Table 1.

Information to be documented in an effective publication plan

Key element	Explanation
Authors	All persons who agree to meet the appropriate qualifications for authorship. The author list should be updated prior to submission, once the authorship criteria are verified. It may be helpful to list (as applicable) the corresponding author, a lead academic author and/or a lead sponsor author in the publication plan.
Contributors	Additional contributors to the study or manuscript, including publication planners. A key contact (with contact information) should be provided for each manuscript, abstract and presentation.
Data and timing	Specific datasets/analyses, by planned manuscript or presentation. Timing for data to be included in each manuscript, such as the date of the top line report, last subject last visit and the deadline for including data in a results registry all should be recorded or referred to the appropriate data owner (for example, the clinical tracking records for individual studies or programmes). The publication plan should clearly link primary and secondary analyses of any study, even if they appear in different manuscripts, through the use of protocol numbers or clinical trial registry numbers.
Journal(s) and other venues	The intended journal for submission and a backup in case of rejection, as well as the names and locations of all congresses, where the data are planned to be presented. Timing for congresses (submission deadlines, presentation deadlines), peer review, journal revisions and page proofs should be documented in the publication plan.
Publication team or steering committee members	If different from the authors and contributors.
Status	For initial manuscripts: draft, submitted, accepted or published. For rejected manuscripts: reformatting, resubmitted, accepted or published. Citations should be recorded for all presented or published work. It is helpful if citations for abstracts, posters and the manuscript describing the same dataset are linked in some way.