Stephen Gilliver

Section Editor - In the Bookstores

Stephen Gilliver studied for a PhD in Cell Biology at the University of Manchester before working as a post-doc at the same institution and as an associate lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2010 he moved to Sweden and started working as a freelance copy editor. After a short stint as a trainee editor at a small publishing company in Uppsala he worked for 4 years as Science Editor at a research institute in Malmö. Since 2015 he has been a medical writer at TFS Trial Form Support, a CRO based in Lund. He is also an occasional translator (Swedish to English). The bulk of Stephen's experience is in medical publications, but regulatory writing now accounts for a major part of his workload. Stephen is married with two young sons.

Contributions

In the Bookstores - Volume 32, Issue 1

Medical writing books on a budget Allison McIntosh has collected several shelves of books on medical writing. In this article, she provides a selected list of books that can be purchased for less than £10 (approximately €10). Contributors: Alison…

Results of the 2021 EMWA salary and compensation survey - Volume 31, Issue 4

In 2021, EMWA members were asked to participate in a survey about their current salary and compensation. The survey included questions on some of the factors that typically influence earnings, such as education, geographic location, level…

In the Bookstores - Volume 31, Issue 2

In the Bookstores - Volume 31, Issue 1

As the authors of this book, Koen Cobbaert and Gert Bos, state “software joins the dots, by connecting patients with healthcare professionals and breaking down the boundaries between everyday objects, medical devices, and medicine.” As a medical…

In the Bookstores - Volume 29, Issue 4

Last year, I wrote my first poem – 10 lines of free verse that, after three rejections and 229 days in queue, was purchased and published. Although I have been selling short stories since 2016, poetry is something new for me, undiscovered territory,…

In the Bookstores - Volume 29, Issue 3

In the Bookstores - Volume 28, Issue 4

How to read a paper – the basics of evidencebased medicine and health care (sixth edition)

In the Bookstores - Volume 28, Issue 3

Yellowlees Douglas is a con sult - ant on writing and organisations and an associate professor in the Center for Management Com - munication at the University of Florida, USA. Maria B Grant is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of…

In the Bookstores - Volume 27, Issue 4

In Strategic Scientific and Medical Writing: The Road to Success, Pieter Joubert and Silvia Rogers describe how to identify the target audience, construct key messages, and recognise the desired outcome of your document to make your writing more…

In the Bookstores - Volume 27, Issue 3

Health Literacy FromA to Z: Practical ways to communicate your health message (Second Edition) By Helen Osborne, M.Ed., OTR/L

In the Bookstores - Volume 27, Issue 2

An Introduction to Pharmac - ovigilance is a compelling read and one that both new and experienced medical writers will find useful for providing a suc - cinct, yet thorough, overview of today’s current drug safety requirements. Patrick Waller and…

In the Bookstores - Volume 27, Issue 1

In an ideal world, the deluge of information that comes our way from the tax office, insurance com pa nies, lawyers, computer software compa - nies, and suchlike would be written in plain English. Sadly, the reader is often left with the impression…

In the Bookstores - Volume 26, Issue 4

Publishing Your Medical Research (Second Edition)Daniel W. ByrneWolters Kluwer, 2017Daniel Byrne has taught courses on biostatistics and medical writing at Vanderbilt University since 1999. He wrote the first edition of Publishing Your Medical…

ICMJE to mandate data sharing statements - Volume 26, Issue 3

Those of us who attended the 2017 spring conference in Birmingham were treated to an excellent symposium on transparency in clinical trials, where EU Policy 00701 on disclosure of clinical data was a key focus. A month later, theICMJE (International…

In the Bookstores - Volume 26, Issue 2

What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know: Questions and Answers for the Serious Medical Author They say “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but the title of this book lends itself to curiosity. In What Every Medical Writer Needs to Know, Dr Robert B.…

In the Bookstores - Volume 26, Issue 1

Do you ever see someone else use an unfamiliar shortcut or by tapping a few keyboard keys achieve something that seems to take you an age? Maybe you would like to spend a little less time working at your computer? If so, this could be the book for…

Peer review fraud - Volume 25, Issue 4

The hijacking of peer review by authors who create false referee profiles in order to deliver favourable reviews of their own work has received prominent recent coverage in several leading journals. At the time of writing, over 300 articles had been…

How to interpret and report the results from multivariable analyses - Volume 25, Issue 3

Multivariable analyses are some of the central statistical methods of clinical trials, and yet some medical writers may be unsure as to what they are and how best to interpret and report the results. In this article we provide an overview of…

Suggested reading in recent issues of European Science Editing - Volume 25, Issue 2

Among the highlights of the November 2015 issue of European Science Editing (ESE) is an essay on whether interpretation of research ethics is universal. Writing from an Iranian perspective, Behrooz Astaneh describes how cultural norms and inadequate…

HIV research fraudster handed stiff prison sentence - Volume 24, Issue 3

In the December 2014 issue of Medical Writing, I reported that disgraced Iowa State University researcher Dong-Pyou Han was facing fraud charges for faking experiments on a new HIV vaccine.1 In spite of a guilty plea, on 1 July 2015 Dr Han was…

In the Bookstores - Volume 24, Issue 3

There are no new book reviews in this issue of Medical Writing. However, upcoming book reviews in future issues of the journal should include: Writing for Science Journals: Tips, Tricks, and a Learning Planwritten by Geoffrey Hart and reviewed by…

European Science Editing: May 2015 picks - Volume 24, Issue 3

In the ironically titled ‘The increasing pseudodignification of medical prose’, retired consultant Neville W. Goodman bemoans the failure of medical writers (by which he means people who write scientific papers) to use simple words.1 Goodman…

