American Association of Dental Editors’ Position Statement on

Undue Commercial Influence on Professional Publications

The American Association of Dental Editors (AADE) believes the interests of readers are paramount. AADE feels that disguised commercially biased articles in a professional publication may have a negative impact on patient care.

This statement provides recommendations to editors to help ensure that commercial interests, or authors with commercial interests, do not exert undue influence on their publications that could be detrimental to patient care.

AADE understands commercial entities have a right to communicate legitimate information to dentists through advertisements in professional publications. AADE also recognizes nonprofit organizations will legitimately seek to generate nondues revenues through publishing advertisements by commercial entities in their publications. Transparency of processes and distinction between editorial and advertising content are essential to high-quality dental professional journalism.

Recommendations

• Editors should have a clear understanding, through established policies, of the commercial expectations of the organizations/associations that own their publications.
• Editors should not be influenced by commercial interest when deciding to publish an article. Equally, pressures from external commercial interests should not influence the content of a published article.
• Different individuals should hold the responsibilities for clinical/scientific editorial content and for the sale of advertising space in a publication.
• Each publication should develop or follow a set of written advertising standards.
• The editor should have the final approval about the acceptability for publication of the content of an advertisement and where it is positioned in a publication.
• An advertisement about a particular product or service should not be placed within or immediately adjacent to an article relating to the same type of product or service.
• Editorial content should be distinguishable from advertisements or advertorials.
• Authors should be asked if they have any financial interests in companies manufacturing or distributing the types of products or services mentioned in their articles. There should be a prominent indication in print that authors either have, or do not have, a declared financial interest in products or services mentioned in their articles. This would include research support.
• If the editor receives verifiable proof that an author has neglected to reveal a financial interest, the editor has a responsibility to alert the readership in a prominent “correction” notice.

This position was adopted by the AADE Board of Directors at their February 20, 2008 meeting in Chicago, Illinois.