Tools that Every Freelance Medical Writer Needs

Please release that these are just some of the tools you will need. It is highly advisable, for example, that you hire an accountant to help with business taxes at the end of the year. You will need to register your business and pay taxes throughout the year, too, but these are tools that you will need on a day-to-day basis for your projects.

1. Software to edit PDFs (required)

What is this and why do you need it? This is a program that allows you to underline or highlight in your references. If you are a medical writer who writes for medical communication companies or pharmaceutical companies, this is absolutely mandatory; you are required to identify material cited in your paper.

Options:

• Nitro PDF If you are starting out and not working on material that will go through regulatory review (as in it is only for the internal team to use for fact-checking), consider using Nitro PDF. Search for discount codes on the internet, too, before purchasing. You can usually find enough discounts to purchase it for ~$50.00.
• Adobe Acrobat Professional or Adobe Acrobat X is usually at least a few hundred dollars (see the Adobe website). However, there are companies that actually require you to use this program in a certain way according to their own guidelines to mark up (highlight, underline) your references. This program is also more powerful in my experience than Nitro PDF.  If you want to first evaluate the program  before spending a few hundred dollars, the company does allow you to download it for a free trial period of approximately one month.

2. Reference Manager software (recommended)

Sometimes some of the articles will require you to list not one but hundreds of articles, and the reference manager can help you keep track of the references. This is recommended rather than required because in my experience, most companies prefer that you do not put in the reference numbers yourself because they often have a reference manager that they use. So instead you may be asked to use code numbers for your references.

Please notice that Mendeley and Zotero are free;  I would highly recommend that you learn how to use one of these resources.

Options:

• Refman or Endnote: These are usually a few hundred dollars and you can download it for free for a month before deciding if it is the best program for you
• Mendeley:  The benefits of Mendeley are as follows: it is free (although it may cost if you go beyond a certain point), very easy to use within minutes, and you can easily organize your PDFs with it; I think of it as itunes for PDFs. Other great features of this program are that it extracts information from the paper so you don’t even have to type it in (but do check it, it sometimes makes mistakes). Based on the papers that you download it will recommend other papers. You can access your paper anywhere (ipad, iphone). This youtube video will provide a demonstration of the things that Mendeley can do.
• Zotero: Zotero is also free. I did not have a chance to evaluate this program, but you can see the company website or a blog post by Profhacker describing Zotero..

3. Journal subscription (optional). Typically your client provides the articles for you. However, you may prefer to have access to 1 or 2 journals. The New England Journal of Medicine, for example, is only $100/year and allows you to keep up with the industry throughout the year.

4. Books (optional)

As these are likely to be tax deductable, keep your receipts.