PLSP Blog

In our third ‘Peek Behind the Research’ interview series from the 2022 European Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP), Will Gatrell (Global Medical Publications & Communications Senior Manager, Ipsen) talks about his poster ‘Prevalence and characteristics of plain language summaries indexed in PubMed‘.

Read our interview in full below or access the poster here.

ISMPP-EU-2022-Prevalence-and-characteristics-of-plain-language-summaries-indexed-in-PubMed

Source: ‘Prevalence and characteristics of plain language summaries indexed in PubMed‘ originally presented at the 2022 European Meeting of ISMPP, January 2022.

Why is Ipsen interested in plain language summaries?

We committed to publishing Ipsen research open access in 2019 and remain one of only three pharmaceutical companies to make this commitment. However, we’re aware that our publications may not be understandable to a broad audience and, for some time now, have been discussing ways of making the content more accessible. One way to make publications more understandable is by including plain language summaries. In fact, we’ve recently committed to developing plain language summaries (PLS) for all journal articles that include data from human studies, starting from July 2022 [1].

Why did you carry out this research?

The recently published Open Pharma recommendations for PLS [2] provided the framework to develop these summaries, but we needed to assess the feasibility of making this commitment. Discoverability is a big issue, but PLS can be indexed alongside the scientific abstract on PubMed, if they’re written in the correct format. It’s not clear how commonly this is happening and we conducted this study to assess the prevalence of PLS in PubMed.

What were the main findings?

Indexing of PLS in PubMed is increasing, but it remains uncommon; we found the prevalence to be 61 per million articles listed on PubMed in 2021.

Are you looking to continue this research further?

Yes, we’re looking at what the barriers might be around journals offering PLS; we’d like them to be a standard component of a peer-reviewed article in same way everyone expects there to be a scientific abstract. I’m pleased to say that the Future Science Group is one of the publishers that does encourage PLS and publish them on PubMed.

Finally, what are your thoughts on the future of PLS and their place in medical/scientific research?

Developing PLS will make research more accessible and inclusive, and expands on our original commitment to publishing our journal articles with open access. It’s important that everyone can access high quality, credible medical information. There has been a concerted move to increase the uptake of PLS in medical research, mirroring the way open access has become commonplace over the last 5 years. In many ways the two go hand in hand, providing the opportunity to truly access the content of an article. Ipsen was the first funder to make a commitment around PLS; others are likely to follow. Our hope is that PLS will enhance the conversations between patients and their physicians, resulting in improved patient outcomes.

Acknowledgements: Will thanks his co-authors Kim Wager and Alison Chisholm from Oxford PharmaGenesis as well as Nisha Sheikh from Ipsen for their contribution to this work.

[1] https://www.ipsen.com/our-pledge-summaries-in-plain-language-for-all-journal-publications/

[2] Rosenberg A et al. Curr Med Res Opin. 2021:1–2. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03007995.2021.1971185

Continuing our ‘Peek Behind the Research’ interview series from the 2022 European Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) , learn more about the poster ‘Analysis of reach for different formats of plain language summaries‘. Here Shilpa Khobragade (Principal Medical Writer, Lumanity*), Pippa Perrett (Medical Writer, Lumanity) and Lorraine Law (Associate Editorial Director, Lumanity) talk us through their research and their thoughts on PLS.

Read our interview in full below or access the poster here.

ISMPP-EU-2022-Analysis-of-reach-for-different-formats-of-plain-language-summaries

Source: ‘Analysis of reach for different formats of plain language summaries‘ originally presented at the 2022 European Meeting of ISMPP, January 2022.

Why did you carry out this research?

Acknowledgment of the importance of plain language summaries (PLS) is growing, with recognition of their potential ability to increase the reach, visibility, and impact of publications. Despite the rising interest in PLS, there is currently a limited understanding of their potential reach. Our work aimed to understand the potential reach of three different PLS formats: standalones, those published alongside articles, and lay abstracts. 

What were the main findings?

From this research, we had four key findings.

1. Standalone articles provide a greater reach of information than either PLSs published alongside or lay abstracts, according to publication metrics.
2. From our survey of industry professionals, it appeared that PLS published alongside articles may have a greater potential to enhance the reach of a publication beyond the primary audience.
3. Again from our survey – it was suggested that PLS citability and length are likely to be the main factors influencing their reach.
4. We found that PLS can reach a wider potential audience using different media types other than Twitter, such as online news, newspapers and press releases.

