Cargando…
Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them?
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 obt...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4011692/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24800999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094709 |
_version_ | 1782314824735129600 |
---|---|
author | Wieland, L. Susan Rutkow, Lainie Vedula, S. Swaroop Kaufmann, Christopher N. Rosman, Lori M. Twose, Claire Mahendraratnam, Nirosha Dickersin, Kay |
author_facet | Wieland, L. Susan Rutkow, Lainie Vedula, S. Swaroop Kaufmann, Christopher N. Rosman, Lori M. Twose, Claire Mahendraratnam, Nirosha Dickersin, Kay |
author_sort | Wieland, L. Susan |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4011692 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-40116922014-05-09 Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? Wieland, L. Susan Rutkow, Lainie Vedula, S. Swaroop Kaufmann, Christopher N. Rosman, Lori M. Twose, Claire Mahendraratnam, Nirosha Dickersin, Kay PLoS One Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2014-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4011692/ /pubmed/24800999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094709 Text en © 2014 Wieland et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Wieland, L. Susan Rutkow, Lainie Vedula, S. Swaroop Kaufmann, Christopher N. Rosman, Lori M. Twose, Claire Mahendraratnam, Nirosha Dickersin, Kay Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title | Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title_full | Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title_fullStr | Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title_full_unstemmed | Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title_short | Who Has Used Internal Company Documents for Biomedical and Public Health Research and Where Did They Find Them? |
title_sort | who has used internal company documents for biomedical and public health research and where did they find them? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4011692/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24800999 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094709 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT wielandlsusan whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT rutkowlainie whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT vedulasswaroop whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT kaufmannchristophern whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT rosmanlorim whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT twoseclaire whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT mahendraratnamnirosha whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem AT dickersinkay whohasusedinternalcompanydocumentsforbiomedicalandpublichealthresearchandwheredidtheyfindthem |