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Elsevier, a leading international publisher of scientific,
technical and medical (STM) information products and services, announced today it has moved to provide consistent internal guidelines for its pharmaceutical services divisions when producing reprints, article compilations or custom publications on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. This initiative follows an internal review that was commenced when the company became aware of a series of publications produced in Australia between the years 2000 and 2005 that carried the name “journal of” but lacked proper sponsor disclosures and were not in fact journals and should not have been titled as such.
Given the issues identified in the Australasian series, the
company is acting to ensure that all of its pharmaceutical services divisions around the globe are following consistent sponsorship practices and disclosure standards for various article reprint products. While these pharmaceutical services divisions frequently reprint peer reviewed articles from Elsevier, they are managed separately from the division that publishes the company’s core collection of primary research journals.
Elsevier will review practices related to all article reprint,
compilation or custom publications and set out guidelines on content, permission, use of imprint and repackaging to ensure that such publications are not confused with Elsevier’s core peer reviewed journals and that the sponsorship of any publication is clearly disclosed. Elsevier expects to complete its review and issue guidelines by 30 June 2009.
“Full disclosure should be the standard at Elsevier, and we
need to strive every day to make sure that we enforce consistent global guidelines for sponsorship and disclosure for article reprint products,” said Michael Hansen, CEO of Elsevier Health Sciences.
“I want to assure our authors, editors, and customers that the integrity of our peer reviewed research journals has not been compromised in any way. These guidelines will help ensure that there is no confusion between these special compilations and our core collection of primary research journals.”
Elsevier and other STM publishers each year produce tens of
thousands of reprint products (authorised reprints of articles from original primary journals), mostly one or two article reprints with paper covers (compilation products), to more
content rich products with reprinted peer reviewed articles and other summaries, abstracts, case studies, conference summaries and glossy covers (custom publications). These products are produced for pharmaceutical companies and serve a valid and useful educational and marketing purpose for these companies.
