Are you an academic with several unfinished manuscripts simmering on the backburner?

Are you developing an exciting product at a biotech startup but struggling to find the time to write and publish?

I can help write and edit your manuscripts, manage project timelines, facilitate author reviews, and restyle papers so they are ready to submit.

I currently live in rural New Hampshire and when I am not reading and writing about science you can find me exploring the woods with my dog, foraging for mushrooms in the summer, and cross country skiing in the winter.

I have a BSc in Genetics and a PhD in Medical Microbiology. I have four years of medical writing experience working primarily in scientific publications (abstracts, posters, and manuscripts) for large multinational companies in the pharmaceutical industry. I have written manuscripts in a wide range of therapeutic areas including obesity, cardiology, diabetes, liver disease, neurology, vaccines, and infectious disease with an emphasis on randomized clinical trials (RCTs), real world evidence (RWE) studies, and health economics and outcomes research (HEOR).

Multinational pharmaceutical companies have streamlined their publication processes enabling them to publish vast quantities of peer-reviewed publications to support their products. I want to bring the same processes and expertise to small startups and academic labs at a fraction of the price that medical writing agencies charge.

About me

My services

Student Tutoring and Writing Services

$72/hour

I offer 1:1 tutoring to highschool and university students in the biological sciences and general scientific writing feedback/assistance to students of all disciplines and experience. I offer advice to undergraduate students interested in postgraduate study and to students interested in pursuing careers in medical writing.

Writing and Editing for Academics and Non-profits

$100/hour

I earned a BSc in Genetics and a PhD in Medical Microbiology. I have helped write and edit manuscripts in the basic medical and biological sciences related to infectious disease, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and evolutionary biology. Once you have your data, I can write initial manuscript drafts, edit drafts produced by PhD students and postdocs, or conduct final edits to make manuscripts submission-ready. I help academic labs develop manuscript creation processes inspired by industry practices to get papers published quickly!

Writing and Editing for the Pharmaceutical Industry

$150/hour

I produce manuscripts, abstracts, and conference posters with an emphasis on real world evidence (RWE) studies, health economicsand outcomes research (HEOR), and randomized clinical trials (RCTs). I offer support at every stage of the manuscript lifecycle, including:

  • author kickoff meetings

  • journal selection

  • writing initial manuscript drafts

  • project management

  • facilitating draft reviews

  • quality control checks

  • formatting for journal specific guidelines

  • handling journal submissions

  • addressing peer review feedback

  • revising and restyling rejected manuscripts

FAQs

How does authorship work? Are you a ghostwriter?

My contributions do not usually make me a named author on scientific manuscripts, nor am I a ghostwriter. Instead my contributions should appear in the acknowledgments section with a statement like this:

“The authors thank John Newman of John Newman Medical Writing, LLC for writing assistance provided in accordance with Good Publication Practice (GPP2022) guidelines and funded by [your company or grant here].”

Ghostwriting is condemned in the medical publishing industry because we should strive towards transparency and accountability in all facets of our work. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) publishes clear criteria to confer authorship:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

  2. Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

  3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

I regularly contribute to criteria 2 and 3 in a manuscript and sometimes help interpret data (criteria 1) in the discussion of a manuscript, but I rarely design the studies, acquire/analyze data, or agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work (criteria 4) because of my lack of participation in data collection.

I have a limited amount of money to spend on outside writing/editing assistance and I have no idea how long it would take to write/edit my manuscript. Can you give me a project estimate?

Certainly! I am happy to provide free consultations to discuss your project(s) and what services you are most interested in. You can share your project materials with me and I can give rough estimates before initiating work. In the past, I have also agreed to hourly price caps on projects (i.e, I will spend a maximum of 4 hours editing a manuscript and share my progress with a client before deciding how they would like to proceed).

I am always happy to negotiate lower rates for academics, non-profits, and interesting projects that aim to have a positive impact on public health.

How can you help me publish more papers more quickly?

I recommend taking a strategic approach to publication planning. When you are close to finishing data collection and visualization, it helps to have a brief publication planning meeting with the key stakeholders (typically all named authors or at least the key 1-2 authors closest to the data). In this meeting we should cover:

  • a brief overview of the data

  • target journals for submission, including backup journals in case of initial rejection

  • timeline for producing each section/draft of the manuscript

  • determining who will review each draft of the manuscript

By regularly incorporating these processes your academic lab or startup can greatly improve your time-to-publication.