Medical
writing and clinical data management has seen an extensive growth in India
these days due to active involvement in the medical and clinical research
activities. A number of Contract Research Organizations (CROs) have come into picture
that provides its services to multiple healthcare organizations. The medical
writing services include preparation of a diverse range of clinical research documents
that are required by the stakeholders, including clinical investigators,
Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), study coordinators and regulatory
reviewers. They also prepare and provide manuscripts that are concise, accurate
and are ready for submission to peer-reviewed medical journals for publication.
The medical content is prepared according to the needs of the end users that
can be physicians, healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, biotech
companies, etc.
For an
effective propagation of knowledge from a lab where experiments for a
particular study are conducted to the people, medical writing is an essential
tool. The knowledge can be conveyed through multiple forms such as
publications, newsletters, blogs, websites and pharma-healthcare magazines. One
of the important goals of a scientist or clinician is to publish their original
research in a peer-reviewed and indexed journal that can lead to the
recognition of their novel scientific work. However, the lack of technical and writing
skills, institutional hurdles, and time constraints can pose a challenge to the
researchers. Due to the linguistic and technical constraints faced by
researchers, there have been the growth of medical writing companies that can
be contacted for collaboration.
The first
step for preparing a manuscript is to choose a particular journal for
publication depending on the study type and target reader. Other factors that
can be kept in mind while choosing a journal for publication are publication
fee, indexing, open-access, impact factor and editors and editorial board
members. Some of the well-known journals provide an “open access” option to the
authors, wherein if the manuscript is published, it is accessible to all the
readers online free of cost. However, the authors need to pay a certain fee to
make their manuscript an open access article. However, a number of ‘predatory
journals’ are also available that lack basic industry standards, sound peer
review practices, and solid basis in publication ethics. It is important to
identify and distinguish the predator journals from genuine journals and avoid
selecting them for publication. To establish the content or context of the
work, a thorough literature search and review is required. The focus of
literature survey is to collect and discuss the published information and
existing literature in their fields of expertise. It is important to identify reliable sources
of information in order to produce a high-quality manuscript. The content of
the manuscript should be interconnected in meaningful paragraphs and should be
prepared as per the author’s guidelines of the selected target journal. The
guidelines also include the instructions specifying which format has to be used
to list the references at the end of the manuscript. The referencing can be
done manually or referencing tools such as EndNote™ and Mendeley™ may be used
to organize the references as per a particular format listed in the author’s
instructions.
It is a
responsibility of the author that can also be a medical writer of a CRO to
avoid any kind of plagiarism in the manuscript. It is a serious threat to
scientific publications and is defined as “theft or misappropriation of
intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of
another’s work and the representation of them as one’s own original work” by the
office of Research Integrity. To prevent plagiarism, it is important to develop
strong writing skills with proficiency in writing in one’s own words and simultaneously
conveying the ideas effectively to
the reader. However, when quoting
available evidence, the content has to be substantiated with appropriate
references. Further, numerous plagiarism detection tools are available and can
be used to check the extent of plagiarism in the manuscript prepared before it
is submitted to the journal for reviewing. Once the manuscript is written,
referenced, formatted and checked for plagiarism, it is submitted to the
journal for review.
Before accepting the manuscript, journal verifies the authenticity of the research work by the process of peer review, after which it is decided whether the manuscript is suitable for publication or not. The peer review process is carried out by experts with similar area of expertise. Also the journal checks the appropriateness of references used, plagiarism, presence of grammatical errors and the absoluteness of the scientific material. In case of any discrepancy, journal editor returns the draft article to authors for revision and if the revised article is found to be correct in all manners, it get accepted and published in the concerned journals.
WorkSure® provides a wide range of high quality medical writing services and has team of qualified and experienced Medical Writers that are well equipped to write scientific documents and manuscripts that are clear, concise, plagiarism free and thus are of high quality.
