Ethical issues in instructions to authors of journals in oral-craniomaxillofacial/facial plastic surgery and related specialities

SummaryBackgroundEthical standards of biomedical publications are associated with editorial leadership, such as contents of instructions to authors and journal's mechanisms for research and publication ethics.ObjectivesTo compare ethical issues in the guidelines for authors in oral-craniomaxillofacial/facial plastic surgery (OCM–FPS) journals with those in plastic surgery and otorhinolaryngology/head and neck surgery (ORL–HNS) journals, and to evaluate the relationship between journal's impact factor (IF) and ethical issues in the instructions to authors.MethodsThis study used a cross-sectional study design. The predictor variables were journal's speciality and IF. The outcome variable was the presence of seven ethical issues in the online versions of journal's instructions to authors in October 2009. We included only journals with identifiable IF for 2008, published in English, French, German and Thai. Appropriate descriptive and univariate statistics were computed for all study variables. The level of statistical significance was set at P < 0.05.ResultsThe sample was composed of 48 journals: seven OCM–FPS (14.6%), 14 plastic surgery (29.2%) and 27 ORL–HNS (56.2%) journals. Only four journals (8.3%) mentioned all ethical issues in their guidelines for authors. Neither journal's speciality nor IF was linked to completeness of the ethical requirements.ConclusionsThe results of this study suggest that ethical issues in the instructions to authors of most IF-indexed journals in OCM–FPS, plastic surgery and ORL–HNS are incomplete, regardless of speciality and IF. There is room for substantial improvement to uphold scientific integrity of these surgical specialities.