Free medical journals with drug advertising were significantly more likely to recommend specific drugs that were advertised on their pages than were journals that relied upon subscription fees to cover their operating costs.

“Free journals almost exclusively endorse the use of the selected drugs, whereas journals that rely exclusively on subscription fees for their revenue are more likely to recommend against the use of the same drugs,” said lead author Annette Becker, MD, from the University of Marburg, Germany. The study was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ 2011. Doi:10.1503/cmaj.100951).

The cross-sectional study examined all issues of 11 journals for general practitioners in Germany that were published in 2007. …