To remain certified, most of the nation’s 700,000 doctors are required periodically to take continuing medical education courses. But for years, critics have said that too many of those courses are little more than drug company marketing in the guise of education.

Sponsorship by the pharmaceutical industry pays an estimated half of the cost of such programs in the United States, which exceeds $1 billion a year. And critics have argued that the national nonprofit group that accredits the course providers has not done enough to fight drug industry influence in the classroom. On Tuesday, the head of the accrediting group said he was poised to begin taking stronger action.

Dr. Murray Kopelow, chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education, said he would make public “within weeks” a previously confidential listing of classes and companies that violated rules against commercial bias.

And at the urging of a prominent critic who successfully filed a complaint alleging bias in a specific course, Dr. Kopelow said his group was reviewing a proposal that would require educators to notify doctors and furnish corrective materials whenever it is later found that the class material was biased in favor of a drug firm.