Why don’t medicinal chemists from industry publish anymore?

In 1993, the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry (JMC) published similar numbers of papers by chemists working in industry and by those in academia.

Three decades on, the figures have changed drastically: the number of industry authors in the journal has fallen, from 526 in 1993 to 154 in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of authors working in academia or government has more than doubled, from 566 in 1993 to 1,345 in 2023.

Looking at it another way, in 1993, the numbers of academic and industrial chemists who published papers in JMC were roughly equal. In 2023, nearly nine times as many academic chemists published as industrial ones did.

What’s more, in 1993, 6 out of the 10 most common affiliations of authors who submitted papers to JMC were companies. In 2023, none in the top 10 were, an analysis published in JMC in April found. In 2023, 8 out of the 10 most common affiliations of authors submitting to JMC were Chinese universities, none of which were in the top 10 in 1993.

The sharp drop in journal papers by medicinal chemists working in industry may be due to outsourcing of chemistry to contract research firms that aren’t allowed to publish research on behalf of their clients, chemists changing jobs more frequently than in the past, and companies being more secretive to protect their intellectual property, among other factors.

The discrepancy in publication trends between industry- and academia-affiliated authors was the topic of a recent editorial meeting at the journal, according to Dean Brown, a chemist who is head of research at the Boston-based biotechnology firm Jnana Therapeutics and who edits perspectives articles at JMC.

The meeting prompted Brown to take a closer look at JMC’s data and publish the analysis as an editorial outlining his findings. “It confirmed what I thought,” he says, referring to the sharp decrease in the number of industry chemists publishing in JMC.

While Brown didn’t analyze other journals that medicinal chemists publish in, he says JMC’s figures are likely representative of wider industry trends because the publication has long been a top choice for medicinal chemists, and he doesn’t think it likely that industry-affiliated authors started publishing elsewhere.

A 2020 analysis published by JMC backs that view. It evaluated the bibliometric data of seven medicinal chemistry journals (including JMC itself) from the period between 2000 and 2019 and found that although the total number of papers doubled during that period, the output from chemists at large pharmaceutical companies declined significantly.

That’s not to say that drug industry chemists aren’t doing publication-worthy science anymore but that those who are aren’t writing about it.

“A lot of excellent science carried out to very high standards, which would be immensely helpful to the whole scientific community, is just not published,” says Simon McDonald, director of the medicinal chemistry consulting firm RGDscience and a coauthor of the 2020 analysis. “The whole art and discipline of writing scientific papers makes you a better scientist.”

Although publishing papers didn’t earn him many accolades when he worked in industry, McDonald says, his body of published work has helped him showcase his expertise since he left industry and started his consultancy work. “When I left, I needed to rely on it,” he says. “It’s been very helpful.”

Brown doesn’t have data on chemistry career paths to determine whether fewer chemists are now going into industry than were 2 or 3 decades ago, a trend that could explain the decline in the number of papers being published by industry chemists.

But what is clear from anecdotal evidence, Brown says, is that medicinal chemists have been moving from big pharmaceutical companies to small biotechnology firms, leaving behind their projects, notes, and past work, ingredients that they would need to publish papers with full backstories. “They just don’t have a story to tell,” he says. “I think that’s a large part of the trend.”

Another factor that may be contributing to the decline in publishing by industry medicinal chemists is the fact that pharmaceutical companies have increasingly outsourced research to contract research organizations (CROs) and manufacturing to contract development and manufacturing organizations (CDMOs).

“That’s much more difficult to publish on than when these organizations had internal chemists in the past, and they could develop a chemistry story, and that in and of itself was very nicely publishable material that the CRO model just doesn’t facilitate,” Brown says.

Kenneth Drew, vice president of the US division of Flamma, an Italian CDMO, says he’s not surprised by the editorial’s findings.

Using the example of small molecules, Drew says CROs are typically tasked with producing small quantities (less than 1 g) of compounds relevant to a research project, while CDMOs are responsible for doing the process chemistry work to scale up output of promising molecules. At CDMOs, “there’s a lot of interesting science that goes around trying to figure out how to scale a molecule and shorten the synthetic route and make it more efficient,” he says.

But Drew says Flamma and other outsourcing organizations are not allowed to publish this research without the customer’s consent. “The customer either owns the work done or we use our own proprietary knowledge but provide that at no cost to the customer,” he says. “In turn, it makes no sense to share our trade secrets with our competitors.”

For example, Flamma has been working on amino acids since 1950. “There is huge internal knowledge of how to make, for instance, specialty amino acids that would be really wonderful to publish and put out into the industry,” he says. “But then you’re basically giving everybody the keys to the kingdom.”

Another factor, Drew says, is that industrial chemists nowadays move jobs more often than they did in years past. “I’m almost an outlier being at my company for the last 15 years,” he says.

Leaving a company means chemists may not have access to the same labs or research to publish studies, he adds. And these days, researchers may be more focused on securing their next role than publishing past work. With so many other outcomes and goals in mind, publishing results seems to be low on the radar, Drew says.

Since medicinal chemists in industry aren’t likely to publish about their companies’ next great drug until it’s approved, their papers typically fall into two categories. In the first are papers about drugs that failed to work and that the firm has given up on; the second includes papers on drugs they have already patented and, often, commercialized.

“If a chemist has been working on a project that isn’t going to lead to a marketable drug, then getting their synthetic methods in the literature helps the entire community to do their work more efficiently,” says Anthony Czarnik, a chemist and inventor who has cofounded five biotech companies and is now an adjunct professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

But many journals don’t accept papers reporting negative results—often referred to as the file drawer problem—creating an overly sunny view in the scientific literature of the drug industry’s success, Brown notes. “I’m not asking any journals to lower their standards,” he says, but journals should make space for what may be teachable opportunities for the medicinal chemistry community.

While medicinal chemists can have an impactful career in drug discovery without publishing papers, Brown says doing so is rewarding. He also recommends that industry chemists take advantage of other forms of scientific communication such as engaging with others on social media, giving academic talks, and presenting scientific posters. Without such participation, “I just think it’s a missed opportunity for their scientific growth and development,” he says.

Another way for industry chemists to keep in touch with their peers would be for them to write review articles, perspectives, or editorials, Brown says. “That will allow those scientists to write about something that isn’t proprietary but will get some notice in the community.”