Joanne Walker

Recently the editors of Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth have announced that Plain Language Summaries will be required for all manuscripts submitted to the journal. With readers inundated with research in this field, the editorial board of the journal took the decision mandate the submission of a PLS with every paper to allow a broad audience to understand its findings of the work. Recognising that PLS mean extra work for the authors, they offset this by explaining that adding a PLS will significantly increase the audience papers, helping journalists, science writers, policymakers, and industrials understand the research discussed.

Read more more here.

The latest PLSP published in Future Oncology provides a summary of the GioTag study, that looked at how the drugs afatinib and osimertinib affected people with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene. The PLSP, written by Professor Maximilian J Hochmair, is a summary of the final analysis of the GioTag study published in Future Oncology last year.

By publishing both the original article and PLSP is the same journal, we are able to link the publications to make readers of either article aware of the original and PLS versions.

Read the PLSP in full here.

The original article, entitled ‘Sequential afatinib and osimertinib in patients with EGFR mutation-positive non-small-cell lung cancer: final analysis of the GioTag study’, published in Future Oncology, can be found here.

The much awaited ‘How-To’ Guide for the development and dissemination of plain language summaries of peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations, developed by PFMD, is now available. Co-created with a wide variety of stakeholders, including patient representatives, industry members, publishers, researchers, medical communication agencies and public officials involved in research bodies, the guide is the ultimate resource for anyone who needs to write or contribute to a PLS of a peer-reviewed journal publication or congress presentation.

Download the guide here.

About PFMD
Patient Focused Medicines Development (PFMD) aims to transform the way in which we understand, engage, and partner with patients globally in the design and development of research and medicines by focusing on unmet patient needs. We are bringing together and synergizing disparate but complementary efforts that integrate the voice of the PATIENT across the lifecycle of medicine. PFMD was established in October 2015 as an open, independent global coalition of health stakeholders.

It’s all well and good producing a plan language summary of an article, making the research easy to understand for a lay audience, but how do you ensure these readers discover and actually read the PLS? In their latest post “Don’t Just Produce Plain Language Summaries: Seven Tips to Get Them Read”, Deborah Wyatt and Marisha Fonseca of Impact Science at Cactus Communications share their thoughts on how to make PLS discoverable and drive readership. With suggestions including where to publish the PLS, format and how to maximize SEO, they present some useful tips to maximize the accessibilty and discoverability of these articles.

Read the post in full here.

If societies, publishers and researchers 
want to truly engage with the public and disseminate their research, then plain-language summaries must be easy to find.

Deborah Wyatt
VP, Global Academic & Society Relations – Impact Science at Cactus Communications

As the third largest pharmaceutical market is the world, Clarinda Cerejo and co-authors sought to understand the current state and challenges of plain language summary development by pharmaceutical companies in Japan. Discover more about their research in the video below and visit here for more details.