RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Ethics requirements and impact factor
JF Journal of Medical Ethics
JO J Med Ethics
FD BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and Institute of Medical Ethics
SP 253
OP 255
DO 10.1136/medethics-2011-100174
VO 38
IS 4
A1 Philippe Charlier
A1 Valérie Bridoux
A1 Laurence Watier
A1 Melissa Ménétrier
A1 Geoffroy Lorin de la Grandmaison
A1 Christian Hervé
YR 2012
UL http://jme.bmj.com/content/38/4/253.abstract
AB Do all clinical research publications show strong application of ethics principles and respect for biomedical law? We examined, for the year 2009, the ethics requirements displayed on the website of 30 leading medical journals with an impact factor (IF) >10, and 30 others with an IF <10. We carried out a short study looking at the relationship between the IF of a journal and the ethics requirements in its instructions to authors. We show that the IF of a biomedical journal bears a direct relationship to its ethics requirements. Such results should improve the ethics requirements of all biomedical journals, especially those with low IF, so that they are internationally standardised to the higher standard required by journals with higher IF.