Plain Language Summaries

Standalone, citable summaries published in the Future Science Group journals written to be understood by a lay audience

PLSP Blog

Do plain language summaries have a place alongside health technology assessments?

Patients are now being recognised for their vital role in medical research, spanning the whole lifecycle of drug development A new article published on the The Evidence Base discusses the importance of including lay summaries alongside health technology assessments (HTA). Many agencies, such as the NHS, National Institute for Health Research and EUnetHTA, have already published plain language summaries of their findings, highlighting their dedication to putting patients at the centre of HTA decision making.

All the work from these institutions has been powerful in providing patients with a voice, and rationale, for the decisions made by HTA agencies. Consequently, this can go on to improve the quality of healthcare provided by the sector as many viewpoints are accounted for. Given the evidence, it seems that including lay summaries in HTAs may be a step forward for both decision-making and patient livelihoods. 

Darcy Hodge, The Evidence base

Click here to read the full post.

Peek Behind the Guidelines: Why the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy is now requiring authors to add plain language summaries

The Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy is now requiring the inclusion of plain language summaries (PLS) in certain articles published in the journal. The aim is to ensure that research published in the journal is accessible to a wider range of stakeholders that includes patients.

We spoke with Laura E. Happe, PharmD, MPH, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy, and Associate Professor, University of Florida College of Pharmacy, to learn more about this new requirement for authors and how this change has been perceived so far.

  • What has been the driving factor for you to mandate PLS in Research, Research Briefs, Systematic Reviews, and Viewpoint articles published in JMCP?

Our decision to publish PLS was mission-driven. At JMCP, we foster the exchange of ideas across a span of stakeholders, many of whom are not regular readers of scientific literature. We also promote managed care pharmacy’s role in addressing racial and social inequities in medication use.

Publishing PLS helps us to advance these aspects of our mission by making our published research more accessible to a wide range of stakeholders.

Laura E. HappE, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy, and Associate Professor, University of Florida College of Pharmacy

We began requiring PLS for manuscripts submitted in October 2021. We will begin publishing manuscripts that include PLS in April 2022.

  • How have authors reacted so far to this mandate?

Our authors have quickly adapted to submitting PLS along with their manuscripts. While there are a variety of formats being used for PLS today, we have adopted a concise summary with a 75-word limit at JMCP.  Although it seems like writing a short summary should be easy, it can be very challenging for authors to distil their findings into just a few words. And while our authors have expressed excitement about this new feature in JMCP, we have seen that many have difficulties writing in plain language.

  • Are you looking to provide any tools to help authors write their PLS?

We point our authors to resources provided by ISMPP. Based on this, we encourage authors to use short sentences and short words, avoid jargon, and use conversational language.

We also ask our authors to aim for an 8th grade reading level, which can be challenging. The reading level recommendation is based on PCORI, which posts study summaries for the public at a 6th to 8th grade reading level.

  • Will the PLS be discoverable on Medline alongside the article?

Yes. Because we adopted a 75-word format for our PLS, it was easy to incorporate them directly into our manuscripts themselves. JMCP is Medline-indexed and the full text of all of our articles, including PLS, are available free on our website.

We recognize that there are a variety of formats being used for PLS today, and there are limitations to our 75-word format. Our format allows the authors to describe the key results from their research, but they likely aren’t able to include other important information like study limitations. Even so, the inclusion of PLS will enable a wider range of stakeholder to access research that will help improve health for all patients through access to high-quality, cost-effective medications.

Learn more about JMCP and their commitment to publishing PLS here.

Promoting the use of patient-sensitive language when talking about lung cancer

A new post published on the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer website has called for clinicians, researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders to use patient-sensitive language when discussing lung cancer. By paying attention to the words used to describe people with lung cancer, they hope that improvements in physician–patient–researcher communication can be made, and stigma associated with lung cancer can be reduced.

With a greater number of empowered and involved patients, it is more necessary than ever for research to pay attention to the use of patient-sensitive language. Words used to write research publications and present at conferences should be inclusive of patients and represent the reality of the people who live daily with the disease and accompanying treatments.

Terri Conneran and Ivy Elkins, IASLC

To learn about the language they recommend, read the post in full here.

Why early-career researchers should explain their work using plain language summaries 

A new article featured on Bioanalysis Zone outlines why researchers, especially those in the early stages of their career, should consider using plain language summaries to explain their work. Science communication, and the ability to explain their work to anyone, is an important skill that all researchers need to learn to future-proof their careers.

Communicating outside of the scientific community could also boost a researcher’s career, by expanding the impact of their latest results, creating new collaborative opportunities across sectors, giving a significant boost to their public profile and opening doors for future projects.

Amy White, Bioanalysis Zone

Click here to read the full post.

Ipsen pledge to publish plain language summaries for all their journal publications

At the recent European Meeting of ISMPP, Ipsen have announced their commitment to publishing plain language summaries alongside all journal publications they support that contain data and findings from human studies. Pledging to feature a 250-word plain language summary as a minimum alongside all articles from July 2022, Ipsen hope to provide everyone with the opportunity to read and understand their research.

We believe that developing plain language summaries will make our research more accessible and inclusive, thus expanding on our original commitment to publishing our journal articles with open access.

Discover more about Ipsen’s new inititive ‘Our pledge: summaries in plain language for all journal publications’ here.