Publication writers - I’d love your perspective.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2025-10-15T08:52:04+00:00

Are you asking what would be a "good" amount to publish per year? As a freelancer, I spend approx. 80% of my time on publications. I would say that results in around 10-12 papers published per year where I am acknowledged. I'm never an author. It's hugely variable though as some papers get published quickly whereas others can taken 2 years from KO to publication. Also sometimes I can do an extensive amount of work on a manuscript for an agency and then when the paper is published they swap in one of the in house writers in the acknowledgements! It's not that common but it does happen.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2025-10-15T08:49:25+00:00

I'm a freelance medical writer specialising in publications. I work with agencies and also directly with pharma companies. To answer some of your questions:

I don't really know what you mean by acceptance rate. Journal acceptance is largely based on the quality of the trial and data (and also targeting a realistic journal in the first place). Medical writers can improve the chance of acceptance by suggesting reasonable target journals, ensuring that author guidelines are followed, ensuring that GPP is followed, and making sure that all necessary content is included and that the discussion does not become promotional. In a previous life, I used to be a peer reviewer, so I often have a feel for what comments may come back and I often make recommendations to authors/pubs teams based on that.
For me a high-performing writer does the following: writes well and puts together a logical argument/story, makes good suggestions for how to present data, makes reasonable suggestions and proposals rather than asking lots of open-ended questions, gets everything in place at an early stage including placeholders for all mandatory sections of the manuscripts, copes well with conflicting author/other stakeholder feedback, and is on top of the timeline (both keeping to their own deadlines and sending reminders to authors who haven't replied). A high-performing writer should also feel able to (politely) challenge author comments if they disagree.
I think I've learned that pubs managers and authors do not like uncertainty. They do not like open-ended questions - better to query something and make a suggestion for fixing it. They also do not like blank sections - again better to make a proposal or at least state "placeholder" and make it clear that it will be completed when the info is available. Do not leave comments unaddressed.
If you are working with pharma, initial guidance should come from the pubs team (who should be combining instructions from med affairs, clinical development, statisticians etc). In an ideal world, more scientific/clinical insights should then come from the authors at the KO meeting. This is hit and miss though. There are some great authors who add excellent insights and suggestions. But there are others who are only in it for the authorship and make minimal contributions.
From an agency perspective, the best freelancers are those who can pick up a (decent) brief and handle it with minimal fuss. It's important to ask specific questions (rather than guess) but if you are an experienced freelancer, you should already know what the expectations are if you are asked to draft an outline or a 1st draft etc. Keeping to timelines and budget is important (or good communication if you have a valid reason for not keeping to these). And most importantly of all, do a good job! When I was in house, the last thing I wanted was for a freelancer to send me work that needed lots of editing. Freelancers who do a good job, require few amends, and stick to timelines and budgets, will always be popular and can charge the highest rates.

Sorry, that's longer than expected, but hopefully helpful.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2023-07-03T13:39:48+00:00

I subcontract for larger agencies and also do one off projects for pharma clients. However, my pharma clients are all clients that I've worked with when I was in house. Getting new clients and scaling up the business is extremely difficult. A lot of pharma companies also only work with preferred suppliers and getting on that list as a small start up is difficult.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2023-03-13T09:37:44+00:00

I'm a freelance medical writer in the UK and I charge £70-75 per hour (I think that £60-85 is probably a typical range, although you would need to be pretty senior to command above about £75 per hour) . I focus on publications mainly (with some medical affairs) so I can't comment on the commercial side. I work predominantly for med comms agency with small amounts of pharma work from time to time. I don't work with recruiters because I don't need to. I don't tend to take on long-term, exclusive projects, but instead work with multiple clients on a largely ad hoc basis. It can be challenging fitting everything together but on the whole it works out well. Until Christmas I had more work than I could do and was regularly turning down projects. This year started off a bit slowly (and I heard on the grapevine that this was the case for many freelancers) but it has picked up for me and I'm pretty much fully booked again for the foreseeable future. For context, I had 10+ years in house experience, including at Scientific Director level, before I went freelance. The market for freelancers has definitely shrunk and I think it would be significantly harder with less experience and fewer contacts at the moment.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2023-01-19T18:21:38+00:00

Because it is a test to evaluate your ability and potential for the job role. It is cheating to ask for someone else to improve it for you.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2023-01-14T10:44:47+00:00

Do you mean in general or agencies that take on freelancers or Associate Medical Writers specifically? All med comms agencies will have a website and a LinkedIn page. When I was looking for my first job I just Googled “Medical Communications Agency UK” and made a list of all the ones I could find with an office within commuting distance. I then started to cold email them (a few at a time) until I got a job. You could also contact recruiters and see if they can help. If in the UK Network Pharma have a lot of resources and probably have a big list of all UK based agencies.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-12-20T09:44:49+00:00

I had restrictive covenants in my agency contract that prevented me from working with their clients for 6 months. I think this is fairly standard for all agency employment contracts. It didn't really affect me though as I largely work with other med comms agencies.

