President's Message - Volume 23, Issue

Dear medical writers, Having embarked upon my year-long journey as president of EMWA, this is my first opportunity to update the members about the achievements, plans, and aspirations of the outgoing and new Executive Committee (EC). The…

Changing methods to assess targeted therapies in oncology - Volume 27, Issue

New methods have been developed to evaluate targeted therapies, since the classic sequence – phase I, toxicity; phase II, efficacy; phase III, comparison with standard treat ment – is no longer effective for evaluating these new treatments. In…

The Webscout - Volume 23, Issue

What happens pre-approval? The theme of this issue made me wonder what it is that happens before approval of a new medication. Of course, it is clinical development, notably phase II and phase III studies. But many years have already passed before…

Passing the torch - Volume 21, Issue

This issue is the first where I will be serving as Editor-in-Chief of Medical Writing (MEW). Elise Langdon-Neuner, Editor-in-Chief since 2004, will be stepping down. This is yet another step in the evolution of the journal.

For those of you unfamili…

Manuscript Writing - Volume 21, Issue

What are the most common reasons for a manuscript to be rejected (and how can they be avoided)? In their article on handling manuscript rejection, Woolley and Barron1 offer the following soothing advice: Authors, particularly inexperienced…

Out On Our Own - Volume 22, Issue

We are all riding high after meeting in Manchester at the EMWA conference in May 2013. It was wonderful to see so many colleagues coming together and enjoying the new-look events that EMWA offered us for the first time. Both the Symposium Day, and Ka…

RCTs: Can the treatment work? Patient registries: Does the treatment work? - Volume 26, Issue

The first part of this article compares the main features of studies based on patient registry data with those of randomised clinical trials, providing a basis for better understanding the differences between the two. The second part details how to…

English Grammar and Style - Volume 24, Issue

In this issue •  We continue Michael Schneir's fascinating series on distractions in medical and scientific writing, this time concentrating on non-pronoun-induced backtracking with adverbs, verbs, and nouns. This sounds a little…

Writing economically in medicine and science: Tips for tackling wordiness - Volume 26, Issue

Concise medical and scientific writing is clearer, more direct, and more pleasurable to read than wordy text. It is also more accessible to readers, including those outside the discipline and non-native speakers of  English. An added benefit of…

Lingua Franca and Beyond - Volume 24, Issue

Writing is something that I have always loved. Actually, as a teenager I would have studied literature, but I changed my mind at the last year at school. I became a paediatrician instead for a few years but then little by little, my career turned…