Clarifications and corrections on PubMed’s plain language summary requirements

In September 2021, the Open Pharma accessibility workstream published their recommendations for plain language summaries (PLS) of peer-reviewed medical journal publications¹. The recommendations focused on best practices for ensuring discoverability and accessibility of PLS within the functional limits of PubMed, which is one of the most widely used platforms for biomedical publications². The recommendations were accompanied by a letter to the editor authored by RS on the utility and impact of the recommendations³. The supplementary report of the recommendations paper and the letter to the editor incorrectly stated that PubMed has a technical requirement of 250 words for PLS. Corrections have been issued for these publications.

The current recommendation for a 250-word limit is based on publishers’ practices as discussed at a roundtable meeting in January 2021. This recommended limit was originally introduced by Adis⁴ – who were the first to publish PLS on PubMed in 2018 – and has since been adopted by Taylor & Francis⁵, but may vary among other publishers. The Adis and Taylor & Francis specifications were based on journal production practicalities, including PubMed’s technical requirements for content tagged as “Other Abstract” (the XML tag used for PLS) to be text-based and formatted as a single paragraph. These specifications were also designed to ensure that PLS are concise and digestible – key elements of plain language and digital communication best practices that are important for optimizing comprehension and health literacy^6,7. Graphical PLS, which may be preferred by some audiences to text-based PLS^8–10, can often be accommodated on journal websites, publisher platforms, and open access repositories (e.g. figshare). Currently, however, graphical PLS cannot be hosted on PubMed, which may limit visibility and discoverability.

In March 2021, Open Pharma had invited the International Society for Medical Publications Professionals (ISMPP) PLS Perspectives working group, which includes KW, to review a draft of the recommendations and supplementary report. The group commented that their understanding was that PubMed no longer truncates abstracts. Since the publication of the Open Pharma recommendations, direct correspondence between KW and the National Library of Medicine (NLM; responsible for PubMed) has confirmed that PubMed does not set any word limit on PLS (personal communication; KW and NLM Support, 23 November 2021). PubMed was not designed to be a PLS repository and, as such, does have a number of limitations¹¹ (e.g. intended for scientific audiences; unable to host graphical PLS or optimal plain language formatting), but a PLS word limit is not one of them.

The Open Pharma recommendation for a concise, text-based PLS remains to aim for 250 words or fewer; this word limit is not a technical requirement from PubMed. The authors of the Open Pharma recommendations and the Taylor & Francis editorial team are grateful to KW for confirming these important details with PubMed and working together to correct the literature.

Karen L. Woolley
Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Clinical Trials Centre, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore, Australia
Envision Pharma Group, Sydney, Australia
[email protected]
Adeline Rosenberg (on behalf of co-authors from
Rosenberg et al, 2021)
Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd, Oxford, UK
Caroline Halford
Adis, Springer Healthcare Ltd, Chester, UK
Kelly Soldavin
Taylor & Francis Group, Philadelphia, USA
Richard Smith
Chair, Patients Know Best, Cambridge, UK
Former Editor in Chief, The BMJ, London, UK

Transparency

Declaration of funding

No funding of this work is to be declared.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

KW is a consultant to and shareholder in Envision Pharma Group, a medical communications company, and has presented and published research on PLS. KW also consults to the University of Oxford, UK and the University of Osaka, Japan on patient involvement in artificial intelligence in healthcare and to the University of Queensland and the University of the Sunshine Coast on patient involvement in clinical research and medical communications, including PLS.

AR is an employee of Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd which facilitates Open Pharma.

CH is the Digital Publishing Manager for Springer Healthcare (part of Springer Nature Group) and works alongside the Adis portfolio of journals. CH has presented and published research on PLS and was part of the Adis team that facilitated the inclusion of Adis PLS on PubMed. KS is a Senior Editor for Taylor & Francis Group (T&F) and oversees a journal portfolio that includes Current Medical Research & Opinion (CMRO). KS participated in the January 2021 Open Pharma roundtable, providing publisher feedback on the draft PLS recommendations, but recused herself from involvement in the submission, peer review, and publication of the article¹ in CMRO. RS has a long association with journals and has a pension from the British Medical Association, which owns the BMJ.

Acknowledgements

We thank the National Library of Medicine Support Team for providing clear, timely, and direct assistance with queries regarding technical requirements for PLS on PubMed.