Garth Sundem  00:00

Welcome to this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series, Elevate. I’m your host, Garth Sundem, Communications Director at MAPS. And today we’re speaking with Mike Taylor, Head of Data Insights and Customer Analytics at Digital Science, and Noah Strait, Director of Operations and Program Management at SMAC about publication strategy and impact, and specifically, what’s changing in this space? So, Noah, it used to be Impact Factor Right? Or, or what did publication strategy historically look like? And get us started with what you see as the major avenues of change in this area? What do you think?

Noah Strait  00:45

Yeah, absolutely, I’d say historically, publication strategy really fell into two pieces, there would be the push and pull on trying to get into high prestige journal is possible with the highest impact factor possible. And then also that same time understanding that it’s hard to get into those journals. So then kind of falling back on your own knowledge of the disease state and knowing within whatever area, maybe there, there’s three or four journals that are likely to publish for you. But really, it’s just based on kind of your own personal experience. And then that driving force behind Impact Factor and prestige,

Garth Sundem  01:18

So aspirational and realistic, but still no impact factor.

Noah Strait  01:22

Yes, I it makes me laugh, because it’s always the biggest battle from a publications perspective, because from a Wall Street perspective, and from a leadership perspective, people understand if it gets into one of those high prestige journals, it’s harder to explain the turnaround times the the quality that they’re looking for, or the impact that they’re looking for, from a journal perspective. So it’s a constant push pull between those two. Right? And

Garth Sundem  01:47

oh, go ahead, Mike.

Mike Taylor  01:49

Yes, no, I was just thinking that it’s a really interesting, dynamic relationship between the two, isn’t it? I was talking with a colleague a few months ago at one of one of one of your congresses. And she gave me some really shocking numbers about the additional amount of time it takes to get into a high prestige journal. And she’s estimated the cost is running into into six figures. Starting with 100,000 additional dollars to if you’re going to set your ambition, getting into one of those top tier generals, you’ve got to be spending more money, you’re spending more time, all of these things are going to cost. And I think we’re really at the beginning of trying to understand the relationship between the cost and the impact. And what it takes to I mean, Gus talks sorry, I didn’t know who was talking about pushing pull. I often talk about inputs and outputs, you know, this is a system, the input is the paper and the K wells. And the journal is all of this, the ingredients that goes into making bake in the cookie, and then you’ve got, you know, what you get out of it. And I think we’re right at the very beginning of trying to understand the relationship between these two.

Noah Strait  03:03

Yeah, 100%. And especially when you fit a factor in that those pivotal phase three, launch publications are going to be so crucial to your medical science liaison strategy. I mean, that that extra lag time that gets built into a prestigious journal that can make the timeline is almost unworkable from when you get your top line data to when you actually want to be having your MSLs engaging with folks in the field. So that time is so valuable. So yeah, there’s that that actual dollar value. And then there’s like cost for every day and every month that you’re not able to speak to that publication, because it’s not out yet. So

Mike Taylor  03:37

and we’ve seen this recently in both obesity and in assignments, where we’ve had one molecule beat the other one to the punch by maybe a matter of six, seven months. And you know, that’s the that’s the that’s the rewrite time. That’s the redrafting time.

Garth Sundem  03:54

that better be a good cookie Mike, at the end of that $100,000 In six months, with

Mike Taylor  04:00

the input asking you to come over and have have some cookies one day,

Garth Sundem  04:04

Okay, so let let, let me ask a question first. So when you have your Phase Three registration study, and it’s a it’s a practice changing thing, do you still bake the best cookie you can and go for the highest impact factor? I mean, okay. I’m imagine you’ve got a new drug that’s going to change oncology practice, you know, do you go to JCO? Do you go to any JM that’s still what you’re doing? Because it’s a big deal. And then I’ve got to follow up on this. Is it still?

Noah Strait  04:40

I think that’s it. It’s such a slippery answer, but that really depends on who your audience is. And I hate saying that because it’s like the most consultant answer you can give. But it really depends on who your audience is. I would say for something like oncology, probably that’s the right choice, but depending on something that’s more niche, you might not get the people who are actually practicing medicine. They may not be reading that journal entry. might not be the way to get that paper in front of them, and to maximize what that reach in the knock on will be from that publication. And this is a challenge, we struggle a lot as when we’re given that sort of publication strategy advice is, it’s very clear, it’s a good metric for success to say, hey, this gets into NEJM. But if your goal is to really get that data out there and get it in front of the people who are going to utilize your your therapy, it might not always be just to be totally honest. So I would say it’s often something we still shoot for with the right situation. But more and more a modern publication strategy does look past the impact factor. And I think it’s kind of it’s somewhat of an outdated metric on its own in context, you can still absolutely have relevance, but it’s really much more dependent on your reach, and who you’re engaging with who you want to engage with. Okay,

