The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors today is publishing a joint editorial establishing uniform conflict-of-interest disclosure rules for members of that organization, which includes most of the leading medical journals in the U.S. The new policy, released a few moments ago by the New England Journal of Medicine, is notable for including a three-year look back period for reportable financial ties to industry, which for NEJM would mean increasing its current standard from two years.

The new policy represents a major victory for a coalition I helped to bring together during 2007 and 2008 while at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Our efforts to create a uniform policy, which will be published shortly by the journal Addiction, never attracted support from the major journals. But they knew about our work, and have now done the right thing.

I will have more to say later after having read the full policy and the model disclosure form. But for the time being, I give a tip of my hat to my colleagues who co-authored our uniform disclosure policy: Thomas Babor of Addiction, Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, Jonathan Moreno of the Center for American Progress, Barnett Kramer of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Wendy Husser of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.