Identifying and Minimizing Incentives for Competing Interests in Sports Medicine Publications

Academics in sports medicine as well as other medical fields are generally expected to publish research and opinions in peer-reviewed journals. The peer-review process is intended to protect against the publication of flawed research and unsubstantiated claims. However, both financial and non-financial competing interests may result in sub-optimal results by affecting investigators, editors, peer reviewers, academic institutions, and publishers. In this article, we focus on the non-financial competing interests created in our current academic system. Because these competing interests are embedded in our current scholastic framework, the potential biases are difficult to quantify. To minimize the effect of these competing interests, we review and highlight some underlying incentives for each stakeholder and some potential solutions to mitigate their effects.