact factors, reputation, and subscriptions
    • Advertising
    • Sponsored supplements
    • Publishers
    • COIs of journal staff
  • COIs of peer reviewers
  • COIs of article authors
    • Ghost authors and non-contributing authors
  • COIs of study sponsors

I'd have a broad structure of

• COIs by agent (that's a bad name btw)
  • Authors
    • Authorship (or perhaps 'credit')
    • Funding and sponsorship
  • Journals
    • Advertising
    • Business models (this is where everything from subscriptions/open access/reprints can be mentionned)
    • Citations and reputation
    • Sponsored supplements
    • Peer reviewers
  • Publishers (includes owners/governing bodies, possibly as subsections, but the top level name should be kept simple)
  • Sponsors (maybe, if that can't be merged in authors without being too bulky).

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:18, 17 February 2019 (UTC)