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Advertisements appear in print and online journals, email alerts, other online information products and services, and other types of media (such as podcasts and blogs). For biomedical publications, advertisements typically include the following: ▪ Advertisements that promote professional or trade-related products (primarily pharmaceuticals and medical equipment in biomedical publications), services, educational opportunities or products, or announcements (see also , Advertorials). These are typically called display advertisements in print; online, they may include banners, pop-up windows, or text-based ads (such as in email alerts or other online communications of information) (see also , Advertising and Sponsorship in Online Publications). ▪ Display Less

The uncertain romance between scholarly journals and the drug industry has long been like a marriage of convenience between partners who became friends ultimately, not because they were very fond of each other originally, but because they needed each other.    Robert H. Moser, MD Commercial activities, such as advertising, sponsorship, reprints, and e-prints provide a major source of revenue for many scientific publications. With this revenue, publications can offset some of the costs of journal operations, production, and distribution; may be able to set lower subscription rates than would otherwise be possible; and can serve as a source of income for Less

Online ads are not restricted by the physical limits of a printed page. For example, a user can increase the type size of the prescribing information that appears in small type in print pharmaceutical ads. Ads can rotate, expand, be animated, or pop up on a screen without the user’s request. An ad for a particular drug, product, or service can be hyperlinked to the manufacturer or provider’s website. In addition, ads can be targeted for specific users or a specific user experience. The standards for protecting editorial integrity of print publications apply to advertising in online publications and other Less

An advertorial is an ad that imitates editorial content or presents content in an editorial-like format, such as using text, tables, or figures in a manner similar to the journal’s editorial content. During the early 1990s, following a decline in the biomedical advertising market, advertorials became more common. The ASME developed guidelines for special advertising sections, which may help a publication maintain its integrity if it publishes advertorials (see Table ). Companies may submit advertisements that provide information on a topic pertaining to a product the company markets (or plans to market) but that do not name any commercial product. Less

The editorial and publishing staff of JAMA and the Archives Journals have developed general eligibility requirements and guidelines for advertising copy to ensure that advertisements published in these journals are appropriate (see Tables and ). The ASME also has developed a guide for print-based advertisements.   The following criteria for print pharmaceutical ads are adapted from the guidelines prepared by the World Health Organization and the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations: 1. Advertising text should be presented legibly. 2. Pharmaceutical ads in print journals must include the following (in online ads, this information may be included on a website Less

Other forms of sponsorship include sales of bulk subscriptions to commercial entities for distribution to individuals, noncommercial sponsorship or grants to support specific editorial sections, and grants to support publication of journals in resource-poor communities. With each type of sponsorship, the funding source should be clearly indicated to recipients and readers/users, and all editorial content should be under the complete authority of the editor, should undergo the journal’s usual editorial evaluation and peer review, and should not be influenced by the sponsor(s). | Less

Publishers of journals may sell reprints and e-prints of journal articles as a source of revenue. Reprints and e-prints may be purchased by authors for personal use, by others for educational purposes, or by commercial entities for promotional purposes. In biomedical journal publishing, a reprint is the republication of an article or collection of articles in which the content is unchanged from the original publication (except perhaps for the inclusion of postpublication corrections). An e-print is a digital reproduction of or an online link to an article or collection of articles, usually PDF files(s). For example, publishers of JAMA and Less

Sponsored supplements are collections of articles, usually on a single topic, and are published as an extra edition or a separate section of a journal, often after a meeting or symposium. A study of 58 highly cited and read medical journals found that the number of supplements published by these journals had increased 4-fold from 1966 to 1989. Forty-two percent (262 of 625) of these supplements were single-sponsored (ie, sponsored by 1 pharmaceutical company) and, compared with supplements funded by other types of sponsors, were less likely to have been formally peer reviewed and more likely to have promotional attributes, Less