Good publication practice guidelines for medical communications agencies: a MedComm perspective

Good publication practices in clinical pharmacology: transparency, evidence-based medicine and the 7-D assessment

Transparency and evidence-based medicine are cornerstones of good publication practices (GPP), and concern publishers, editors, research investigators, and reviewers alike. Methods for implementing these principles within the framework of GPP are described. The main aspects include obtaining a Manuscript Agreement Contract, a Statement on Transparency of Authorship and a Declaration of Conflicts of Interest from the authors. Assessing whether a manuscript meets the requirements of EBM is demonstrated using the “7-D assessment”. The main purpose of this tool is to established that the (1) right Design, (2) right Diagnosis, (3) right Drug molecule, (4) right Dosage, (5) right Data, (6) right Deductions, and (7) right Documentation have been implemented in order to meet the objectives of the investigation. If the findings from any one of these assessments is questionable, the compliance of the research with EBM principles will be weakened and the reviewers and editors will make recommendations to the publisher accordingly. The guidelines described will help to provide a fair and transparent process of scientific publication and foster the freedom of clinical pharmacological research.