TY - JOUR
T1 - Who has used internal company documents for biomedical and public health research and where did they find them?
AU - Wieland, L. Susan
AU - Rutkow, Lainie
AU - Vedula, S. Swaroop
AU - Kaufmann, Christopher N.
AU - Rosman, Lori M.
AU - Twose, Claire
AU - Mahendraratnam, Nirosha
AU - Dickersin, Kay
N1 - Funding Information:
The third thing we learned is that funding for research using internal company documents is uneven. Where there has been funding available, notably for the tobacco-related research, many important research projects have been conducted. Three-quarters of the tobacco research was funded by the U.S. government, primarily the NCI. Indeed, the NCI established a program of research and actively solicited researchers to develop projects using internal tobacco documents (e.g., http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/pa-files/PAR-01-063.html ). From 2000 to 2007, the NCI provided a total of approximately $23 million to fund tobacco industry document research studies [personal written communication, Tobacco Control Research Branch Behavioral Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, NCI, July 12 2013].
PY - 2014/5/6
Y1 - 2014/5/6
N2 - Objective: To describe the sources of internal company documents used in public health and healthcare research. Methods: We searched PubMed and Embase for articles using internal company documents to address a research question about a health-related topic. Our primary interest was where authors obtained internal company documents for their research. We also extracted information on type of company, type of research question, type of internal documents, and funding source. Results: Our searches identified 9,305 citations of which 357 were eligible. Scanning of reference lists and consultation with colleagues identified 4 additional articles, resulting in 361 included articles. Most articles examined internal tobacco company documents (325/361; 90%). Articles using documents from pharmaceutical companies (20/361; 6%) were the next most common. Tobacco articles used documents from repositories; pharmaceutical documents were from a range of sources. Most included articles relied upon internal company documents obtained through litigation (350/361; 97%). The research questions posed were primarily about company strategies to promote or position the company and its products (326/361; 90%). Most articles (346/361; 96%) used information from miscellaneous documents such as memos or letters, or from unspecified types of documents. When explicit information about study funding was provided (290/361 articles), the most common source was the US-based National Cancer Institute. We developed an alternative and more sensitive search targeted at identifying additional research articles using internal pharmaceutical company documents, but the search retrieved an impractical number of citations for review. Conclusions: Internal company documents provide an excellent source of information on health topics (e.g., corporate behavior, study data) exemplified by articles based on tobacco industry documents. Pharmaceutical and other industry documents appear to have been less used for research, indicating a need for funding for this type of research and well-indexed and curated repositories to provide researchers with ready access to the documents.
AB - Objective: To describe the sources of internal company documents used in public health and healthcare research. Methods: We searched PubMed and Embase for articles using internal company documents to address a research question about a health-related topic. Our primary interest was where authors obtained internal company documents for their research. We also extracted information on type of company, type of research question, type of internal documents, and funding source. Results: Our searches identified 9,305 citations of which 357 were eligible. Scanning of reference lists and consultation with colleagues identified 4 additional articles, resulting in 361 included articles. Most articles examined internal tobacco company documents (325/361; 90%). Articles using documents from pharmaceutical companies (20/361; 6%) were the next most common. Tobacco articles used documents from repositories; pharmaceutical documents were from a range of sources. Most included articles relied upon internal company documents obtained through litigation (350/361; 97%). The research questions posed were primarily about company strategies to promote or position the company and its products (326/361; 90%). Most articles (346/361; 96%) used information from miscellaneous documents such as memos or letters, or from unspecified types of documents. When explicit information about study funding was provided (290/361 articles), the most common source was the US-based National Cancer Institute. We developed an alternative and more sensitive search targeted at identifying additional research articles using internal pharmaceutical company documents, but the search retrieved an impractical number of citations for review. Conclusions: Internal company documents provide an excellent source of information on health topics (e.g., corporate behavior, study data) exemplified by articles based on tobacco industry documents. Pharmaceutical and other industry documents appear to have been less used for research, indicating a need for funding for this type of research and well-indexed and curated repositories to provide researchers with ready access to the documents.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0094709
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0094709
M3 - Article
C2 - 24800999
AN - SCOPUS:84900444377
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 9
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 5
M1 - e94709
ER -