Pharmaceutical companies plan increasing e-journals emphasis

A survey of executives at 14 major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies has revealed that electronic journals play a key role in communicating the research results of such companies.

Half of the companies surveyed in Best Practices, LLC’s benchmarking study, 'Scientific Publications Strategy: Managing Reputation, Clinical Trial Results, and Commercial Relevance,' plan to increase their publication in e-journals over the next year, with only 7 per cent planning to decrease their e-journals use.

The study also revealed that for early development (preclinical to Phase II), global peer-reviewed publications were considered to be most effective by half of the respondents. That figure rises to 93 per cent for the Phase III through submission stage and to 92 per cent in the launch and post-launch stage. When it comes to actually producing the papers the study found a trend toward hiring in-house writing staff with high-level science degrees.

Companies surveyed included Merck, GSK, Shire, Eli Lilly, BMS, Genentech, biogen idec and Pfizer.