Safeguarding Scientific Integrity: Examining Conflicts of Interest in the Peer Review Process

Introduction

• Science and politics are human endeavors shaped by human biases, so political use of science must not interfere with scientific methods or communication.The scientific method is presented as one check on personal biases and political influences.Source: Introduction · pp. 1–2
• Scientific communication spans informing and educating the public as well as publishing papers, editing journals, and conducting peer review.It can inform policy, clinical care, and other critical areas.Source: Introduction · p. 2
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest and other integrity lapses have been documented, prompting inquiry into how misinformation enters science and spreads beyond academia.The paper focuses that inquiry on publications and their editorial workflow.Source: Introduction · p. 2

Communication through Publications: Editors, Reviewers, Authors, and the Publication Process

• Guest editors assume reviewer-selection and publication-oversight power, and breaching ethical guidelines may channel biased research through trusted journals.The paper notes that such breaches can also call a journal’s and its editorial board’s reputations into question.Source: Communication through Publications:… · p. 2
• Peer-review workflows vary across publishers and journals and lack a common codified process, so they do not fully guarantee research integrity.The paper distinguishes gaming—optimizing the system for professional gain—from manipulation that crosses community boundaries of acceptable practice.Source: Communication through Publications:… · p. 3

Study Objective

• The case study uses COPE reviewer guidelines to examine expertise, conflicts of interest, and objectivity among reviewers, editors, and authors in one journal special issue.Ethical guidance identifies expertise, disclosure of competing interests, and impartial evaluation as considerations for editors and reviewers.Source: Communication through Publications:… · p. 2, Study Objective · p. 3

Data Collection

• The analysis selected open-access, peer-reviewed articles published in 2022 in one special issue with the same guest editors and publicly named reviewers.Roles were gathered from the special-topic site, while affiliation information came from that site, web searches, and Dimensions.Source: Data Collection · pp. 3–4

Expertise

• Expertise was proxied using publication totals, recent publication averages, publication recency, and available peer-review counts.The publication average covered 2019–2022 and excluded works with 25 or more co-authors.Source: Expertise · p. 4

Conflicts of Interest

• Conflicts of interest were assessed from public affiliation information and organizational roles, with strong political affiliation defined by membership, leadership, founding, advocacy, or activist work.The assessment focused on whether conflicts were disclosed, rather than claiming to determine whether a person was unbiased.Source: Conflicts of Interest · p. 4, Conflict of Interest · p. 5

Objectivity

• Objectivity was operationalized by combining expertise and conflict-of-interest data, but reviewers’ actual comments were not collected for assessment.The paper defines objectivity as minimizing or controlling biases, including conflicts of interest.Source: Objectivity · p. 4

Analysis

• A mixed-methods analysis used a bipartite network with people and papers as separate node sets, linking people to papers they edited, reviewed, or authored and coloring nodes with conflicts.The network analysis was used to visualize relationships relevant to objectivity.Source: Objectivity · p. 5, Analysis · p. 5

Results

• The analysis covered six peer-reviewed articles, including one brief report, two reviews, and three original research papers; one review had four reviewers, while the others had two.Two papers had an editor among their reviewers; Guest Editor 1 edited five papers and reviewed one, while Guest Editor 3 edited two and reviewed one.Source: Results · p. 5, Results: Objectivity · p. 8

Results: Expertise

• All editors and reviewers had related education or practice, but Guest Editor 3 had no work history in fertility, pregnancy, and mental health.Source: Results: Expertise · p. 6
• Reviewer publication histories ranged from no publications in the prior four years for three reviewers to prolific records for Reviewers 5 and 6.Reviewers 7 and 10 had not been primary authors since 2015 and 2007, respectively; Reviewer 11 had no publication history and was not an early-career researcher.Source: Results: Expertise · p. 6
• Peer-review counts from Loop and ORCiD were excluded because those sources could be incomplete or entirely missing.Source: Results: Expertise · p. 6