Were you surprised by any of the results?

Several findings surprised us, including:

• The difference between the highest Altmetric attention scores (AAS) and the survey results for most impactful PLS type in terms of reach – we found that standalone articles had the greatest AAS and greatest number of tweets, while our survey results suggested PLSs published alongside articles to be the most impactful. 
• According to industry professionals who took part in our survey, citability was suggested to be the highest influencing factor for reach, with readability being the lowest.
• Publication of the PLS we investigated did not appear to impact the number of page views subsequently received by the corresponding main article. 

Are you looking to continue this research further? 

We aim to continue our investigations into the reach of different PLS formats, as we have only just begun to scratch the surface. Our next step will be surveying the lay audience to discover which PLS format is most likely to enhance – and which PLS attributes they feel best increases – the potential reach of a publication beyond the primary audience. These results will show how closely lay audience responses correspond with industry professional responses, and with publication metrics. 

Finally, what are your thoughts on the future of PLS and their place in medical/scientific research?

Pippa: I feel with appropriate methods of making PLS discoverable, whether through a central repository or inclusion of appropriate links to the start of the manuscripts, PLS will help various readers, from non-expert health care professionals to patients, keep up to date with the latest research. 

Lorraine: I think PLSs are a valuable tool for demystifying scientific research, particularly when tackling the vexing question of communicating a drug’s effectiveness and safety, the clinical significance of results and patient benefit. The coronavirus pandemic has shown how open accessibility of scientific data on the internet – when it was previously hidden behind university library walls – and the leverage of news and social media have made it possible for misinformation to spread easily, because the vast majority of research communication relies on expert interpretation of risk and benefit. PLS can play a role in helping patients and the public in general understand the principles and underlying significance of medical research, and what it really means for them.

Shilpa: I think PLS are important tools and have a great future. But I believe the authors who publish the original article together with the writers with PLS expertise should guard against any misunderstanding in the lay audience. I also feel that the PLS are very helpful for not only the patients, caregivers, or lay audience but also for the non-specialist professionals. I believe from the patient’s perspective; readability is an important factor but the PLS should not be oversimplified or ‘dumbed down’ too much as they are probably exposed to other scientific and complex materials and might find it insulting or not scientifically robust. In a nutshell, the PLS should be written to cater for a wide variety of audiences at an appropriate readability level and to achieve this, the PLS writers should be properly trained.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank their co-authors Craig Burgess, Heather Smith, Aree Cheshire and Damian Eade from Lumanity for their work on this research project.

*Formerly Cello Health Communications/Cello Health Insight

The 2022 European Meeting of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) took place on 25–26 January. For anyone involved in medical publications and scientific communications, this meeting provides invaluable insights into the latest developments and best practices in this field as well as the opportunity to engage with fellow publications professionals.

The theme of this year’s meeting was ‘Advancing Our Profession: Driving Leadership and Best Practices in Medical Communications‘ exploring how publications professionals can be leaders at all levels and how all stakeholders play a part. Alongside the talks, roundtables and panel discussions, 45 posters were presented providing new research, findings and observations across the broad range of topics.

With the increasing interest in plain language summaries, several posters were presented on this theme. In this series of ‘Peek Behind the Research’ interviews, we speak with the authors to learn more about their research and work.

Here we speak with Caroline Halford (Digital Publishing Manager, Springer Healthcare) and Steve Winter (Senior Scientific Team Leader, inScience Communications, Springer Healthcare) about their research ‘Do plain language summaries encourage readers to access your publication? A pilot study‘.

Read the interview in full below or access the poster here.

ISMPP-EU-2022-Do-plain-language-summaries-encourage-readers-to-access-your-publication-A-pilot-study

Source: ‘Do plain language summaries encourage readers to access your publication? A pilot study‘ originally presented at the 2022 European Meeting of ISMPP, January 2022.

Why did you carry out this research?

Caroline: Adis have been publishing plain language summaries (PLS) since 2017, and we were the first publisher to facilitate publication of PLS on the PubMed platform. Since we started offering authors the opportunity to publish a PLS with their manuscript, we’ve seen an exponential rise in submissions each year. 

To put it into context, in the entirety of 2017 we received only eight manuscripts with a PLS.  In 2018, this rose to 48 manuscripts.  Last year (2021) there were 151 Adis manuscripts published with PLS, and we’ve already published 47 PLS in January 2022! 

