Publication management systems
Publication management systems coordinate publication plans, document development, reviews, approvals and records of author involvement.
Planning, execution and oversight
Managing plans for several products or indications with overlapping timelines can be challenging. Integrated software can support plan design and approval, author-eligibility checks, assignment of writers and reviewers, document review, contribution audits and compliance with Good Publication Practice, transparency requirements and standard operating procedures. Some packages provide visualisations of performance, spending and author engagement, and writers should become familiar with the features relevant to their work. A standardised system can improve productivity, maintain a consistent process, reduce time spent managing execution tasks and support compliance with industry standards, transparency requirements and standard operating procedures.
Datavision workflows and writer access
In 2014, Datavision’s developer reported use by more than 50 pharmaceutical, biotechnology and device companies worldwide and 85,000 registered users. The system supported global transparency and consistent management of publication programmes and related projects to help ensure compliant data disclosure. Its three workflows covered the publication-planning process.
- Planning, including needs assessment and budget approval.
- Project execution, with GPP2-supported workflow templates.
- Tracking and reporting, including global transparency and a metrics programme.
Project execution contained the functions most relevant to medical writers. As a central resource for internal and external stakeholders, Datavision recorded reviews, inputs, decisions and relevant correspondence from early development to the final published or presented document.
The system’s users included the following groups.
- Publication managers.
- Internal auditors.
- Medical writers.
- Project managers.
- Internal and external authors.
- Reviewers and approvers, including statisticians, medics, legal and intellectual-property officials, and regulatory team members.
- Senior decision makers, such as medical directors and compliance leads.
Publication managers, project managers and administrators used a desktop programme-management interface, while authors, reviewers and approvers used a web review portal. Senior management could assess compliance, finances, effectiveness and efficiency through an Executive Window. Writers used the desktop application or the web-based Writers Workbench according to client preferences about functions and access rights.
Tasks and target venues
Writers’ individual-project tasks required four of the system’s ten functional tabs: Workbench, Journals, Congress and Documents. Workbench showed current, upcoming and overdue tasks and publication-plan items, linked directly to document records, and highlighted review and approval feedback in its Messages and Tasks sections. It also showed tasks assigned to authors and reviewers, helping teams manage workloads against deadlines and priorities, while Chart View showed how projects fitted into the overall plan.
The 2014 Journals and Congress database contained approximately 5,000 journals and 3,000 congresses, maintained by a dedicated team working with publishers and societies. Users could create target lists and link venues to document records to plan against real timelines, view all abstracts for a congress and track submission frequency to particular journals. Those links also supported output and productivity metrics. The developer offered to add a requested missing venue within one working day and add subsequent congress years as organisers released details.
Documents and review records
The Documents tab managed document details, project timelines, versions, drafts, reviews, approvals and feedback through its sub-tabs.
- List displayed all publications or a subset as an ad hoc report, with fields that could be added, removed or rearranged, filtering and export to PDF or Excel, and project-specific watch lists; double-clicking a project opened its details and plan, whose default timeline followed templates matching company standard operating procedures and publication best practice.
- Details managed versions and drafts, participants, related studies, specialties and indications, target venue and progress notes.
- Plan held the document’s project plan, initiated reviews and approvals, and displayed feedback available for download; its client-specific templates could take additional review steps when required.
The optional web-only Writers Workbench condensed the Documents functions into one interface, displayed only the writer’s current projects and provided wizards for actions such as starting reviews. It supported project details, timelines, reviews, approvals and feedback, helping writers maintain documentation for potential publication-department audits.
PubSTRAT planning and project tools
In 2020, Anju Life Sciences Software’s PubSTRAT suite comprised JSCA, SYQUENCE, PubSTRAT and Cite Central, available separately or as an integrated web-based solution. JSCA covered more than 2,500 journals, 1,500 conferences and 600,000 abstracts, with MeSH-term searching, citation counts, impact factors, Eigenfactor scores and selection criteria. It provided estimated submission-to-acceptance and acceptance-to-publication intervals and conference acceptance criteria updated daily as the event approached. Users could view numbers of articles by journal, topic or MeSH term and timeframe in tables or graphs; an abstract library was planned for a future update.
SYQUENCE captured tactics, communication focus, audience, key dates and milestones, and circulated the plan for steering-committee or leadership approval. Its Gantt chart displayed projects and publication types vertically and timelines by quarter, month and year horizontally, with red for pending, orange for active authoring and green for published, and filters for project or timeframe. Approved tactics automatically synchronised to PubSTRAT as separate projects.
