ESTABLISHING AI ROOTS IN SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS
By Krista Terry, CMPP, SVP, Publication Management and Strategy
AI is no longer just a seed of possibility in medical communications. It's grown foundational roots across the publication life cycle, with pharma, agencies, and publishers embedding it into their workflows. After years of careful evaluation and cautious trialing, organizations are now cultivating AI-powered workflows to produce the fruits of faster and smarter impactful scientific publications.
Discovery and Planning
In the early stages of publication planning, teams are increasingly using AI to summarize evidence, identify publication gaps, and determine emerging opportunities. Tracking publication and congress trends allows teams to stay abreast of approaching submission deadlines and to be aware of new conferences that align with their target audiences. This new era of scientific discoverability enables faster tactical development and more informed planning, allowing teams to pivot and reprioritize as scientific needs evolve.
AI is also streamlining the development of publication plans, particularly when identifying appropriate conferences and journals. Historically, publication managers would manually research individual conferences and journals and, when that information was unclear, reach out to editors to confirm suitability. Today, AI-powered tools can help match content with appropriate journals based on manuscript type, subject matter, and thematic alignment. This provides an early assessment of journal fit and potential acceptability before a manuscript even reaches human editors.
Content Development
These tools have also been playing a role in accelerating the content development of primary publications and literature reviews. Clinical study reports can be synthesized into digestible summaries to aid in primary and secondary content development and then reused or adapted into content for modular components.
Also, rather than laboring over hundreds of publications, teams can now use AI to rapidly generate summaries of existing literature to aid in concepting and outline generation. This allows scientific teams to spend less time on manual literature review and more time interpreting the evidence and developing strategic publication opportunities.
The extraction of modular content is extremely beneficial when considering materials that will be impactful following a presentation or journal publication. This allows pharma to extend audience reach with plain language summaries, infographics, and social media; it can also be beneficial for internal purposes such as internal scientific communications and MSL/training resources.
Peer-Review and Validation
AI tools do not only benefit pharma and their agencies. Journals and publishers are adopting similar technologies to improve editorial efficiency in assessing manuscript submissions. When manuscripts are first submitted, editors may use AI to complete an initial screening and quality check. This includes checking for originality, potential plagiarism, and duplicate content.
It’s also beneficial for identifying appropriate peer reviewers based on expertise, which gives the manuscript a fair and thoughtful review. Technical checks are also critical to identify missing information, ensure proper formatting, and readability. It’s become so popular that publishers recognize the need to establish guidelines around the use of AI to standardize how content is developed, evaluated, and disseminated in a consistently ethical manner.
The Next Stage of Growth
There is no doubt that AI has moved beyond the experimental stage and is becoming an established part of the scientific publication ecosystem. From evidence discovery and publication planning to content development and validation, AI is helping teams work faster, think more strategically, and expand the reach of scientific communications.
But technology alone is not enough. Human expertise remains essential for interpreting data, ensuring scientific accuracy, maintaining compliance, and preserving the integrity of scientific communications.
As AI continues to reshape the industry, organizations that combine innovation with scientific rigor will be best positioned to drive meaningful impact. At p-value group, we're helping teams harness AI thoughtfully across the publication lifecycle to unlock greater efficiency, stronger insights, and more impactful scientific communications.
Ready to explore what's next? Connect with p-value group at info@pvaluegroup.com to learn how AI-powered publication strategies can help maximize the value and reach of your scientific data.