In terms of value, anecdotally, our specialist and patient readers have told us via social media that they value our PLS.  Occasionally, peer reviewers even request that PLS are added to manuscripts to help readers understand the final article.  But we’ve never seen any solid research to demonstrate whether they actually lead to increased readership. Since we now have many PLS under our belt, we thought it was a good opportunity to investigate. To try and find the answer, we looked at access to a PLS-containing article as a surrogate of readership. It was also a really good opportunity for Adis as a publisher to collaborate with inScience, our med comms agency within Springer Healthcare, to help establish the importance of PLS for their clients.

What were the main findings?

Steve: When we captured the metrics of 50 open access Adis articles accompanied by a text-format, 250-word PLS and compared them with a similar article without a PLS, we found that the majority (62%) of articles with PLS were accessed significantly more often than the comparator non-PLS-containing article. This was when we applied the 25% cut-off for a ‘significant’ difference in metrics. If we applied a lower cut-off of 10%, then the positive access rate increased further to 68%.

In terms of therapy areas, we saw that ophthalmology, rheumatology, oncology and diabetes were the strongest areas with significantly higher average number of accesses for PLS-containing articles. That said, we saw a benefit associated with including a PLS across all therapy areas.

Were you surprised by any of the results?

Caroline: Yes! We knew that PLS were valued by readers – but didn’t think it would be as clear cut as it was, with such a high rate of increased access.  

We were not surprised that diabetes and rheumatology stood out as areas with strong metrics for PLS.  In our experience, these have an engaged generalist readership, including lay audiences and patients (due to the fact that these are often chronic disorders). We were not surprised about oncology either. This tends to be a well-researched (or Googled!) area with lots of public interest. 

The thing that surprised us the most was how few text PLS we receive and publish compared to other formats.  Text-based PLS represent only approximately 25% of all PLS submissions. The rest are submitted in a wide range of formats such as graphical, video, slide sets, or audio slides. Perhaps this is because PLS are still relatively new, and publishing stakeholders haven’t come to a conclusion as to the ‘best’ PLS format yet.

Are you looking to continue this research further?

Steve: Again, yes! This was very much a pilot study, and we have a number of ideas on what we want to do next. For example, we want to explore if other factors may have contributed to the increased readership of articles with PLS – such as whether articles with PLS are more shared on social media or whether other factors are involved. 

As Caroline mentioned, there’s currently no consensus on the ‘best’ PLS format so we are also thinking to see if the format of a PLS makes a difference. Do text-based PLS, for example, benefit from higher readership compared with graphical PLS?  In this regard, we’d also be interested in looking at whether PubMed indexing of PLS is a driving factor for visibility and findability.

Finally, what are your thoughts on the future of PLS and their place in medical/scientific research?

Caroline: Adis journals are designed for the scientific community. However, the publishing landscape is evolving.  Healthcare professionals are busier than ever, with lots of pressure to keep up to date with literature. Also, open access means a much broader range of reader types are accessing medical journals and their content. With these factors in mind, we need to recognise that PLS are needed so that (1) healthcare professionals can digest a quick, bite-sized overview of a paper; and (2) lay audiences can understand the science behind the data without misinterpreting it. So I do think PLS have a place in medical literature, and I believe that more journals will start to adopt them having seen the benefits for their readership. We could even see PLS being mandated in future – for example, Cochrane Reviews already provide a PLS as standard alongside their articles. 

Recent ISMPP research shows that healthcare professionals find PLS “very/extremely useful”, and use them as clinical tools to share info with patients (Lobban et al. ‘Do healthcare professionals really value plain language summaries?’ presented at ISMPP EU 2022.).  It’s also been reported that PLS hosted on accessible journal platforms are likely to be shared by patients and patient advocacy groups.  It’s great to see this type of feedback on the utility of PLS within the healthcare and lay communities. The future of PLS in medical publishing is promising – I believe we’ll see more PLS in future, and wider dissemination.

Steve: I completely agree with Caroline, PLS are becoming an increasingly important means of communicating to time-crunched HCPs and engaged patients alike. In terms of the future, we probably need more research on what formats work best so that we meet (and hopefully exceed) the information needs of a broad range of stakeholders.  

Acknowledgements: Steve and Caroline wish to thank their co-authors on this research project, Matt Evans (Adis) and Mel West (InScience), for their time, expertise and collaboration.