Manuscript Writing - Volume 24, Issue 2

Medical writers with little experience of writing manuscripts can struggle to organise their thoughts. Linking the information within the different sections of a manuscript can be referred to as ‘manuscript flow’. This article is the last of a…

Risk Management - Volume 24, Issue 2

The thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960s cost several thousand lives, but it ultimately led to changes that will undoubtedly save many thousands more: it triggered a chain of events involving the WHO and the ICH that resulted in the…

In the Bookstores - Volume 24, Issue 1

Online plain English and readability resources - Volume 24, Issue 1

To encourage individuals and businesses to write in simpler, more readable English, private and government-backed enterprises have created a number of freely available online resources. While most relate to general English use, some are devoted to…

Plain language and readability - Volume 24, Issue 1

Plain language is writing in clear, concise language that is easy to read and understand. Whenever I hear the term plain language I am reminded of a lay summary I was once asked to edit. The stream of technical language (‘self-source bias’, ‘effect…

In the Bookstores - Volume 23, Issue 2

Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare by Peter Gøtzsche; Radcliffe Publishing, 2013. ISBN: 978-184619-884-7 (paperback). 24.99 GBP. 310 pages. Mastering Scientific and Medical Writing: A Self-help Guide by…

Recommended procedures for retracting articles: Inadequate and patchily applied? Analysis of a recent article in PLoS One - Volume 23, Issue 2

Retraction of research articles ruins careers, dents confidence in the scientific literature, and can have a profound impact on meta-analyses. Retraction rates have seen a big recent rise, as journals act increasingly quickly to remove articles that…

In the Bookstores - Volume 23, Issue 1

To satisfy the inquisitive mind, Oxford University Press has since the year 2000 published books offering ‘A Very Short Introduction’ to a whole range of subjects. For example, 2013 saw the publication of introductory guides to, among other topics,…

Journal Watch - Volume 22, Issue 4

The August 2013 issue of European Science Editing (ESE), the journal of the European Association of Science Editors, included a couple of articles relating to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, on which I comment elsewhere in this…

In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue 3

The Spirit Level Ever had a ‘ping’ moment? This book might have been mine. I'm not a natural pessimist, but Western society today seems less cohesive and people more materialistic, stressed, unhealthy, and unhappy than in times gone by. Wealth and…

English Grammar and Style - Volume 22, Issue 2

Good writing practice is not a formal set of rules about how to write, like the requirements of GCP or GMP. Our aim is to highlight that the focus of all writers should always be on their readers, and that writers should make their texts as easy as…

In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue 2

While other guides focus on how to write scientific papers, What Editors Want advises on preparing them for publication. Its authors, Philippa Benson and Susan Silver, identify their target readers as writers, senior researchers, and teachers of…

In the Bookstores - Volume 22, Issue 1

Bad Pharma is the latest book by the well-known anti-quackery campaigner Ben Goldacre, and attempts to explain to us that medicine is broken. Despite the title, he criticises not only the pharmaceutical industry, but also regulators, doctors,…

Medical Journalism - Volume 21, Issue 4

The majority of medical writers (either in the pharmaceutical industry, CROs, or as freelancers) provide documents for regulatory authorities. A smaller proportion works in the medical and health communication field writing texts for either…

In the Bookstores - Volume 21, Issue 4

A useful reference for writing pharmacovigilance documents Like other areas of medical writing, pharmacovigilance (PV) medical writing has many detailed regulations, guidance documents, and templates associated with it. As such, there is a…

English Grammar and Style - Volume 21, Issue 3

Good Writing Practice As an editor, I have been battling against verbosity, redundant modifiers, and ‘buzz’ words for many years. New terms and turns of phrase or new meanings for words pop up all the time. Many of them have come with the…

Journal Watch - Volume 21, Issue 3

Improving the credibility of reporting industry-sponsored research Reports of ghostwriting, guest authorship, selective or biased disclosure of research results, and inaccurate or incomplete reporting of potential conflicts of interest have damaged…

English Grammar and Style - Volume 21, Issue 2

Pleasing the reader The fundamental principle in the practice of medicine, ‘first, do no harm’, could be transposed to the world of medical writing to ‘first, do not annoy’. The Good Writing Practice (GWP) group at EMWA has been focussing on…

Regulatory Writing - Volume 21, Issue 2

The Physicians Payment Sunshine Act – casting a shadow over clinical research? In October 2010, the American congress passed the Physicians Payment Sunshine Act, which will force drug and medical device manufacturers to disclose their…

Journal Watch - Volume 21, Issue 2

Authorship, ghostwriting, and tips on making scientific writing more enjoyable to read In this issue five papers are discussed covering the subjects of authorship and authorship criteria, ghostwriting and guest authorship, and adding style to…

Forgive me for repeating myself: Self-plagiarism in the medical literature - Volume 21, Issue 2

While plagiarism of others’ work is universally condemned, authors’ reuse of their own words and data (so-called ‘self-plagiarism’) is a far more contentious issue. The recycling of one's own text, in particular, polarizes opinion: some consider it…

Good Writing Practice - Volume 21, Issue 1

The Good Writing Practice initiative was launched in the December 2010 issue of TWS1 by Alistair Reeves and Wendy Kingdom. The aim is to go beyond the classic style guide and provide advice on practical aspects of writing that make texts easier to…

Journal Watch - Volume 21, Issue 1

Impact of protocol amendments, bias and quality in industry-funded trials, and rethinking authorship criteria Amendments to clinical trial protocols are widespread, but can result in increased costs and delays in study implementation.