To meet ethical and scientific obligations, authors should submit timely, high-quality manuscripts. Authors, however, can encounter ethical (e.g., authorship designation) and practical (e.g., time and resource limitations) challenges during manuscript preparation. Could professional medical writers-not ghostwriters-help authors address these challenges? This essay summarizes evidence countering three myths that may have hindered authors from considering the use of professional medical writers. Authors with sufficient time, writing expertise, and reporting guideline knowledge may meet their obligations without writing assistance. Unfortunately, not all authors are in this position. Decisions about writing support should be based on evidence, not myths.

Professional writers can help to improve clarity of medical writing The editorial by Roger Collier calls for the clear presentation of study findings, to ensure that results that have been carefully gathered are appropriately communicated. 1 The Global Alliance for Publication Professionals agrees with these sentiments, and states, "Most of the responsibility for improving writing in academic medicine, however, falls upon the physicians and scientists who produce it."However, it has been shown that the major barrier to publishing research is lack of time, 2,3 which may well lead to poorly written manuscripts, as well as nondisclosure of results. The issue of waste in biomedical research has been tackled before, 4 and the Global Alliance for Publication Professionals has previously highlighted the role that professional medical writers could play in resolving the burden of time constraints and lack of training faced by researchers (see PubMed Commons comments 4). We would like to emphasize the role of professional medical writers in helping authors deliver high-quality, accurate and timely manuscripts in an ethical and transparent manner. Such medical writers are highly qualified individuals, combining scientific rigour, in-depth knowledge of publication guidelines and aptitude for effective communication. 5-7 Professional writing services have a recognized impact on publication success, 8-13 and although such professional assistance does have budgetary implications, as previously suggested, provision could be included in research 4 or departmental budgets. 3,14 Indeed, there may be cost savings associated with the lower time requirement for authors preparing a high-quality, readable, concise and accurate manuscript that adheres to a journal's instructions to authors and applicable best practices.

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Objective: We evaluated compliance of recent narrative systematic reviews with the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidance. Research design and methods: We searched EMBASE and MEDLINE databases on 21-September-2017, for English-language records with a print publication date of 01-June-2017, for "systematic review" (in the title field) and terms relating to drug therapy (in the subject field). Case studies, conference reports, letters, surveys, errata, editorials, and meta-analyses were excluded. A manual screen excluded protocols and reports providing statistical analysis. Articles were scored for fulfilment of PRISMA checklist items for the objectives, methods (information sources, search, study selection), and results (study selection, study characteristics), and whether they reference PRISMA. Results: Of the 99 abstracts identified, 46 (46.5%) were selected for analysis. Reasons for exclusion were: not drug related (n ¼ 35), statistical analysis conducted (n ¼ 10), protocol (n ¼ 7), and not in English (n ¼ 1). Twenty-seven (58.7%) publications did not fully adhere to our set of PRISMA items. More than 82% of publications appropriately reported on objectives, information sources, and study selection (methods) items, whereas 76.1% and 50.0% reported study selection (results) and search items, respectively. Publications citing PRISMA (n ¼ 28; 60.8%) tended to report on more items with the exception of search criteria. Conclusions: Just over half of these recent publications described as systematic reviews did not follow PRISMA criteria, despite referencing them. These findings suggest a need for improvement in performing systematic reviews and/or reporting how they were conducted. Such improvements may lead to greater confidence in the findings of systematic reviews.