Most peer reviewers for major medical journals receive industry payments

Key takeaways:

• Of 1,962 physician peer reviewers, more than half received industry payments between 2020 to 2022.
• Most of the industry payments were general payments and were made to individuals or their institutions.

Most physicians who conducted peer reviews for major medical journals received industry payments, according to a research letter published in JAMA.

These payments from drug and medical device manufacturers ended up totaling more than a billion dollars over a 3-year period, researchers reported.

“Although conflicts of interest of journal editors and authors have been investigated, the traditionally opaque nature of peer review has hindered their evaluation among peer reviewers, despite their crucial role in academic publishing,” David-Dan Nguyen, MDCM, MPH, a urology resident physician at the University of Toronto, and colleagues wrote.

Most journals have established conflict-of-interest policies for authors but “fewer extend these policies to peer reviewers,” they added.

“In many cases, journals or editors may inquire about reviewer conflicts of interest and consider these while managing the peer review process, although publicly available review conflict of interest disclosures are rare,” they wrote. “Reviewers of leading medical journals may have industry ties due to their academic experience.”

In the analysis, the researchers examined general and research payments by drug and medical manufacturers to physician peer reviewers of major journals — including BMJ, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and The Lancet — between 2020 and 2022.

Researchers identified peer reviewers based on each journal’s 2022 reviewer list, whereas general and research payments during the 3-year period came from information available in the Open Payments database.

The investigation identified 7,021 reviewers, with 1,962 included in the final analysis after Nguyen and colleagues excluded nonphysician reviewers those not in the United States and reviewers not searchable on Scopus.

Over half (58.9%) of peer reviewers received at least one industry payment between 2020 and 2022, with 54% receiving general payments and 31.8% receiving research payments.

The researchers found that reviewers received $1.06 billion in industry payments between 2020 and 2022, which included:

• $1 billion to individuals or their institutions; and
• $64.18 million in general payments.

Speaking compensation and consulting fees not related to continuing medical education programs accounted for $11.8 million and $34.31 million, respectively.

Nguyen and colleagues determined a median general payment of $7,614 (interquartile range [IRQ], $495-$43,069) and a median research payment of $153,173 (IQR, $29,307-$835,637) among reviewers who received such payments over the 3 years.

The investigators also observed payment differences based on sex because male reviewers had substantially higher median total payments ($38,959 vs. $19,586) and general payments ($8,663 vs. $4,183) compared with female reviewers.

They also reported statistically significant differences in payments between specialties.

The researchers pointed out that research payments, especially those made to institutions, may have different implications for conflicts of interest vs. general payments.

The researchers identified several study limitations. For example, the data may not be generally applicable to other journals; meanwhile, the analysis did not capture payments from other entities, such as insurance and technology companies, possibly underestimating the industry payments made to reviewers.

Additionally, Nguyen and colleagues did not know if existing relationships had relevance to the reviewed articles.

“Additional research and transparency regarding industry payments in the peer review process are needed,” they wrote.