When is peer review not peer view? (hint: when Merck pays Elsevier)

This one’s straight out of the twilight zone: for (at least) the past 5 years, Merck (and possibly other drug companies) has been paying academic publishing giant Elsevier to publish fake journals promoting Merck products. From The Scientist (free registration required):

Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only reprinted or summarized articles–most of which presented data favorable to Merck products–that appeared to act solely as marketing tools with no disclosure of company sponsorship.

The journals in question–at least 14 of which go by the “Australasian journal of…” moniker–look and read like peer-reviewed journals, but aren’t. They’re apparently just bound collections of ads for drugs like Merck’s Fosamax.

The Scientist article is really worth a read. It’s like something out of The Onion, except the funny drains out of it when you realize that literally thousands of physicians have received copies of “The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine” or its other Australasian cousins over the past few years.

Elsevier, of course, has responsible and contrite things to say about the episode:

A spokesperson for Elsevier, however, told The Scientist, “I wish there was greater disclosure that it was a sponsored journal.” Disclosure of Merck’s funding of the journal was not mentioned anywhere in the copies of issues obtained by The Scientist.

The Elsevier spokesperson said the company wasn’t aware of how many copies of the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine were produced or how the publication was distributed in Australia, but noted that “the common practice for sponsored journals is that doctors receive them complimentary.” The spokesperson added that Elsevier had no plans to look further into the matter.

The bitter irony is that Elsevier, along with the other major academic publishers, have spent the last few years ceaselessly lobbying against the open access movement, on the grounds that open access journals can’t be trusted to maintain the high quality of peer review that the  commercial publishers provide. Any guesses as to whether Elsevier will rethink that stance following this fiasco?

Much more on this story over at Peter Suber’s open access blog…