Mike Taylor  05:48

I mean, these are great generals you’re talking about, but they’re not great generals, because they have a high impact factor. That great journalists, because of the organizations that run them, the editorial, the editors, the editorial staff, and so on. And, of course, their their reputation. Jeff is a sort of a shortcut to understanding a big old mix of those, but it’s not necessarily, it’s not the best way of understanding them. I think one of the things that I guess we don’t want to confuse here is that if we’ve got the budget to be publishing in one of these very prestigious journals, then we’re probably doing other things as well. We’re doing press releases, we’re doing other kinds of communications, we’re doing publication boosters, we’re doing maybe video abstracts, pls, and so on. So we’ve got to kind of take into take into into mind, all of the activities that we’re doing around it, you know, some of the areas of work that I’ve been doing suggest that, you know, open access journals are very, very good at delivering impact, and they tend to be easier to link to easier to to build these extenders around as well. So I think we are seeing a change in in the way that we view these things. I guess the other thing, I would say, and this is sort of bearing in bearing in mind, some of my experience of working with focus in rare diseases is that, um, we, you know, we just said, Okay, an oncology journal, is great for an oncology trial. Of course, if we’re thinking about rare diseases, then very often we’re trying to talk to HCPs, who have a really limited practice, limited scope. And they’re going to be really focused on on the particular journals that they work in. Now, if we look at a New England Journal of Medicine, when thinking about a rare disease, it might publish one paper every five years on that area. And yeah, sure, people are going to read it. But if you want to reach if you want to change the way that you know, maybe the 400 practitioners in the world, are thinking about this disease, you need to be in a journal that they are contributing to, that they are recommending and reading. And this, I think, is a slightly different approach. It’s setting a more sophisticated hurdle. You know, we think about targeted, targeted communications and so many other worlds. We’re not really yet using the data that we could be to target our our publications. And I think this is one of the things we’re going to, we’re going to see changing over the course of the next few years. We’ll talk

Garth Sundem  08:30

about what to do with a niche study. So do you still need the journal? And if so, is it only something to link to from your own extenders? What do you what do you think? No, do we still need the journal,

Noah Strait  08:43

I think you absolutely need the journal. It’s really key from a medical science liaison strategy and how you’re disseminating your data. So having a go out there, it’s really outside of your FDA label, it’s between that and congresses are really the two venues, you have to share data on your therapy. So I think they’re crucial to have, I think Mike’s really hit the nail on the head there that with the changes in regulatory framework, the push to really use to go rare and rare. And that’s where I think a lot of people are going back to how public use of strategy used to run, you start to struggle, because it’s easy when it’s, you know, major solid tumor oncology. That’s very straightforward for where to take that. But what do you do when you get into a situation where it’s, you know, a rare disease of 400 patients, and you’re targeting something like pediatrics on top of that, because you’ll find even within the journals, some will target pediatrics, and they’re very interested in publishing that some just whether explicitly or implicitly, they rarely if ever take that on. And so then when you start thinking about your publication strategy that requires so much knowledge, and you know, in rare diseases more and more, you’re walking in with some baseline understanding, but usually part of your publications processes you learn in that space and understanding what’s going on. So that makes everything so much harder and it really does push for a more data driven metrics approach to how you choose your publication because you just can’t go off of the way it used to be of historical knowledge.

Mike Taylor  10:07

Okay, so

Garth Sundem  10:08

let me ask if you have a niche study and there’s 400 HCPs in the world who are going to find relevance in that? Do you have to know those 400 HCPs first, and then ask how we’re going to put a study in front of them? I mean, is it knowing your audience? Is that really what it comes down to for a new study?

Mike Taylor  10:34

know, okay, I was just thinking that you know, the tools and the data exist, that enable us to take a remote view of this. And that this can be sort of an iterative, an iterative example, I was thinking earlier about a client of mine who was looking to place a paper that was a post hoc analysis of a certain population subgroup. And they were looking to find journal that had a big footprint in, I think it was Southeast Asia, I am afraid I forget the details. And you know, that that in itself is, it feels like quite a difficult thing. And there’s no reason why someone who’s based in, in this case, in the east coast in the USA, would necessarily know which are the right channels. But you can look at the data to see which of the impactful journals which you’ve got the which have got the decent footprint of publications, which are allied to the local professional organizations, and so on. You can do quite a lot with data, which surfaces a lot of information that enables sports experts to make the right decision. So the way I like to think about it is that you know, that you can give an expert data and configure it what to do with it, you don’t have to give them the answer. Or try to give them the answer at least. Okay,

Garth Sundem  11:59

so the I, we have a leader here at maps renew, if you’re listening, your phrase is the pub is the hob. And it sounds like that still somewhat the case? You know, you got to get it in the journal, you got to get it in the Congress just for that peer review and to show that it’s legitimate. But then, let me go back to the second half of my earlier question. Does the impact for a niche study come more from the fact of that journal or that Congress presentation? Or is it your extenders? Is the journal really only something to link to? And now is it on the publication’s team to drive the actual impact? What do you think? No,

