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Writing an Expert Opinion article

It is common for a medical writer to come across requests for expert opinion articles. Expert opinion articles are not like any other manuscripts, such as original articles, case reports, or narrative reviews. What makes them different? Quite a lot, actually. I would say they lie somewhere between narrative reviews and consensus statements. Unlike narrative reviews, they are likely to be published only if the authors are KOLs, as opinions of KOLs are likely to get a good readership. Hence, most journals with a high impact factor publish them only by solicitation. While narrative reviews only present a ‘narrative’ of evidence related to a topic, expert opinion articles also present the author’s personal perspective and opinion based on his/her clinical experience. Hence, such articles written by KOLs are sought after. Usually, such articles have a single author; at most 2-3. In case there are multiple authors, the manuscript might not be accepted as an expert opinion article and a process of arriving at a consensus and writing the manuscript as a consensus statement is required. Both types of manuscripts are entirely different from each other; hence, merely changing the title from expert opinion to consensus does not make it a consensus statement article. Narrative reviews could be biased (though ideally, they should not be); however, in the case of expert opinion articles, they definitely should not be biased and strike a good balance in terms of representation of research from all viewpoints- of course, everything supported by scientific evidence.

So, how should one go about writing expert opinion articles? First and foremost, it is a must to know what take home message the author(s) wishes to convey. What are the additional (secondary) message(s) to be conveyed? What are the subtopics the author(s) wishes to cover in the article? It is also important to know what is definitely not to be covered. Once this information is available, the writer needs to search for evidence regarding all subtopics. The evidence should not include only one point of view. All conflicting evidence also needs to be covered. After reading through the literature, it is a good idea first to create an outline, which lists all the headings (sections) the writer plans to break the manuscript into. Under each heading, list the bullet points based on the evidence so that it gives a clear idea of what the section will cover. This outline should be sent to the author(s) for validation, along with a request to add their clinical perspective about each section or as an overall paragraph for the entire manuscript as expert opinion articles are about evidence based medicine. Without the author(s) perspective, the article will look no different from a narrative review. The actual writing should begin only once all of the above information is in place. Also, remember, the article should remain balanced and not try to convince the reader about a single point of view.

The structure of the expert opinion article usually goes as follows:

  1. Key highlights/executive summary if the journal allows it. These are usually 4-5 bullet points that are the take-home messages from the article.
  2. Abstract: This is unstructured and usually 200 words (depending on journal guidelines).
  3. Introduction: This usually begins with the problem and its magnitude, followed by the challenges in addressing the problem, and ends with what the article aims at presenting.
  4. Subtopics: These are 4-5 paragraphs and entirely depend on the content of the manuscript. Each subtopic should present evidence from all perspectives and end with the author(s) perspective.
  5. Another alternative could be a separate section on the author(s) perspectives.
  6. Summary and conclusion: Unlike in original articles, this section can be longer as it summarizes the contents of the article.

The standard length of expert opinion articles is 2500 to 3500 words, but I have seen some journals that allow no more than 700 to 1000 words, which is akin to writing an editorial. In fact, editorials are a form of expert opinion article. These usually have no subsections or abstracts but need to follow the above flow nevertheless. It is the skill of the writer to convey the message(s) in a few words.