Chicago, IL - Editors of major medical journals are cheering the decision of the federal district court in Chicago to deny a Pfizer subpoena that would have "threatened the integrity of [the journals'] peer-review process," as Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) editor Dr Catherine D DeAngelis writes an early online editorial published today [1].

In a decision earlier this month, Magistrate Judge Arlander Keys ruled that the journals were not compelled to provide Pfizer with documents regarding how manuscripts are accepted/rejected, or hand over copies of rejected manuscripts, identities of peer reviewers and the manuscripts they reviewed, and comments by and among peer reviewers and editors. Pfizer had requested the documents as part of a broad request for information it hoped to use in its defense against more than 3000 lawsuits pertaining to how celecoxib and valdecoxib were advertised and marketed in the US.

"We firmly believe that ensured confidentiality of reviews allows reviewers to provide professional critiques of manuscripts without fearing potential repercussions from authors," DeAngelis and JAMA counsel Joseph P Thornton write in the editorial. "The subpoenas attempted to invade the peer-review process, and we are delighted that Magistrate Judge Keys said so when he ruled they could not be enforced against us."

The editorial explains that JAMA and the Archives journals have always deliberately kept the names of peer reviewers confidential and have a policy of not disclosing the topics of papers ultimately not accepted for publication. "This promise to reviewers and authors allows the peer-review process to work in an unrestrained environment. Producing any of these documents, with or without names, would seriously compromise the process and the trusting relationship among the editors, authors, and reviewers."

In the March 14 ruling, Judge Keys agreed with the journal editors that this information could be kept confidential from Pfizer and the public and that any information Pfizer's lawyers might need could be obtained from published articles.

In recent weeks, other journals also subpoenaed by Pfizer—including the New England Journal of Medicine, BMJ, and Science—have published editorials warning that compelling journals to provide this kind of information could have a chilling effect on the peer-review process. "If efforts of this kind were to succeed, the sad day might come when Science would have to add a firm caveat emptor to its instructions for peer reviewers," Science editor and former FDA commissioner Donald Kennedy wrote [2].

In response, Pfizer issued a statement calling subpoenas "a routine part of fact-gathering in any litigation" and pointing out that, in this case, both the plaintiff and the defendants had subpoenaed researchers and/or medical journals.