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EDITOR'S CHOICE: Fiona Godlee Easing the spring BMJ 2007; 334: 0 [Full text]

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Increasing advertising in the BMJ

Nicholas S. Kalson, Martyn E. Lovell   (2 April 2007)

Increasing advertising in the BMJ 2 April 2007
Nicholas S. Kalson, Yr 3 Medical Student, Manchester University, M13 9PL, Martyn E. Lovell Send response to journal: Re: Increasing advertising in the BMJ	Dear Sir/Madam, In January 2007 the style of the BMJ changed, with the stated aim of becoming more magazine-like. We have since suspected an increase in the number of advertisements in the journal. We determined the number of pages devoted to adverts in the first ten issues of the BMJ published in 2006 and 2007, and found that in 2006 16.1 pages were commercial, compared with 20.8 per issue in 2007. This did not correspond with an increase in the number of pages per issue, which actually fell from 60.6 to 53.4. There were 3.8 pages of journal text for every page of adverts in 2006 compared with only 2.6 pages for every one in 2007. The rise in journal advertising space is over only one year; if it continues then we will soon have more adverts than edited text! We appreciate that adverts are a necessity, and that news-stand magazines have more adverts than scientific journals, but how does the BMJ want to be considered? When research articles are disrupted by commercial advertisements this surely detracts not only from their readability but also their impact. Competing interests: None declared