Letters to the Editor

Editor's noteI share the concerns of Drs. Capehart and Holsinger about the potential influence of advertising revenues on editorial decisions. The Journal has two constraints in place to deal with the possibility.

First, the advertising and editorial functions of the Journal are totally independent. Although I as editor have a general notion of the magnitude of our advertising revenues, I am totally ignorant as to how much comes from which company. From time to time, I examine ads for tastefulness and appropriateness, but it has never occurred to me to figure out which companies buy more advertising space. Therefore, I lack the information base to experience the subconscious influences about which Drs. Capehart and Holsinger are concerned.

More important, the peer review system provides built-in checks that constrain influences from advertisers. The reviewers have no financial interest in the Journal. Their guiding purposes are to ensure that the best science is published and to provide critiques that improve manuscript quality. The Tollefson et al. paper may not be perfect (few papers are), but it was well worked over by reviewers, and the authors were conscientious in their responses to criticisms provided.

The Journal does have space constraints, and we did ask Tollefson et al. to cut down their paper. In so doing, we applied the same constraints that we apply to all other authors. I appreciate the fact that Drs. Capehart and Holsinger have given me an opportunity to clarify this issue.