There may be no conflict of interest here — but it is awfully hard to tell. And this is not an isolated case of a Times reader calling for more disclosure. Many are demanding it. And they’re right. Readers continually cite examples, on both the news and opinion pages, in which The Times gives voice to information and opinion without disclosing the financial or political ties behind them. Here are two I have heard about:

 An Op-Ed article by Brenda Shaffer calling on President Obama to invite the president of Azerbaijan to Washington to discuss “Russia’s next land grab,” which she believes will be in the South Caucasus, the oil-rich region bordering Russia and Turkey. It identified her as being affiliated with the University of Haifa and as a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, but did not disclose that she has been a consultant to the state oil company of Azerbaijan. (An editor’s note to that effect, containing an implicit rebuke of the writer, was appended a week later.)

 An ISIS-related story and a number of informational graphics that use as a source of information the Institute for the Study of War. It is led, in part, by a former Army general, Jack Keane; he has been a paid adviser to America’s military industry, according to an article in The Nation by Lee Fang. “To portray Keane as simply a think-tank leader and former military official, as the media have done, obscures a fairly lucrative career in the contracting world,” he wrote.

How much disclosure does The Times owe its readers? How much is practical to provide in terms of space limitations and editors’ time and energy? I corresponded with Sewell Chan, a deputy opinion editor, and talked to Philip B. Corbett, The Times’s associate managing editor for standards, about these concerns.

Mr. Chan told me that Op-Ed contributors sign a document that states that they are abiding by The Times’s guidelines on integrity, including conflicts of interest. He also said (after consulting with the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal) that editors would be taking more care to vet these contributors.

Hans Gutbrod, the executive director of Transparify, has some suggestions about how.

First, he told me, news organizations must do more than just ask for a routine sign-off. They should insist on an affirmative statement that there is no conflict of interest, financial or otherwise. Omitting information may seem harmless, but making an affirmative false statement may give contributors more pause.