Researchers have long noted that journals’ conflict-of-interest reporting requirements can be bewilderingly various, and commensurately confusing and time-consuming to comply with.

Thye need worry no more when they submit their manuscripts — at least if they are submitting to the gang of 12 journals belonging to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. In simultaneous editorials like this one in the New England Journal of Medicine, those journals are announcing their adoption of a new, uniform format for financial interest reporting by manuscript authors. You can take a look at the form they are requiring authors to complete here; and a sample of a form completed by Kermit the Frog (no kidding) is available here. It should be noted that Kermit, while required to describe qualitatively his financial ties, was not obliged to spell out the dollar amounts he collected.

The editors say that, for the next six months, the form will be in a beta-testing stage; they will meet again to tweak it according to comments they get from users between now and 10 April 2010.

Meantime, a new group of specialists have captured the limelight for the anemic rate at which they reported their conflicts at their 2008 annual meeting. This study, published last week in NEJM, reported that just 71.2% of speakers who received payments from five makers of total hip and knee prostheses in 2007 told their audience at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons meeting that they had received those payments.