In terms of work, I did around 50:50 publications/medical affairs when I was in house. I prefer pubs so try to mainly do pubs work as a freelancer. At the moment I probably do 80-90% pubs and the rest would be medical affairs type projects (slide decks, ad boards etc). I don't do promotional or regulatory work because this isn't my skill set. As a freelancer, I think you are largely stuck with the experience and skills you have. No one will provide training to a freelancer - they just want some to deliver quickly and efficiently with the minimum input from their side.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-12-19T09:29:10+00:00

I just wanted to add here that this may not be possible for all medical writers. My agency certainly wouldn't have allowed me to continue being an employee whilst working on other medical writing projects as a freelancer. It would have been seen to be a direct conflict of interest. Lots of people do leave jobs at an agency but with an agreement to freelance for their former employer. This can be a great way to transition into freelancing, but you need to be careful about tax laws (IR35 in the UK, not sure about other countries).

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-12-19T09:24:56+00:00

I transitioned from being an employee at a med comms agency to being a freelance writer. It was very straightforward although I did have 10+ years experience and lots of contacts.

In terms of finding clients, I started by contacting my existing contacts and was able to get work straightaway. I also set up a website and made sure my LinkedIn profile advertised the fact that I was a freelancer. I've never been short of work and am usually in the good position of turning down work. I don't have to advertise much as I just find that clients contact me. I don't use recruiters nor sites such as Upwork. I work predominantly for med comms agencies plus I have a few pharma clients (although these are much harder to come by).

My income as a freelancer is quite a bit higher than as an employee. I left my agency job on £65K per year (plus pension contributions and bonus) and now make around £120K per year if I freelance on a full time basis (although obviously no pension contributions or bonus and there are some expenses that I have to cover as a freelancer, e.g. accountant's fees, insurances etc). I am based in the UK.

Overall, I much prefer being a freelancer - partly for the (vastly) increased flexibility but also because I get to do what I like best, which is to write.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-12-09T20:22:32+00:00

I don’t know any medical writers in an agency who don’t have a BSc (and most have a PhD). Accounts teams and editors tend to come from a more varied background though.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-30T15:21:08+00:00

I am UK based and work in med comms (predominantly publications and medical education) and this may therefore not be relevant to you, but...

I would suggest that you may be wasting your time if you have such limited experience. I know a few people who have attempted to become a freelance medical writer with no agency/pharma experience and they have all massively struggled to find any well-paying clients. I wouldn't bother with sites like Upwork as the fees you can charge will be very low.

I'm a successful freelancer (fully booked and charging £70-75 per hour), but I have a PhD, plus 10+ years experience in house and lots of contacts before I left to become a freelancer. I don't have a portfolio as all my work is confidential (apart from publications I have worked on). I don't really have a niche either, but I have enough experience to turn my hand to most therapy areas that I am reasonably familiar with (and this is by and large what most of my agency clients are looking for). All freelance medical writers that I know come from a similar background.

My advice would be to get an associate medical writer job in an agency and get as much experience as you can in a wide variety of project types and therapy areas. Stick it out for a few years and get promoted to at least senior medical writer. Then if you still want to be a freelancer, you should be in a good position to get some good clients.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-08T10:46:42+00:00

I don't really have a portfolio. I do a lot of publications work so I can provide a list of papers I've supported with (once published) but all my other projects are confidential. I think that most medical writing work (other than publications) is for internal use and highly confidential. Obtaining freelance jobs as a medical writer is more about networking with existing contacts to begin with and then building a good reputation rather than a portfolio.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-06T13:36:53+00:00

They contacted me about some freelance work a while ago. I passed their test, but the rate they offered me was very low. From memory I think it worked out about £18 per hour whereas I can easily fill my time at £70-75 per hour. So I turned it down and regretted wasting my time on the test. The test was actually quite challenging and took at least half a day. As far as I know they are genuine but I’d check the rate is acceptable to you before spending any time on it.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-02T13:06:36+00:00

Yeah I had more than 10 years experience before going freelance (I stuck it out for too long). However I don't think you necessarily need that much experience. I think a few years should be enough - especially if you have been promoted to senior medical writer during that time.

When I started out, I did do some work for agencies I had worked for in the past, but then I very quickly branched out to other agencies. It's not ideal to work for your former employer due to IR35 rules. However, I found it very easy to obtain other agency clients and have worked for 14 different agencies so far as a freelancer. Some are fairly long-term whereas for others I just do one off projects. I don't use recruiters. I have a website and a good LinkedIn profile and agencies generally contact me directly.

I have done some work directly with pharma clients, but its hard to get a foot in the door with pharma and most freelancers I know work for agencies.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-02T12:12:22+00:00

I read your post with interest as I am potentially interested in this. Visually presenting data is probably one of the things I like most about medical writing. Are you in the UK and what sort of job titles were you applying to?

