Background: Cochrane has set a ground policy to ensure that its systematic reviews are free of conflict of interest (COI) and to prevent potential influence from commercial sponsors or sources. Although Cochrane’s declaration of interest focuses largely on avoiding potential financial COI, guidance on academic COI remains ambiguous. Health policy promotion occurs through gathering evidence of healthcare interventions from systematic reviews, and involves clinical experts and consensus from academic conferences. The extent to which the evidence is influenced by academic and political interest, and the career driven incentive of the authors, is not known. Apart from disclosures of a financial nature, academic interest may be the driving force for drawing a conclusion. There are many research groups and institutes that have different standards in their code of conduct policy, therefore, there is an implication of a lack of consistency in practising the elimination of non-financial COI.
Objectives: To conduct a survey of the existing guidance on COI management within the 54 Cochrane Review Groups and to characterize academic COI.
Methods: An internet-based survey will be used to acquire any statement of academic COI policy from the 54 Cochrane Review Groups. The survey will identify whether a comprehensive definition of academic COI exists. Review groups without a disclosed academic COI will be selected for assessment, by relating review authors to authors of included clinical trials in published Cochrane Systematic Reviews.
Results: The results will show how many Cochrane Systematic Review authors have conducted their own clinical studies and the Cochrane Review Groups in which affiliations are common.
Conclusions: This research will present the underlying concern about the need to include independent people in review teams to exercise avoidance of academic COI, retain impartiality in the outcome judgments of the reviews and to promote well-balanced review teams.