Assessment of whether use of a professional medical writer is associated with time to publication of papers reporting phase III oncology clinical trials in two high-impact general medicine journals

Objective Professional medical writers assist authors with ethical and accurate publication of scientific research. We hypothesized that the support of a medical writer would enable timely publication of research and explored their association using papers reporting phase III oncology trials from 2019–2023. Given the time frame of this research, we also assessed the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic on publication volume as a secondary objective.Methods We searched PubMed for phase III clinical trials published in New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and the Lancet between 01/01/2019 and 12/31/2023. Publications reporting oncology trials were reviewed in full to document acknowledgement of medical writing support, data cut-off date, publication date and other key characteristics. Time from data cut-off to publication was compared for papers with and without medical writing support.Results Our search identified 442 papers reporting any phase III clinical trials, of which 164 (37%) reported oncology trials; 122/164 (74%) disclosed medical writing support. Mean time to publication was significantly shorter for papers disclosing medical writing support than those without (307 vs. 466 days; p < 0.0001). Median time to publication for papers with medical writing support appeared stable from 2019 to 2023. The volume (oncology and non-oncology) of phase III trials published in NEJM and the Lancet between 2019 and 2023 was lowest during 2020 to 2022 (n = 70–88) and highest in 2023 followed by 2019 (n = 110 and n = 96, respectively).Conclusions Medical writing support is associated with timely publication of clinical trial results, even during events that may disrupt publication development such as the Covid-19 pandemic.