Publication planning: piecing the jigsaw together
pharmafile | March 18, 2010 | Feature | Medical Communications | medical education, publication
In the pharmaceutical industry where every statement of fact must be referenced, trial data is fundamental to the delivery of product-related core messages.
Before findings can be cited and used to drive product growth, however, they must be published. And, once published, they must be made visible and accessible to all key stakeholders in a timely manner.
These facts in mind, the importance of a product’s publications plan cannot be overestimated – a haphazard approach to publishing is all too often associated with crippling delays and missed opportunities.
The publications plan
The aim of a publications plan is to outline the long-term strategy, reviewed on an annual basis, for a product’s growth as supported by literature. A publications plan will identify when and where best to publish trial data for timely and targeted dissemination, and how to support that primary publication through secondary and tertiary publications. An effective publications plan will ultimately have a positive impact on the overall promotional campaign for a product.
Irrespective of the position of your product within the pharmaceutical pipeline, publications should play an important part in the marketing strategy. During pre-clinical development, publications will raise awareness of unmet need and burden of disease, the mechanism of action of the new compound and so forth.
At launch, publications can be utilised, for example, to communicate the place of the new drug in the treatment algorithm, its advantages over competitor products and how introduction into clinical practice might be facilitated. And as patent expiry looms, why not use the literature to spotlight potential problems with generic substitution and to publicise new license applications.
To understand how a publications plan helps in the delivery of these messages, it helps to know what developing such a plan involves.
Solving the puzzle
In essence, writing a publications plan is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together – a coherent picture will develop only if each piece is carefully shaped and correctly aligned with those next to it.
The figure (right) here illustrates the steps involved, and shows that the publications component does not stand alone, but rather forms part of the overall product communications strategy.
The first step therefore is to determine the product’s positioning within the market place and the key messages that need to be conveyed and to whom – the key stakeholders.
Once this information has been determined, it is possible to look at the research findings that you have at your disposal and identify how they can be used to support the communications strategy through targeted publications.
If your key stakeholder is the clinician and your key message that your product is more effective than others on the market, your primary publication should not be aimed at a nursing conference or journal, although secondary publications in a nursing context might be in order to help support its introduction into practice.
Likewise, new data for an old product, indicating a cost benefit over a competitor, probably won’t be suitable for The Lancet, where practice changing research is favoured, but will be of interest to commissioners and the journals they read. The second and third steps are the literature search and gap analysis – together, they will provide background information about what has been published before about the product, indicating which stakeholders have already been targeted by publications, and where the gaps are.
This research will also tell you what key messages have been highlighted to whom and again, where the gaps are. Importantly, product-specific and more general literature and gap analyses should be done, thereby providing intelligence not only about your product, but about your competitors too. This step is crucial in optimising the potential of publications.
The final step involves identifying and researching relevant publications to target. The literature search and gap analysis will lead to recommendations with respect to the content and targeting of primary and secondary publications.
They will also help you to increase the acceptance rate of a paper you plan to submit, by providing answers to the following key questions:
• Has the journal published a similar review/research in the past two years?
• If not, does the journal publish the type of article proposed?
• If yes, does the proposed article add something new to the knowledge base?
If the answer to the last two questions is no, an alternative choice of journal is likely warranted.
Correct targeting of an article from a company point of view also depends on numerous journal specific factors.
Of course, publications need not be independent company sponsored journals – websites, promotional materials and so forth are also extremely valuable and should be mapped out in the publications plan too.
Use of agencies to help deliver these tertiary publications will help to ensure balanced materials and timely production of promotional literature within the context of the overall communications strategy.
Return on investment
A publications plan is a complicated document to pull together and can be costly to commission. But quick and efficient publication of trial data is crucial to a product’s marketing strategy. As timelines for publication in peer review journals often span six months or more, it’s crucial that the correct journal is targeted in the first instance.
Rejection after three months of peer review is a major setback. Prior to journal submission, it is important to be aware of the opportunities that conferences afford for rapid dissemination of results in a citable format. It is noteworthy that enlisting a professional medical writer to help draft and place an abstract, poster or article can speed up the publications process markedly.
Completing the package, secondary and tertiary publications planned to coincide with and/or follow on from primary publications, facilitate interpretation of data and wide dispersal of key messages across all stakeholder groups for maximum impact.
The power of these secondary and tertiary publications should not be underestimated, helping as they do to contextualise and translate into clinical practice often complicated research, both through wide dissemination and a wide variety of publishing formats.
There should already be a local (as well as a global), regularly updated publications plan in place for your product. If there isn’t, my best advice is to invest in one.
Abbie Pound is the editorial and publications manager at Succinct Healthcare Communications and Consultancy, who offer training and consultancy services on all aspects of publishing, including publications planning (www.succinctcomms.com).
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