v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 714 entries across 20 domains · CC-BY 4.0714 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack AStablev2026.2

Medical writer contribution

Professional writing assistance to drafting a biomedical manuscript by a person whose primary role is writing rather than research — including drafting, restructuring, language polishing, and preparing submission — disclosed transparently per Good Publication Practice (GPP) guidelines.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An industry-employed medical writer named in acknowledgements as 'Editorial support was provided by X (employer), funded by Y'

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A medical writer who drafted the entire manuscript but is not disclosed (ghostwriting — a violation, not a contribution category)

Editorial commentary

Medical writers must be disclosed by name, affiliation, and funding source; covert medical writing (ghostwriting) is a research-integrity violation. GPP 2022 specifies that medical writers may meet authorship criteria when their contribution is substantive enough; otherwise they are acknowledged with funding source noted.

References

Good Publication Practice GPP 2022 (DeTora et al. Annals of Internal Medicine)
European Medical Writers Association EMWA guidelines

Also known as

Professional medical writer · Medical writing assistance

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Medical writer contribution"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/medical-writer-contribution" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Medical writer contribution",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/medical-writer-contribution",
  "description": "Professional writing assistance to drafting a biomedical manuscript by a person whose primary role is writing rather than research — including drafting, restructuring, language polishing, and preparing submission — disclosed transparently per Good Publication Practice (GPP) guidelines.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions-and-adjacent-contribution-vocabularies/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/medical-writer-contribution",
  "sameAs": [
    "Professional medical writer",
    "Medical writing assistance"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

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