Joint Position Statement Gains Momentum Globally

During the COVID-19 health crisis, medical researchers have felt significant pressure to publish relevant findings as quickly as possible. In this rush to publish, pre-publication review processes for scientific manuscripts have been modified, or in some cases, removed. A danger is that these changes could lead to misleading, incomplete, or inaccurate publication of data that can directly inform critical medical or health decisions. Further, once the threshold of publication oversight is lowered, it becomes a precedent that cannot be easily reversed, potentially eroding standards and causing the public to lose trust in medical science.

The American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA), and the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) published a Joint Statement on 31 March 2021, in the peer-reviewed journal Current Medical Research and Opinion (CMRO) – emphasizing that having a pre-publication review is still essential and asserting that the integrity of published scientific and medical research must be protected.

The statement was first published in Current Medical Research and Opinion, 31 March 2021: https://doi.org/10.1080/03007995.2021.1900365 and is now gaining momentum with organizations around the world. Representatives from the authorship team will be presenting at conferences and webinars for the Asian Council of Science Editors, Australasian Medical Writers Association, Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors, and the Spanish Association of Medical Writers.

AMWA has also just published the first of many translations that will be created in partnership with our partner organizations, EMWA and ISMPP.  We thank Amanda Xiaoqing Mao and her team at Acurit Medical Communications for their support with the Chinese translation of this JPS. 

Read more about this joint position statement, and other statements by AMWA, at www.amwa.org/position_statement.