Noah Strait  12:42

think this gets back to and I think Mike hinted at earlier that the challenge with rare disease is that there’s gonna be a few people who, for whatever reason specialize in that. But the majority is gonna be someone in a specialty or primary care who runs into this rare occasion. And they’re now struggling to find where that data is. So I think it’s a it’s a combination, because then you have to think about how does that person get into the pipeline? And how do they engage with the content, so they’re probably going to go in search, and they’re gonna look for something that’s reputable. So absolutely, that piece still matters. But then like even more than that, that medical science liaison and the whole publications engagement strategy on top of that becomes a bigger deal. Because you want to be engaging with conferences, you want to be pushing that out there. Ideally, you have some sort of online resource for people to engage with, so that when physicians do encounter these very rare patients, the first thing they’re gonna do when they make that diagnosis is they’re gonna start Googling to see what comes up. So you really want to make sure that wherever you’re going, as soon as reputable as possible with the user base that you’ll want. Going back to what Mike was saying, if you know that the incidence rate for this rare disease is going to be higher in certain region, doesn’t matter what the US Impact Factor is it’s going to matter what the impact factor is in that region where that patient will be treated.

Mike Taylor  13:51

Well, those are two Yeah, I was just thinking about the importance of stakeholders here as well. I have a friend who’s a nurse, and she works with some very rare chromosomal disorders obviously working with in the pediatric context. She works with a she voluntarily supports a professional org, a stakeholder group, and one of the things that they do there is to promote, not promote, that’s the wrong word, but they provide insights into the research that’s going on in the particular areas. So you know, she’s become over the course of her career really important person in terms of digesting the research and posting about research. Because you know, as as Noah says, you know, you’ve got a baby, you’re not, there’s something wrong with the baby. You’re your family doctor isn’t sure but they’re looking at do some tests and tests come back words are spoken in a consultation. You know, what do you do you Google for it, you might come to Wikipedia, but you’re gonna come across Ross support groups, stakeholder groups, they might be on Facebook, they might be on AIX. But those are going to be the venues that, you know, bring you in contact with specialists HCPs. And all along that line there is there’s room for intervention in terms of modifying the conversations and bringing information in into account. I think increasingly, with things like AI, we’re going to be seeing those walls begin to break down as well. Because people are going to be using things like Microsoft’s copilot, you know, what can you tell me about this disease my baby has just been diagnosed with. And, you know, copilots going to be using data out of out of our own materials are collateral at a research publications, maybe at a Preprints, you know, juicing a digest, and then providing you with links to go and explore. So I think that we’re going to start seeing more of these wolves breaking down, surfacing more disinformation. But at the same time, that doesn’t come along with authority. Because you know, one of the things we know with with things, tools like chat GPT, is you don’t necessarily get that word of authority. someone lands on a journal article, you have a reasonable assumption of authority, and sort of the the voice of experience if you’d like that you don’t necessarily get to these other sources. You know, we’ve all heard about Dr. Google. Right. I think Dr. Dr. Chat is probably, you know, every bit as as vulnerable to, to communicating things that aren’t necessarily necessarily the right thing to be communicating. Yeah. And I think it’s a you know, and you hit the nail on the head there, too, that the flip side to Dr. Google is like, we always joke that doctors Google too. And so you really have to think about that, that I can, both audiences are going to be trying to pull data and you really got to have a strategy that addresses both of those points, or you’re going to miss on one side or the other. Yeah.

Garth Sundem  16:56

So can we say that a modern take on publication strategy would be kind of two part and one is knowing your audience, knowing who the specialists are? And knowing how to put that journal article in front of them as sort of a first step strategy, but then also, making your information discoverable in many ways, for the primary care physician who doesn’t see this all the time, who’s going to see it once and then go googling for it? Is, is that a really distinct two part strategy? And we have to hit these people in two different ways?

Noah Strait   17:37

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think, if you want to complete strategy, you absolutely need to have some s tailored to both. I think it’s might be my Medical Affairs by a show. And I think, probably in terms of data dissemination, the most important to hit is going to be getting the physician piece and making sure you have something addressed to the physicians whether it’s going to be just because ultimately, nine times out of 10 is probably gonna be them driving treatment, absolutely, that the patients are going to be there and you want to have something to support them. But in terms of like how I prioritize with my clients, what we’re looking at first and foremost, it’s probably going to be physician strategy first, just in terms of who the user will be. But then we absolutely want to build that other patient piece on top of that, or it’s, especially in rare disease. It’s such a big gap and as you think to about the enrollment championship, so having some that addresses both your publication and then feeds into your clinical trial enrollment can be incredibly helpful.

Garth Sundem  18:27

All right. Well, I know what the topic for our next podcast is. And that is what publications teams can do to ensure that AI is providing authoritative information. So maybe next time we’ll dig a little deeper, but for now, let’s leave it there. And Mike and Noah thank you for joining us today. To learn more about how your company can partner with Altmetric, visit altmetric.com MAPS members don’t forget to subscribe, and we hope you enjoyed this episode of the Medical Affairs Professional Society podcast series, Elevate