Results: Conflict of Interest

• Two guest editors, five of twelve reviewers, and two of nineteen authors were active in anti-abortion advocacy and lobbying organizations identified as conflicts of interest.The identified organizations included CLI, AAPLOG, BCPI, WECARE, and the St Louis Guild of the Catholic Medical Association.Source: Results: Conflict of Interest · p. 7
• Guest Editor 3’s Catholic affiliations were not treated as a conflict without evidence of active lobbying or advocacy; a separate Christian-based author group appeared unconnected to CLI or AAPLOG.The reviewers for that separate paper appeared unassociated with its authors or organization.Source: Results: Conflict of Interest · p. 7
• Eight of fourteen reviewers were strongly connected to anti-abortion organizations, and eight of nine individuals with conflicts did not declare them.Source: Results: Conflict of Interest · p. 7

Results: Objectivity

• Two papers, 103 and 105, showed significant affiliation and authorship overlap among authors, an editor, and peer reviewers.Source: Results: Objectivity · p. 8, Figure 2 · p. 10

Discussion

• Two articles showed possible ethical lapses, including questions about expertise, objectivity, undisclosed conflicts, and reviewer alignment with political views.The authors state that conflicts of interest should have prevented publication of both articles.Source: Discussion · pp. 10–11
• One suspect article was retracted over undisclosed competing interests, while the other remained unretracted despite potentially questionable interests.The retraction took months and involved legal proceedings.Source: Discussion · p. 11
• Four other articles appeared to have expert reviewers, no undisclosed conflicts, and adequate objectivity, though effects of the retraction on their authors are difficult to measure.Source: Discussion · p. 11
• The analysis covers six papers in one topic, lacks comparisons with other special issues, and may miss associations or peer-review information.The authors note there is no registry of organizational affiliations, so not finding an association does not establish that none exists.Source: Discussion · p. 11

Open Peer Review

• Open peer review can expose reviewer and editor identities; in this case, posted names enabled conflict analysis and helped identify editorial anomalies.Other models make review letters or recommendations public, and open review may support consistency and transparency.Source: Open Peer Review · pp. 11–12

Conflict of Interest Database

• Publishers should disclose non-financial affiliations, including advocacy and lobbying memberships, and adopt more rigorous, verified conflict-of-interest policies.Such disclosures could give the public and policymakers additional information for assessing potential bias.Source: Conflict of Interest Database · p. 12

Take Responsibility

• Publishers and institutions could provide ethics training, require persistent author identifiers, and reward ethical and open peer-review practices.Institutions could also hold researchers accountable; the authors recommend ethics notices or retraction when ethical guidelines are violated.Source: Take Responsibility · pp. 12–13

• Questionable research distributed by established publishers can be used as evidence for federal, state, and local policies and laws.Source: Conclusion · p. 13
• The authors say they did not assess the articles' scientific quality, focusing instead on the editorial process and its potential downstream effects on policy and case law.They call for stakeholder accountability and curbing the spread of informational pollutants in scholarly literature.Source: Conclusion · p. 13

• Leslie McIntosh is Digital Science's Vice President of Research Integrity, and Cynthia Hudson Vitale receives a part-time salary from the company.Both advise on products related to research integrity.Source: Conflict of Interest · p. 13

• The appendix lists organizations affiliated with an editor, reviewer, or author that may be interpreted as conflicts of interest.Source: APPENDIX · p. 17
• The appendix defines conflict of interest as a potential for secondary interests to influence professional judgment about a primary interest, and notes that perceived conflicts matter too.Source: APPENDIX · p. 17
• The Susan B. Anthony List Education Fund describes the Charlotte Lozier Institute as its education and research arm, focused on science-based pro-life information and research.Source: APPENDIX · p. 17
• AAPLOG is described as a professional association advancing life-affirming medical arguments, while BCPI is described as educating about breast cancer and supporting an AAPLOG brief on abortion's effects.Source: APPENDIX · p. 17
• WECARE describes itself as a consortium conducting research collaboration and education on abortion's physical, psychological, and relational effects; the appendix says it is not discoverable as a nonprofit through Guidestar.Source: APPENDIX · p. 17