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Plain language summaries (PLS) of scientific publications can help to make scientific literature more understandable. In healthcare, PLS can contribute to informed decision- making by healthcare professionals, patients, and their caregivers. In late 2022 and early 2023, the multi-sponsor collaboration Open Pharma developed a 16-question survey to collect the perspectives of journal editors and publishers on PLS and whether they align with the Open Pharma PLS recommendations. A total of 29 surveys were completed, representing 26 individual journals and seven publisher portfolios. Of these, 19 journals and two portfolios did not offer PLS as an option to authors, and one portfolio respondent was unsure. The survey showed variability in format, location, and peer review practices for PLS, and inconsistent tagging of PLS for PubMed indexing. The results highlight the need for more journals to accept PLS and follow best practice recommendations to ensure PLS are peer reviewed and discoverable.
Baróniková et al. (Sun,) studied this question.