{"doi":"10.1093/ntr/ntae109","title":"Commercial Tobacco and Nicotine Industry-Funded Research Has No Place in SRNT and <i>Nicotine &amp; Tobacco Research</i>","abstract":"In this invited editorial, we, the authors, members of the Health Equity Network (HEN) call for necessary changes to policies and procedures of both the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) and its academic journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research (N&TR) to: [1] update definitions of the “tobacco and nicotine industry” to include all entities affiliated with the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of recreational commercial nicotine and tobacco products; [2] prohibit individuals receiving any financial support from the commercial tobacco and nicotine industry, including industry consultants, from participating in any SRNT activities, including membership and annual conference submissions and attendance; [3] exclude individuals receiving support from the tobacco and nicotine industry, including consultants, from the entire publication process at N&TR, including submitting, handling, and reviewing manuscripts; [4] implement procedures to ensure SRNT leadership and its members, as well as the entire N&TR editorial team, authors and reviewers, disclose financial and non-financial conflicts of interest and comply with these policies. The events prompting our editorial highlight the need for reform. In December 2023, SRNT President Chris Bullen e-mailed SRNT members, stating that it had been a mistake when N&TR published one paper coauthored by JUUL employees and a JUUL-funded consultant1 and another authored solely by a JUUL-funded consultant.2 Since 2021, N&TR’s policy has stated, “[W]e will no longer allow tobacco industry (TI) employees to submit work to the journal in any format…We consider e-cigarette companies that are wholly or partially owned by the TI to be part of the TI.”3 N&TR’s existing policies are intended to be congruent with SRNT, and SRNT’s membership criteria further state that “SRNT considers JUUL to be part of the commercial tobacco industry” because of Altria’s ongoing financial stake in JUUL. In our view, the publication of the JUUL employee coauthored paper1 should have clearly been against N&TR’s submission policies. However, N&TR leaders believed the paper was allowed because of Altria’s divestment from JUUL in return for intellectual property rights in March 2023,4 further underscoring the need for an unambiguous policy not dependent on editors and reviewers keeping track of shifting financial relationships across corporations. To our knowledge, N&TR did not identify any problem with the papers until contacted by HEN members, and even then, N&TR did not retract the paper as they did not identify any COPE retraction guidelines that covered this situation. Additionally, N&TR does not have a policy regarding industry-affiliated research or researchers, who are not tobacco industry employees, and SRNT holds the policy that “Individuals who consult for the tobacco industry are, at this time, eligible for membership.”5 Industry-funded consultants continue to be visible participants at SRNT meetings, and N&TR’s reviewer list for 2023 includes individuals who are industry employees or consultants.6 The second article,2 falls into this “consultant” loophole, even though the article’s disclaimer indicates that JUUL Labs, Inc. funded the research and “reviewed and provided comments on a draft manuscript.” Additionally, SRNT’s policy only applies to JUUL because of the financial relationship between JUUL and Altria; the employees of other e-cigarette and commercial nicotine companies not owned by cigarette companies remain able to publish in N&TR. There are four critical reasons for acting now and excluding industry influence from our society and journal. SRNT has “committed to being an anti-racist organization.” As health equity researchers and N&TR authors, Guest Editors, and reviewers, we were particularly disheartened to see N&TR publishing industry work in light of recent SRNT Board policies when SRNT “committed to being an anti-racist organization.”7 These policies were informed by the SRNT Rac","journal":"Nicotine & Tobacco Research","year":2024,"id":484868,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":7,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9533,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":337120,"name":"Andy S.L. Tan","orcid":"0000-0001-6459-6171","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1327006,"name":"Priti Bandi","orcid":"0000-0003-1169-4231","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":671071,"name":"Raglan Maddox","orcid":"0000-0002-2770-0686","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":274564,"name":"Micah L. Berman","orcid":"0000-0002-0336-1317","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1029289,"name":"Lauren Czaplicki","orcid":"0000-0002-7496-0990","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":876578,"name":"Babalola Faseru","orcid":"0000-0003-3805-1850","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1327007,"name":"Kate Frazer","orcid":"0000-0002-6703-266X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":304692,"name":"Kelvin Choi","orcid":"0000-0002-6753-2883","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366590,"name":"Shyanika W. Rose","orcid":"0000-0002-4200-1197","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":25,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:07:42.971417Z","pmid":"38703079","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}