Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15161
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: Journal Article
Ramsay S.
Advertising on TheLancet.com
The Lancet 2009 Mar 7; 373:(9666):794
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60460-8/fulltext
Full text:
At the end of last year, we launched a faster and much improved website. As promised, we are continuing to expand the service offered by TheLancet.com and our users can now set up tailored search alerts. The latter allow a user to be notified of each new instance of Lancet content that matches personally selected keywords.
Search alerts provide an opportunity not only for faster and more targeted access to our content but also for more targeted advertising. We were therefore approached by colleagues in our advertising department and asked whether we would allow drug-company advertisements that matched users’ preferred search terms to be displayed alongside the search results.
Much debate surrounds the appearance of drug advertisements in medical journals-in print and, increasingly, online. All Lancet editorial decisions are made strictly and entirely independently of advertising.
We have agreed that such advertising might appear. However, we have stipulated that advertising sponsors may select keywords based only on clinical specialties (eg, “oncology”) or disease conditions (eg, “breast AND cancer”)-they cannot select keywords based on a drug name or drug class.
We were also concerned that there might be occasions when a user’s search alert contains only one matching article. Were an advertisement for a drug mentioned in the article to appear in the alert, the coincidence might erroneously be perceived to be a link between editorial and advertising decisions. To avoid any such misperceptions, we have also specified that such advertisements may appear only if a search result contains at least three items of content.
We welcome readers’ views on this new arrangement and will continue to strive to be transparent on all similar editorial policies.
