Editorial safeguards
How PsychiatryRx verifies reviewer credentials, handles industry disclosures, enforces recusal from conflicted content, and manages changes when a reviewer's disclosures shift. This is a permanent editorial policy, not a marketing document.
Credential verification
Every reviewer's credentials are verifiable before their name appears on the site. Verification includes:
- State medical or pharmacy license lookup. Board name and jurisdiction confirmed against the state licensing board's public directory.
- Board certification. Confirmed via the ABPN diplomate directory for psychiatrists, the ABMS directory for other physician specialties, or the BPS/BCPP directory for board-certified psychiatric pharmacists.
- NPI registry. For US clinicians, the NPI is verified against the CMS NPPES public registry.
- Institutional affiliation. The bio the reviewer supplies must match the institutional page or directory listing the reviewer names.
- Disciplinary check. State medical or pharmacy board disciplinary records are searched. Reviewers with active sanctions or significant unresolved complaints are not onboarded.
Verification is repeated at the next scheduled review of any page the reviewer approves, and any time the reviewer discloses a material change in their status.
Industry disclosures
Every reviewer submits a written disclosure statement before onboarding. The disclosure covers, at minimum:
- Current and prior industry consulting, speaker bureau, or advisory board roles (last 5 years)
- Research funding (grants, industry-sponsored trials, contracts)
- Equity or ownership interest in pharmaceutical, biotechnology, medical device, or digital health companies
- Book royalties, licensing agreements, and other intellectual property with commercial applications
- Speaking or writing honoraria from industry-supported CME
- Family-member relationships that create a conflict analogous to the above
- Ownership or key role in a clinical practice, if the practice would be a plausible referral destination
The reviewer's disclosure statement appears verbatim on their public profile page. It is not summarized, softened, or edited to remove content that could reasonably be seen as a conflict.
Every page a reviewer approves carries a link to that reviewer's profile, where the disclosures are visible. If a page's topic is directly connected to a specific disclosed relationship, the reviewer's disclosure line also appears in the page's byline.
Recusal from conflicted content
Reviewers cannot approve pages about medications where they have a current financial relationship with the manufacturer. This is a hard recusal, not a case-by-case decision.
Specifically, a reviewer is recused from approving any page whose primary subject is:
- A specific medication manufactured by a company they currently consult for, advise, receive speaking fees from, receive research funding from, or hold equity in
- A specific medication where they are named on an active patent, licensing agreement, or royalty arrangement
- A specific medication that was the subject of a clinical trial they were a paid investigator on in the last 3 years
- A drug class where the reviewer's current commercial relationship is with a market-leading product in the class
The recusal is verified at onboarding and re-verified any time the reviewer discloses a material change. If a reviewer's approved-pages list contains a page they should have been recused from, the page is immediately unassigned from that reviewer, a new reviewer is engaged, and an editorial note is added to the page describing the change.
What happens when disclosures change
Reviewers agree to notify us within 30 days of any material change to their disclosures. Material changes include:
- New industry consulting, speaker, or advisory role
- New industry research funding relationship
- New equity or IP position
- New employer, practice, or academic role that changes the disclosure picture
- Any disciplinary action or license status change
When we receive a change:
- The reviewer's profile page disclosures update within 5 business days.
- Every page the reviewer has approved is re-examined against the recusal rule.
- Any page now caught by the recusal rule is unassigned from the reviewer, and the reviewer's byline is removed. An editorial note explains the change and the date.
- The next scheduled review of every remaining approved page is brought forward if the change materially affects the topic.
Correction mechanism
Errors, outdated content, and new evidence releases are handled per the corrections policy. Anyone, reviewer or not, can flag a specific claim on a specific page with the current source that supports the correction. We respond within 5 business days and act within two review cycles.
When a correction lands, the page's last-reviewed date bumps, an editorial note appears if the change is substantive, and the reviewer of record is notified so they can re-approve the corrected version. If the reviewer of record no longer participates in the network, a current reviewer is engaged to approve the correction.
What reviewers may not do
- Approve a page without reading the current version in full
- Approve a page they are recused from under the hard-recusal rule above
- Add or edit content directly on the site (reviewers approve; they don't write in place)
- Describe themselves as an "editor" or "employee" of PsychiatryRx (see the badge rules)
- Use their reviewer status to endorse a specific product, practice, or vendor outside the site
- Accept payment from industry for reviewing a specific page and then submit that review without disclosing the arrangement
Reviewers who violate these rules have their contributions removed and their profile retired with an editorial note. This is administrative, not personal.
What PsychiatryRx does not do
- Take pharmaceutical company sponsorship for content
- Accept undisclosed payment from any commercial party for reviewer placements
- Publish content that would be usable as clinical protocol without a licensed prescriber's judgment
- Publish comparison tables that make patient-specific recommendations
- Recommend that a specific reader take, stop, or change a specific medication
- Substitute for the medical judgment of the reader's own prescribing clinician