How Pharma can benefit from a digital approach for Publication Planning

There is an increasing need to quickly publish emerging clinical evidence supporting novel treatments and medications and extend the reach of key medical claims to new target audiences.

pharma digital publication planning

It’s estimated $58.8 billion USD is invested every year in R&D by pharma companies in the United States, yet only a fraction of the data from clinical trials and real-world studies are translated into articles published in medium- or high-tier journals.[1]

While the reasons vary, it’s getting harder to publish in prestigious journals because of: the rise of “chaperoned” publication writing; a lack of dedicated on-demand; in-house publication professionals, and; cumbersome, lengthy publication development timelines.KOLs, HCPs and PIs leading publication writing efforts for sponsor pharmaceutical companies often have conflicting demands on their time and have a hard time staying on top of the literature and advances in new treatment guidelines. To improve the efficiency of publication writing, the pharmaceutical industry partners with CROs, publication houses and medical communications agencies to:

• Generate tactical publication plans
• Conduct literature gap analyses
• Provide authorship support

With more stakeholders and support involved, this process can often lead to time-consuming, labour-intensive email correspondence that routinely fails to engage authors. Bottlenecks are created that elongate the publication development timeline, leading to author frustration and unmet expectations for the sponsor pharmaceutical company.

READ ALSO: Why You Need a Medical Communications Company for Publication Planning.

Gaps in traditional publication planning services demand a new, next-generation approach

To expedite publication planning and manuscript writing timelines, and reduce the number of bottlenecks, Six Degrees Medical partnered with Impetus Digital to develop a strategic publication planning approach that leverages a best-in-class virtual collaboration platform.

This next-generation online approach to publication planning and author collaboration allows for:

• A streamlined process to gather key inputs from the publication planning group early to minimize the impact on timelines later in the manuscript writing process
• The creation of a project roadmap that ensures buy-in so all authors are aware of timelines, roles and responsibilities
• An ‘eyes-wide-open’ approach to targeting high-tier journals, including drafting a pre-submission query to high-tier journals and strategic fallback plans in the case of initial journal rejection
• Increased author engagement and participation rates, ensuring that the long-lasting relationships between the sponsor and KOL authors remains satisfactory
• The rapid gathering of information related to ethical publication practices according to GPP3 and COPE, compliance with ICMJE criteria for authorship, and the journal-specific criteria for authorship, ethics and content necessary to improve the chances of publication

This new, virtual approach to publication planning not only meets stringent good clinical practice (GCP) standards and good publication practices (GPP) – it’s centered on generating strategic plans built on engagement and the acceleration of the publication process flow to improve the cost-effectiveness of publication.

At Six Degrees Medical, we play an industry-leading role in developing manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals by providing:

• Sponsor pharmaceutical companies with customized next-generation publication planning approaches that consistently drive author engagement
• Quality medical writing services

• Strategic insights that exceed our clients’ needs at every step in the publication planning and writing process company

About Impetus Digital