PubSTRAT supported project creation, task assignment and hyperlinks to target venues’ scope and audiences. Templates covered author invitations, agreements and authorship checklists, while digital signatures supported audits of author engagement and compliance with Good Publication Practice and corporate integrity agreements. The project page showed the target journal, lead and corresponding authors, assigned writer and active tasks; assigning a writer triggered an email. Configurable timeline templates covered development, review and approval, with suggested times for abstracts, posters and manuscripts and subtasks delegable to authors or reviewers. The publication-management page filtered tasks by product, due date or project and separated To Do, Planned and Done items; task and project links opened timeline or project details, and the Actions control delegated tasks. Performance metrics covered accepted, cancelled, in-progress, pending-finalisation and rejected publications, alongside spending and remaining budget.
Cite Central held citation information and final documentation, generated citations, consolidated product bibliographies and distributed publications to internal and external stakeholders.
Datavision planning and communication tools
By 2020, Datavision combined a web-based planning module, document management and scientific communication platform with a database of over 7,000 journals and 27,000 congresses. Its planning wizard specified tactics, audiences and target venues and identified differences between the plan and communication objectives. Database metrics included acceptance rates, audience size and nature, impact factors, Eigenfactor scores and article types.
The plan views organised the following information.
- Concepts listed planned projects.
- Details identified studies and other inputs.
- Chart View displayed project Gantt charts.
- Gap Analysis compared planned publications by audience and tactic against inputs, including a zero where no abstract was planned for a congress.
- Budget compared allocation and spending by project.
Concept links opened study details such as first-subject-first-visit and last-subject-last-visit dates, publication type and audience, timelines and linked statements about data for external audiences. The system converted plans to PDFs for review and approval, notified reviewers through links, and stored their embedded-review comments. After approval, it proposed timelines from communication type and submission deadline; integration with clinical-trial management systems highlighted milestone changes needed when study dates changed. Project managers could update milestones and send documents for review and approval from a page showing document details and version, supporting materials, authors, linked study and timeline steps.
Author permissions were configurable, electronic signatures used DocuSign, and conflicts of interest and disclosures could be captured electronically. An automated debarment check examined proposed authors’ eligibility for governmental healthcare programmes; debarment checks were also listed among separately purchased options. Writer assignment triggered an email, and the writer’s workbench consolidated projects and current and future tasks, managed reviews and approvals, provided configurable automated reminders and stored supporting documents for reviewers. Simultaneous review through doDOC was scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of 2020.
Reporting covered review metrics, budgets, project milestones, Gantt charts and configurable, exportable reports; dashboards showed project summaries, status, outstanding tasks, alerts and actual versus projected timelines. Analytics included QlikView integration and exports to tools such as SAP BusinessObjects, Tableau and Sisense. Final publications could be sent to a document library or third-party repository such as Veeva Vault, and citation counts were displayed for publications. The scientific communication platform stored themes, communication points and supporting statements to visualise alignment between publications and plans. Separately purchased options included an enterprise content library for capture, management, archiving and distribution, finance and budgeting tools, debarment checks and an enhanced scientific communication platform; the content library could distribute suggested-reading bibliographies.
PubsHub research, review and repositories
In 2020, ICON’s PubsHub offered Journals & Congresses, PMSolution and Knowledge Manager separately or as an integrated solution, with PMSolution subscriptions including Journals & Congresses. The research database covered over 4,600 journals, 3,500 congresses and 4,000 professional associations across more than 100 medical and scientific therapeutic areas, with ongoing updates and predatory journals and congresses flagged and excluded. Journal comparisons included impact factor, circulation, readership, rejection rate, submission timeframes, encore restrictions and submission guidance; congress entries supplied deadlines and possible extensions. Comparison timelines used green for submission to acceptance, purple for acceptance to online publication and blue for acceptance to print publication.
PMSolution managed projects and collaborative review with an audit trail of author involvement. Traditional review used automated email links followed by sequential downloading, editing and uploading, with manually triggered reminders, while CoAuthorLive enabled simultaneous review in real time. Dashboards displayed reviewer-timeline metrics when document metadata were supplied; enhanced analytics and visualisation were planned for an update. User-specific dashboards and access controls supported writers and managers, and Copy Project replicated project information, metadata, supporting documents and team members. PMSolution also tracked author payments and could send approved documents through Veeva Vault PromoMats for automated distribution. Its Primary Document tab showed publications in development and accepted revision uploads, Supporting Documents held review and quality-control sources, and Document History showed versions and revision audits.
Knowledge Manager stored published copies, integrated with PMSolution, supported search through manually entered metadata, and distributed publications internally and externally. It also stored supporting material such as the publication rationale and key messages.
Shared capabilities and integration
In 2020, PubSTRAT, Datavision and PubsHub all included journal and congress databases and publication repositories integrating with Veeva Vault. PubSTRAT and Datavision both supported plan design, modification and approval, author-invitation templates, automated eligibility checks, writer assignment and modifiable timelines. All three supported document review and approval; the 2020 comparison described simultaneous review as a shared capability while also scheduling Datavision’s doDOC capability for later that year. Integration with journal submission platforms was recommended for future versions.