Top-10 Best Practices for Virtual Publication Planning and Development
April 3, 2025 | HCP publications, Impetus Digital, Pharma tips, Pharma trends, Top 10 tips, Virtual collaboration, medical publications, pharma collaboration, pharma global, pharma publications, pharma tools, pharma virtual programs, virtual publication development, virtual publication planning, virtual publications
Virtual publication planning is rapidly evolving with new digital tools, but are you truly optimizing your strategy? Our article dives into the challenges of this new landscape, from data security to stakeholder collaboration, and reveals essential best practices to overcome them and maximize the impact of your publications.
The landscape of publication planning is constantly evolving with the rise of novel digital tools, artificial intelligence, and virtual collaboration platforms. As a result, traditional barriers to effective and efficient publication planning and development are being broken down, while new challenges related to compliance, data security, and global collaboration in the virtual setting have emerged.
To set your virtual publication planning and development project up for success, there are some best practices that all life science teams should follow.
1. Engage Your Key Stakeholders Early and Often
One of the major benefits of virtual publication planning is the ability to engage your key stakeholders on a regular basis to speed up project timelines. After the most suitable stakeholders, whether Key Opinion Leader (KOL), healthcare provider (HCP), or patient co-authors, have been identified and contracted, their involvement should be immediate. Involving them in the early planning process ensures that their input is considered from the get-go, minimizing the need for last-minute revisions to the plan. Likewise, engaging them on a regular basis keeps the project top-of-mind, allows iterative feedback and adjustments, and facilitates seamless course correction.
Frequent engagements also help maintain open and transparent communication throughout the project, which helps manage expectations and build authentic relationships. Aim to foster a culture where participants feel comfortable giving honest feedback.
2. Consider Diverse Perspectives
Another key advantage of the virtual version of publication planning and development is that more diverse stakeholders can be engaged. In this case, diversity might refer to co-authors from different geographic areas, various medical specialties and levels of seniority, and demographics. To cater to these diverse stakeholders, there is a need to effectively manage time zone, scheduling, and language differences. This can be partially achieved through pre-meeting polls to identify the meeting times that work for the most people. Alternatively, leveraging an asynchronous (over time, anytime) collaboration platform allows all participants to participate on their own schedule, irrespective of their comfort with spoken English, geography, and professional and personal commitments. The asynchronous format also enables an equal share of voice among participants, no matter their seniority and level of extroversion.
3. Manage Your Project Timelines and Milestones
Publication projects tend to fall apart in the absence of a clear strategy and behind-the-scenes project management. While it’s key to be agile (see #10), having predetermined timelines and regular milestones will ensure that the project stays on track. This means that the touchpoint dates and topics should be set and communicated to all stakeholders as early as possible. It also means that the scope of literature review needed and the target journal should be identified from the beginning to ensure adherence to the timelines. Likewise, information on the co-authors’ affiliations and conflicts of interest should be collected upfront, in a standardized format, to avoid bottlenecks at the time of submission.
To this end, there is no shortage of project management tools that can be used to keep the project on track. If leveraging a Pharma-compliant virtual collaboration platform, a few come with project management support, progress monitoring, and reporting, which help with all of the above…
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This content was provided by Impetus Digital
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