Improving equity in access to published medical evidence requires international and multistakeholder collaboration. This week, we took the Open Pharma call-to-action to a broad new audience of US medical writers through a feature article published in a special issue of the AMWA Journal.
Open Pharma relies on our international network of Members, Supporters and Followers to communicate the importance of equitable access to published medical research for all. This week, we’ve shared this message with members of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA) by publishing a feature article about Open Pharma in a special issue of the AMWA Journal dedicated to global medical communications.
Medical writers around the world are well placed to understand the benefits of open science and are uniquely positioned to communicate them to their clients. They can play an important role in promoting the innovations that Open Pharma supports to improve the quality, transparency and accountability of medical research communications. The full article is freely available online here.
The same special issue of the AMWA Journal also features a research article co-authored by Ipsen, Supporter of Open Pharma, about the quality of plain language summary (PLS) and abstract translations using free online tools. The research used survey-based assessment to enable bilingual reviewers to rate the quality of PLS translations against measures relating to word and phrase selection, grammar and clarity. The results suggested that both PLS and abstract translations were accurate and readable, but PLS scored better than abstracts across most measures. The full article is open access and available to read here.
We hope that both articles resonate with AMWA members as medical writers are often acutely aware of the challenges of closed publication systems and the potential benefits of more open, collaborative and audience-centric approaches. We therefore invite AMWA members to follow Open Pharma and work with us to help innovate and improve the pharma publications model ecosystem.
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