Legitimizing medical writing: Self-regulation or regulatory escape?

Legitimizing medical writing – Self-regulation or regulatory escape? If medical ghostwriting is acknowledged, does it become medical writing? This article explores how the pharmaceutical and medical writing industries answer this question in their publication guidelines. I used mixed methods, i.e., clustering and qualitative data analyses, to identify the major topics and key definitions, like ‘authorship’, that frame the lexicon in these guidelines. The results suggest that ghostwriting and ghost management are dissociated from publication planning, and defined by a new lexicon. Shared among most guidelines, this lexicon suggests the legitimation of publication planning.