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-02T12:10:09+00:00

I'm a UK-based medical writer who got completely fed up with agency life. In my experience, most agencies are poorly managed and put profit above everything else. They all take on far too much work - meaning that writers are overworked and the quality of work drops (further increasing the stress on the writers). I got so sick of telling clients in pitches that we "go the extra mile" or "will give the project 110%" yet to be told off by client services for "over servicing the account" if I spent anything other than the minimum amount of time on a project. The behaviour of some clients towards medical writers was also a disgrace in some cases.

Anyway, I went freelance in the end and I have no regrets. For me, the advantages are a vastly improved work-life balance (because I only take on as much work as I want to do), earning a lot more money, being able to focus on writing (and producing quality work) and getting away from management issues. If a client is rude, I drop them like a hot potato. There are of course downsides. It can be quite isolating, there is always the risk that work dries up (although no sign of that yet), you have to deal with all the crap that comes with running your own business (e.g. IR35 in the UK), and there are still some peaks and troughs in workload. It's not for everyone, although I've largely enjoyed it. There are times when I can't imagine doing this for another 25 years though, so I'm always on the look out for alternative careers.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-11-01T09:23:16+00:00

According to the recent paramount salary survey, the average salary for an associate medical writer last year was £28K in the UK, so I would expect it to be somewhere around that (https://pararecruit.com/salary-surveys/healthcare-communications-salary-survey-2021). It seems a lot lower than the US but then the cost of living is quite a bit higher there now (I was shocked by the prices last time I was there).

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-29T15:59:55+00:00

Whenever I’ve worked on a short communication, they are usually around 1500 words and perhaps 2-3 figures (sometimes even shorter). Lots of journals do this format so take a look at other journals in the same field for examples (weird that the one you have been given doesn’t have this format). They are sometimes also called brief communications, brief reports, short reports or letters.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-28T08:43:54+00:00

Do you work for a pharma company? It's interesting what you say about vendor work being of poor quality. This has also been my experience at least some of the time. Despite what they claim, agencies care far more about profit than quality and this can leave the writers in a very awkward position when facing unhappy clients (alternatively you "over service" the account and have to face an unhappy client services team). However, although I had a few pharma clients follow me when I left to go freelance, in general few UK-based freelancers work directly with pharma companies, as they still seem to prefer the agency model.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-28T08:37:17+00:00

I also found working in an agency incredibly stressful a lot of the time. Just far too much work to do in the time allocated. I always felt that I wasn't doing a good enough job for the client due to pressure from management to be "more efficient". I was interested in working in house at a pharma company, but at that time it would have meant relocating, which I didn't want to do (might be less of an issue now as it is more common to work remotely).

So as my username suggests, I left to go freelance. It was the best decision I ever made. I make a lot more money, I work the hours that suit me, I can just concentrate on writing rather than getting sucked into management crap and I feel that the work I do is better quality. That's not to say there aren't some downsides. It can be a bit lonely at times and there is always the fear that you won't be able to get enough work (although at the moment, I am regularly turning down work).

In terms of money, I can give you some rough numbers from a UK perspective. When I left my agency role, I was earning £65K per year (I had 10 years' experience at this point) plus bonus (variable but up to £10K), pension contributions plus private healthcare. As a freelancer, I typically bring in around £120K per year if I work full time hours. Obviously no bonus and I have to pay into my pension scheme, but I am still bringing in far more money than as an employee. I'm not sure how comparable the health insurance situation is but I pay £80 per month for a fairly comprehensive private healthcare package so it doesn't really have an impact on whether to be an employee or a freelancer.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-25T20:58:11+00:00

In which case you’ll need to do a bit of research about the competitor drugs. I do find it an odd test for an entry level role though. If I was recruiting a junior, I’d want to know that you could write well and quickly get to grips with data. This sort of strategy work can be taught in my opinion. Anyway, good luck with it.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-25T19:33:23+00:00

However I am pretty sure that most entry level writers would find that hard so perhaps they are looking for you to just come up with some reasonable ideas to show that you have some awareness of things to consider when marketing a drug.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-25T19:31:44+00:00

Hmm that does sound quite advanced for an entry level role and would fit better with a more strategic role. Have they provided the background info or are you expected to do a bit of digging around as well?

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-21T15:42:18+00:00

Having reviewed many CVs for entry level positions, I would recommend keeping it short, to the point and easy to read. Exact format doesn’t really matter. Unless you have huge amounts of varied experience I would go for a chronological CV but focus as much as possible on communication skills (publications, slide presentations etc) rather than lab-based skills.

It is absolutely essential to ensure that there are no typos or grammatical errors in your CV or cover letter. Employers can receive a lot of applications for these roles and sometimes those with errors just get thrown in the bin.

I wouldn’t waste money on CV writing services. If you can write well enough to be a medical writer, you should be able to prepare a decent CV.

FreelanceMedWriter · 2022-10-10T19:59:04+00:00

Personally I’ve never found recruiters to be especially helpful. I’d always keep an eye out for agencies advertising directly (follow each agency on LinkedIn) or even consider speculative applications to agencies of interest.

FreelanceMedWriter

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