Supporting the journal: sponsorship policy

Principle: support never affects acceptance, peer review or ranking

A journal can accept help from outside organisations only if that help has no influence on what it publishes. The rule for this journal is simple: support does not change the decision on any manuscript, the choice of reviewers, the order of articles, the position of an article on a page or any ranking. Editors decide on scientific merit alone, and people who handle manuscripts do not take part in talks about support.

This follows the direction of international guidance. ICMJE's advice on advertising says that advertising must not be allowed to influence editorial decisions, that advertisements should be clearly labelled and distinguishable from editorial content, and that editors should have final authority over advertising policy. The same logic applies to sponsorship: a supporter is never an author, a reviewer or an editor because of its support.

Who may support the journal

Funders, universities, learned societies and other organisations may support the journal if they can be identified by an official website and if their support is compatible with the principle above. As a general rule the journal will not accept support from an organisation whose product is the subject of a pending submission or whose interest could reasonably be seen as compromising independence, and it will not accept support with conditions about content, timing or reviewer choice.

How the site shows supporters: the supporters page, when published, lists only supporters that are marked as published and that have an official https address. Each entry has the name, the official address and a short line. The record does not store an amount or a date, so the page cannot suggest a price for a place in the journal. The page is a draft until the editor publishes it.

• Listing a supporter is not an endorsement of its products or services.
• Supporters have no right to see manuscripts, reviews or reviewer identities.
• A supporter who is also an author or whose employee is an author is handled by the normal conflict-of-interest rules.

Unrestricted educational grants only from industry

Companies in the health sector, such as manufacturers of drugs, devices and diagnostics, may support the journal only through unrestricted educational grants: money or services given without conditions about topics, content, authors, reviewers or publication decisions, and without any right to use the journal's name in promotion. The company does not pay for a particular article, a special issue on its product or a place in the table of contents.

Related practices that need extra care:

• Advertising. If the journal ever carries advertising, it should have a written policy, label advertisements clearly, keep them apart from editorial material and not run advertisements for products shown to be seriously harmful to health, in line with the ICMJE advice on advertising.
• Industry-funded research. A study funded by a company is judged like any other. Authors must describe the sponsor's role and disclose financial relationships, as the ICMJE recommendations require, and must not accept terms that limit their access to study data or their right to publish independently.
• Supplements and special issues. Any content that a sponsor pays for must be labelled as such and must not be presented as ordinary peer-reviewed content unless it went through the same process.

Annual transparency report

The site has a feature that produces a yearly transparency report, as a page and as a PDF, with the figures drawn from the journal's own records. The sponsorship policy should be read together with it, and the editor should state in the report which supporters the journal had in that year. A supporter's name should never appear in an article's text, in reviews or in decision letters because of its support. If an error or a possible breach of this policy is found, it should be corrected publicly.

Contact

Organisations that wish to support the journal, and anyone who has a concern about the independence of the journal, should write to the editorial office. The contact address is the one on the journal's contact page; this draft does not repeat it so that it cannot drift out of date. Please include your official website. The editor will answer in writing, and the journal may decline any offer without giving a reason.

Editor's note for review: the section "Who may support the journal" and the industry rule describe the policy proposed in the guide topic list and the site's supporter feature. Confirm them as the journal's decision before publication.

Sources

• ICMJE, advertising: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/advertising.html
• ICMJE, conflicts of interest and role of the sponsor: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/author-responsibilities--conflicts-of-interest.html
• Journal site (repository): supporters page model and yearly transparency report feature (editor to confirm before publishing)