Jan Geissler, Founder and CEO of Patvocates shared on LinkedIn:

“Patient authorship is a new but important topic in medical publishing, with the number of patient-authored publications growing rapidly. Patient authorship is seen as a relatively sudden and fundamental change to the publication ecosystem, as acknowledged by editors, publishers, funders and researchers.

In our peer-reviewed article co-authored by Karen Woolley, Simon Stones, Richard Stephens, Trishna Bharadia, Beverley Yamamoto, Jan Geissler, Bella Yang, Jacqui Oliver, Amanda Boughey, Catherine Elliott, Laura Dormer and Joanne Walker which was published today, we assessed the different dimensions of patient authorship.

While the value of patient authorship is widely acknowledged and the number of articles with patient co-authorship is increasing exponentially, we also found out that from 16,335 patient-experience publications which specifically report on patients’ lived experience, needs, perspectives and priorities including patient-reported outcomes, 99.8% of them did NOT appear to have any authors with patient experience – so still a huge gap between ambition and implementation where patient authorship would provide strongest value. At the same time, looking at the same dataset, patient co-authorship is a clear indicator for better accessibility, more attention and more downloads.

Our article outlines how patient authors can meet the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors authorship criteria, and provides suggestions how patient authorship can contribute to enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical publishing. It also describes a process for patient authorship in patient-partnered and patient-led research projects.

The article also refers to pioneering work in the patient authorship space, e.g. the “Patients in Publications” training course developed by WECAN and Envision The Patient and the inclusion of guidance on patient involvement in publications in the Good Publication Practice Guidelines (GPP).

Thank you for all your leadership, Karen Woolley and the whole authorship team. Article of course available open access here.”

Source: Jan Geissler/LinkedIn