Professional medical writing support increases the impact of articles reporting randomized controlled trials

Gattrell, William; Farrow, Paul; Costigan, Elizabeth; Sheard, Catherine; White, Richard; Winchester, Christopher

doi:10.21305/ismpp2016.002

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

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“…Our searches identified 75 potentially relevant publications after exclusion of 22 duplicate 98 publications; 70 were excluded during screening and full paper review, and three were identified in 99 bibliographies of identified studies (Figure 1). Of the eight included studies, three were full 100 publications (two in peer-reviewed journals [13,14], one in a non-peer reviewed journal [15]), and 101 five were congress abstracts (four poster presentations [16][17][18][19], one oral presentation [20]). Although 102 no date limit was included in the search strategy, only two of the identified studies were published 103 before 2015: one in 2006 [7] and the other in 2010 [15] ( Table 1).…”

Section: Search Results 97mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other outcomes of interest assessed in this review were assigned 220 independently of the investigators involved in each of the articles analysed in each included study 221 (e.g. standard of written Englishassessed during peer review of analysed articles [17]). As such, in 222 this systematic review, we have been successful in analysing a range of outcomes assessed in 223 observational ('real-world') studies in a standardized manner that minimizes publication bias.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Two studies which represented different analyses of the same group of articles looked at other 127 markers of quality in reporting (Table 2) [14,17]. In these studies, PMWS was positively associated 128 with various measures of reporting quality, including a higher standard of written English (p < 0.01) 129 [14,21], higher likelihood of publication in a journal with an impact factor (p = 0.001) [17], and 130 higher mean impact factor of the journal accepting the article (p < 0.001) [17]. However, there was no 131 association between PMWS and article-level measures of impact, such as mean number of citations 132 per year (p = 0.11), mean number of article views per year (p = 0.84) and Altmetric score (p = 0.55) 133 (Table 2) [17].…”

Section: Quality Of Reporting 106mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Professional medical writing support and the quality, ethics and timeliness of clinical trial reporting: a systematic review

Evuarherhe¹,

Gattrell

White

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Background: Many authors choose to work with professional medical writers when reporting the results of clinical trials. We conducted a systematic review to examine the relationship between professional medical writing support (PMWS) and the quality, ethics and timeliness of publications reporting clinical trials. Methods: Using terms related to medical writer and observational study, we searched MEDLINE and Embase (no date limits), as well as abstracts and posters from meetings of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP; 2014-2017). We also hand-searched the journals Medical Writing and The Write Stuff (2014-2017), and the bibliographies of studies identified in the electronic searches. We screened the results to identify studies that compared the quality, ethics and timeliness of clinical trial publications written with and without declared PMWS. Results: Our searches identified 97 potentially relevant studies, of which 89 were excluded during screening and full paper review. The remaining eight studies compared 849 publications with PMWS with 2073 articles developed without such support. In these eight studies, PMWS was shown to be associated with: increased adherence to Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines (in 3/3 studies in which this was assessed); publication in journals with an impact factor (one study); a higher quality of written English (one study); and a lower likelihood of reporting non-pre-specified outcomes (one study). PMWS was not associated with increased adherence to CONSORT for Abstracts guidelines (one study) or with the impact of published articles (mean number of citations per year, mean number of article views per year and Altmetric score; one study). In studies that assessed timeliness of publication, PMWS was associated with a reduced time from last patient visit in clinical trials to primary publication (one study), whereas time from submission to acceptance showed inconsistent results (two studies). Conclusions: This systematic review of eight observational studies suggests that PMWS increases the overall quality of reporting of clinical trials and may improve the timeliness of publication.

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