Abstract
Objective Medical writing assistance may improve manuscript quality and timeliness. Good Publication Practice Guidelines for pharmaceutical companies encourage authors to acknowledge medical writing assistance. The objectives of this study were to determine the proportion of articles from international, high-ranking, peer-reviewed journals that declared medical writing assistance and to explore the association between pharmaceutical sponsorship and medical writing assistance in terms of time to manuscript acceptance. Design The acknowledgment sections of 1000 original research articles were reviewed. The sample comprised 100 consecutive articles published up to January 2005 from each of 10 high-ranking (impact factor-based), international, peer-reviewed medical journals from different therapeutic areas. The proportion of articles declaring pharmaceutical sponsorship and medical writing assistance, and the time interval between manuscript submission and acceptance were calculated. Analysis of variance was used to explore associations between sponsorship, writing assistance, and manuscript acceptance time. Results Medical writing assistance was declared in only 6% of publications (n = 60). In the pharmaceutical-sponsored studies subset (n = 102 articles), assistance was declared in 10 articles (10%). Disclosure of medical writing assistance was associated with reduced time to acceptance (declared assistance: geometric mean, 83.6 days; vs no declaration: geometric mean, 132.2 days; relative difference, 0.63; 95% confidence interval, 0.40-1.01; P = .053). Conclusions Based on this 1000-article sample, the reported use of medical writing assistance appears low (6%). If used, medical writing assistance should be declared. For pharmaceutical-sponsored studies, the time to publication may be faster when medical writers are used.