OBJECTIVES

To help readers determine whether an author’s relationships and activities might inappropriately influence a paper’s content, health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) journals implement conflict of interest (COI) disclosure policies. This study examines the characteristics of COI disclosure policies in HEOR journals and its association with HEOR SCImago Journal Rank score (SJR), a proxy of journal prestige.

METHODS

We reviewed disclosure policies from 23 HEOR journals with a 2018 SJR score greater than one. After reviewing International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, journal policies, and author disclosure forms, we identified six main author reporting characteristics (yes/no): disclosure of nonfinancial associations, personal associations, nonprofit associations, financial support for all the author’s work (not restricted to the submitted work), financial ties for 36 months prior to the publication or earlier, and required disclosure of all author financial relationships (not restricted to those the author deems relevant). Descriptive statistics summarized the variation across journals of each reporting characteristic. A multiple linear regression tested the association between SJR and reporting characteristics.

RESULTS

Of 23 journals, 12 (52%) claimed to use ICMJE COI guidelines, though 2 of these had author instructions contradicting ICMJE COI guidelines. HEOR journals, on average, requested that authors satisfy four of the six evaluated reporting characteristics (range: 0 to 6). The most common requested characteristic was disclosure of both financial and nonfinancial associations (20/23) and the least common was the disclosure of all financial relationships versus selective reporting dependent on author’s judgement (4/23). The regression analysis did not provide evidence of an association between SJR and the six evaluated characteristics (p-value = 0.99).

CONCLUSIONS

There is considerable variability in COI disclosure policies among HEOR journals, with many asking authors to judge whether to disclose some relationships. HEOR journals should standardize COI disclosure policies and minimize author judgement to achieve COI disclosure goals.