Should a Company Continue to Publish as it Grows?
In a previous post, we wrote about how publishing a manuscript can - for a recently founded small company - be an extremely helpful exercise in any number of ways beyond simply adding a line or two on a founder’s CV. This is especially true when the new enterprise is trying to attract and influence key opinion leaders or potential investors.
What about for a more developed, more mature enterprise - are publications still important? Should you continue to publish? For many, the answer is yes.
While the many reasons you should publish may be predictable, in some cases it is probably not for the reasons you might expect.
As a company matures from the start-up/seed funding stage to a more mature enterprise — perhaps already firmly ensconced in a Series B or Series C funding round or further — there is still value to publishing your work. A critical parsing of development items and making others aware of your growing patent estate, exploring new indications for related new chemical entities not related to your lead compounds or examining compounds not part of an ongoing development path, all of these can be examined and discussed in publications or conference submissions. No less an authority than notable engineer and entrepreneur Dr. Robert Langer, when asked what advice he would give scientist-entrepreneurs said: “Do great science. Don't sacrifice publishing good science to be secretive.”[1]
Still, while there is clearly a need to manage what information you do release, some feel they should avoid publishing too much. Perhaps this would be data from a trial that is unrelated to a primary clinical goal (subgroup analyses!), or certainly a more common finding, study points that produce negative results. Surprisingly, on the other side of the coin, this could include data from clinical trials that support an approved drug. Lee et al. reported that more than 50% of all supporting trials for FDA-approved drugs remained unpublished more than five years after approval.[2] It is certain that many of these data points would include results that would not only be clinically meaningful, but also additional points that may be used to support programs and potentially continued development in other therapeutic areas or a more specific patient population. Moreover, while clinicaltrials.gov is a widely used resource, it does not track the complete story about any therapeutic.
Lastly, there has long been a sense in the scientific community that there is no value in publishing negative results, a belief that has been reinforced by many sources both local and beyond. Let’s be clear, a well-done experiment is a well-done experiment, and there may well be value or scientific insight in a negative result. Some journals are now moving towards a stance of publishing critically planned and executed experiments that produce negative results. A recent article on the PLoS blog “EveryONE” may say it best, “While negative and null results can often be overlooked — by authors and publishers alike — their publication is equally as important as positive outcomes and can help fill in critical gaps in the scientific record.”[3]
We couldn’t agree more.
[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2014/11/robert-langer-creating-things-could-change-world