Open Pharma Recommendation for Plain Language Summaries of Peer-reviewed Medical Journals Publications

3:00 PM - 3:45 PM

Adeline Rosenberg

This session presents the Open Pharma recommendations for plain language summaries of peer-reviewed medical journal publications. These recommendations were initially developed by the Open Pharma Accessibility workstream and were extensively reviewed and refined during an expert roundtable and a focused, public consultation. Open Pharma is a multi-sponsor collaboration of pharmaceutical companies, non-pharmaceutical funders, publishers, patients, academics, regulators, editors, and societies seeking to identify and drive positive changes in the publishing of pharmaceutical company-funded research. We recommend that plain language summaries should be in the style of an abstract, free of technical jargon, unbiased, non-promotional, peer reviewed, and easily accessed. Plain language summaries should also meet the technical requirements to be indexed in directories such as PubMed. Ultimately, these recommendations are intended to be a concise outline of a minimum standard that provides top-line guidance on plain language summaries for authors, medical writers, publishers, and research funders.