Unfair playing field.

Abstract

I fully agree with the change of the name of The Psychiatrist to the Psychiatric Bulletin.1 The phrase ‘unfair playing field’ is very important. For the past 50 years in psychiatric publishing it would appear that there were serious conflicts of interest not declared. For example, an editor and reviewers have reviewed papers where they are competing for research funds in the same areas as the papers submitted. In addition, many of these same people have been on committees deciding on funding for research in the same area as the paper that is being submitted or have other associations with the authors of the paper of one kind or another. Serious conflicts of interest particularly related to the ‘golden circle’ of people who are both editors, submitters of papers and on funding bodies. This controls what is allowed to be published and what topics are allowed to be funded and has damaged research and publication in the past 50 years. In a way it seems as if ‘might is right’ - the mighty being inside the golden publishing circle. It would be interesting for somebody to do a review of publications in psychiatry journals for the past 50 years to see where these conflicts of interest occurred and were undeclared. It is probably a more sociological task.