Oxford PharmaGenesis joined this year’s International Society for Medical Publication Professionals Annual Meeting (ISMPP, 11–13 April, 2016; National Harbor, MD, USA), which attracted over 500 publication professionals from the pharmaceutical industries, medical communication agencies, and publishers from around the globe. The attendees were Gordon Muir-Jones, Brian Falcone, Shilpa Aggarwal, Philip Joseph, and Scott Forbes from the US office, and Richard White and Tim Koder from the UK office.
The meeting this year was titled ‘Medical Publications in a Data-Rich World: Enhancing Quality and Transparency’, and thus the major discussion focused around the pros and cons of increasing transparency in the world of publications, and how to ensure quality of data and reporting in all scientific communications.
Richard White and Tim Koder presented an entire session on Real-world Evidence to satisfy the audience’s appetite to learn more about how to invest in this key area of scientific development and best publication practices in this field. There is unanimous agreement that in this competitive market, a knowledge of real-world evidence and health economics is a must to help brands, companies and agencies succeed.
Also discussed in other gatherings at ISMPP were the recent developments in several areas such as guidelines, regulations and data sharing; upcoming trends and challenges in the field of medical publications; and learning from stakeholder perspectives including publications department heads, biostatisticians and patients.
The packed agenda, featuring a mixture of plenary sessions, roundtable discussions, posters and parallel sessions, offered something for everyone. The Oxford PharmaGenesis posters were very well received, and further exposed our expertise in the publications arena. The Exhibitors’ Hall was crowded during the breaks and the company booth received a lot of footfall.
A snapshot of some of the most interesting and debated topics that were raised during this 3-day meeting is provided below:
1. Enhancing quality and transparency
- In her keynote speech, Jenny Sykes (GlaxoSmithKline [GSK]) highlighted:
- The role of the AllTrials campaign (www.alltrials.net), launched in January 2013, which calls for the registration of all (past and present) clinical trials, and publication of their full methods and summary results. To date, GSK is the only pharmaceutical organization to have joined this campaign
- The Medical Publishing Insights and Practices (MPIP) Initiative, founded in 2008, which aims for “a culture of mutual respect, understanding, and trust between journals and pharma that will support more transparent and effective dissemination of results from industry-sponsored trials” (http://www.mpip-initiative.org/about-mpip)—this group has 9 pharma members, to date.
- The ISMPP committee, together with multiple journal partners, is developing a policy regarding data transparency, with feedback to the draft proposal due 18 April 2016.
- This subsequently raised the questions of who will fund the drive for increased transparency? Should only one platform be used for reporting these data? If so, who decides this and who governs it? As Dr. Grannum Sant (Photocure ASA; Tufts University School of Medicine) put it: “The devil is in the details; but data sharing is here to stay”.
2. The future of journal publications
- Richard Smith (former editor of British Medical Journal) addressed the growing concern for if/what the future of journal publications may be head-on and openly acknowledged that majority of journals are performing “legitimate functions badly, [while] other illegitimate ones are done well”. Some key issues raised were:
- Inability to detect scientific fraud
- The utility, or the lack thereof, of peer-review, which, in Smith’s opinion, can be “wasteful”, “expensive”, “anti-innovative”, and is “unrewarded”
- Publication of preclinical studies—and observational studies in particular—lags behind
- Publication of result databases may achieve increased transparency and reproducibility
- Open access—research funded by public money should be freely available.
3. Myth busters (Panel: Jackie Marchington, Caudex; Richard Smith, BMJ; Karen Woolly, Envision and Sunshine Coast Hospital & Health Service, University of the Sunshine Coast; Alice Choi, ISMPP and Complete Medical Communications [Moderator])
- The rapid-fire format of this panel session was extremely well received and addressed some of the popular myths still mentioned today:
- Professional medical writers are ghosts and introduce bias—despite rejection of this claim, more work is needed to dispel this ‘myth’ completely
- Researchers should not need medical writing support and damned if you do; damned if you don’t—taking action to dispel these misconceptions received full support from the panel. It was unanimously agreed that medical writing support does improve the quality of publications, but disclosing medical writer involvement is a double-edged sword
- Half of all clinical trials remain unpublished—this claim needs a full assessment.
4. Up and coming
- Enhanced content: While 59% of physicians still reportedly prefer print for information (Grahame Conibear; Adelphi Communications), there is no denying that mobile usage is widespread. Publishers and companies are, therefore, offering multimedia and interactive articles and augmented-reality posters. Catherine Skobe (Pfizer) and Grahame Conibear illustrated the power of the Blippar app and its relevance for augmented-reality posters.
- The CONVEY system: Heather Price (Association of American Medical Colleges) introduced the audience to this online system which will provide individuals—in particular, authors—with a web-based repository to increase transparency and ease of author disclosures for publication. The system is expected go live with its first subscriber within the next couple of months.
- Altmetrics: A common subject of many discussions, posters and even workshops was the questionable value of ‘impact factor’, and that there should there be a greater drive towards the use of alternative metrics. In recognition of this, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is working on an Altmetric Initiative to develop a standardization program for such data (http://www.niso.org/topics/tl/altmetrics_initiative/). Final recommendations to the draft standards are expected in June 2016 with a (tentative) final publication in 2017.
5. Other discussions
- Incorporating the patient voice: There is a call for more patient-centric publications, with increased utilization of social media. Karen Woolly suggested involving patients early on in the study development process, even for study design and outcomes selection, and proposed including a section on patient involvement in publications.
- Social media, publication planning, and GPP3: Amongst these staple topics, the pros and cons of using social media were of great interest. The common concerns of if and how the feedback should be monitored and the question of liability was discussed. Medical integrity is, of course, of the utmost concern, and there was consensus that best practices and standards need to be identified regarding the use of social media.
- Predatory journals: The growth of these fake or “pseudo” journals is increasingly becoming of concern, especially in India and other Asian countries, where these predatory journals compete on the grounds of low price, quick publication timelines, and lack of scientific rigor in data selection. Jocalyn Clark (ICDDR, University of Toronto) suggested that professional associations should elevate discussion on this potential pitfall to raise awareness.
