Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies that have joined forces in the Open Pharma Collaboration today announced the urgent need for easily understandable summaries in peer-reviewed medical journals.
The recommendations from Open Pharma, published in the journal Current Medical Research & Opinion, aim to make the medical publication model "more open" and "more accessible and inclusive."
This, the authors state, would facilitate engagement with medical research for all audiences – from patients, patient advocates, and caregivers to healthcare professionals and policymakers.
"Scientific communities are now focused on taking the next step towards openness: accessibility. The broad spectrum of stakeholders involved in medical research places the pharmaceutical industry in a unique position to make the medical publishing model more open," the authors explain.
Few medical research articles currently include plain language summaries. The pharmaceutical industry has an opportunity to improve understanding of medical research for everyone by regularly producing plain language summaries of its articles.
These summaries foster discussion about medical research and support informed and shared decision-making.
Launched in 2016, the Open Pharma initiative brings together a group of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and other research funders with healthcare professionals, regulators, patients, publishers, and other stakeholders in healthcare.
Its goal is to move medical research out from behind paywalls and make it fully freely accessible, thereby increasing transparency, advancing medical science, and ultimately improving patient care.
Today’s call for plain language summaries is the next step towards openness," and although the creation of plain language summaries is still in its infancy," the recommendations set a "minimum standard" that future medical publications with simple summaries will need to adhere to.
The minimum standard recommends that all summaries should be in the style of an abstract, understandable and readable (in text form only, not in video or infographic form), free of jargon, unbiased, non-promotional, and easily accessible.
Open Pharma lists further minimum standards for summaries that should be included:
- an explicit reference to the source publication and the identifiers of the relevant clinical studies with a brief reference to the evidence available
- align with the same general conclusions as in the scientific publication summary
- developed alongside the main content of the manuscript according to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors criteria for authorship
- ideally reviewed by a non-expert during development
- reviewed in full by experts alongside the main content
- made available alongside the summary of the scientific publication for free to read
- provided with appropriate metadata and keywords to improve discoverability in search
- search engines, directories, and indexes.
"Standardised minimum approaches are needed for the development and exchange of plain language, index-friendly summaries to ensure these communication channels align with pharmaceutical industry standards for multiple stakeholders," said the authors.
"This would also help to ensure that plain language summaries are viewed as valid and effective forms of disseminating research findings.
The creation of a minimum standard does not prevent graphically or digitally enhanced summaries, but rather serves as a universal foundation upon which to build further; Open Pharma strongly encourages the additional development of enhanced summaries. Such a standard would define the minimum requirements for maximising the transparency, accountability, accessibility, discoverability, and inclusivity of medical journal publications.
"And once these (minimum standards) are met, we encourage researchers to also consider the creation and dissemination of infographics and video summaries to help people understand their research even better.
