INFORMATION MANAGEMENT The Pharma Documentation Ring provides a forum for members to exchange experience and cooperate on projects of common interest, as well as serving as a platform for the information industry to gauge the views and attitudes of its industrial customers. Overview of Activities of the PDR ed to rationalize their efforts by joint- To help tackle the volume of sci- by Y. Dubosc ly abstracting and coding the scientif- entific literature in the biomedical area and A. Mullen ic literature and patents7 on account of in a systematic way, the five PDR the rapid growth of published materi- companies, besides generating and als. This latter development is depict- exchanging top-quality abstracts, also developed Ringcode,9 which com- THE PHARMA DOCUMENTATION RING ed in Figure 1. (PDR) is an international corporate- bines structural fragmentation codes based organization that focuses on and a system for biomedical concepts, The rapid growth in the amount of initially designed for punched cards activities involving scientific informa- available information over the last few tion and documentation for the phar- that were exchanged among the mem- years has been aptly described by the maceutical industry.15 ber companies. This system was in term information explosion. For fact one of the first mechanized doc- The PDR has several main objec- example, in the 19th century it took umentation tools. tives, such as the exchange of experi- 100 years for the total amount of infor- ence and views among members and mation to double. Since approximate- Due to the efficiency of this the initiation of the development of ly 1960, on the other hand, informa- approach, a number of other pharma- new information services, as well as tion has been doubling every 46 ceutical companies joined the PDR, as the enhancement of the performan- years. can be appreciated from Figure 2, ce of existing commercial information which traces the steady increase in 5,6 growth of the organization from its systems for the mutual benefit of The number of records in online the R&D-based pharmaceutical indus- inauguration in 1958. and other databases has increased try. 8 100% every 4 years since 1983. In However, as the dramatic expan- A brief history addition, between 1987 and 1991, the sion of the biomedical literature dur- The PDR was founded in 1958 by number of online searches conducted ing the 1960s was not paralleled by the five companiesBayer, Ciba, Knoll, via the most important U.S. host com- same increase in manpower of infor- E. Merck and Thomae, who decid- puters doubled to 40 million per year.8 mation departments, PDR companies DN&P 7(9), November 1994 551 were prompted to look for a commer- cial organization able to take over their tasks. For this reason, in 1964 the sci- entific literature component of docu- mentation activities was transferred to Derwent Publications, London, which had launched a punched card-based documentation system for pharmaceu- tical patents in 1963. The new com- mercial documentation service for bio- medical literature was called Ringdoc (now known as Derwent Drug File) and combined PDRs Ringcode with the Codeless Scanning System of Hoffmann-La Roche/Sandoz. PDR companies continued to process the coding of patents in the pharmaceutical and agricultural areas using Ringcode, because the quality of the alternative commercial coding sys- tems was judged inadequate. For this reason, during the 1960s other phar- maceutical companies joined the PDR: Boehringer Mannheim, Diamant (now Roussel Uclaf), Duphar, Gruenenthal, Fig. 1. Growth of information. Rhône-Poulenc, Roussel Uclaf, Sche- ring and Troponwerke (now Bayer). In 1968, the PDR companies expressed the need for better access to chemical reaction documentation. A reaction-coding system based on Ringcode was established10,11 and it was initially decided to code Theil- heimers Synthetic Methods of Or- ganic Chemistry series using this tech- nique. Similar considerations to those involving the biomedical literature caused the system to be transferred to Derwent Publications in 1974, togeth- er with the reaction coding of Volumes 125 of Theilheimer. The new com- mercial service was called Chemical Reactions Documentation Service (CRDS). During the 1970s, the PDR contin- ued to grow smoothly with, for exam- ple BASF, Byk Gulden, Chemie Werk Homburg (now Asta Medica) and Wellcome joining. During these years, the PDR in fact continued to study12 and process pharmaceutical and agri- cultural patents using its Ringcode and to evaluate ways for the computerized coding of Markush formulae.1315 Fig. 2. Milestones of the PDR. However, this work was more and 552 DN&P 7(9), November 1994 more challenged, due to the increasing lines, as well as to redefine the aims, mon work and meetings, as well as by quality of the coding of patents by membership conditions, organization closely cooperating with information Derwent Publications and the advent and activities of the PDR. suppliers. of the online age in Europe, encom- passing enhanced retrieval features, The aim of the PDR is to attain Membership such as, for example, the combination improved access and coverage and to PDR members represent scientific of manual and punched codes in the achieve better distribution and opti- information and documentation Derwent patent file. In 1978, it was mum use of the chemical, biomedical, departments of R&D-based pharma- decided to discontinue the recoding of pharmaceutical, scientific and patent ceutical firms and chemical companies patents. literature for the common benefit: involved in medicinal chemistry. The progressive decrease in coding l by promoting the exchange of expe- Conditions of PDR membership activities inside the PDR meant that rience and ideas among members in At this juncture, it would perhaps the organization went through a reori- non-confidential areas of work; be opportune to briefly outline the entation phase. Energies were released l by jointly studying and assessing conditions attached to membership in for activities related to improving existing commercial and non-com- the PDR (Fig. 3). Members vote on existing commercial information mercial products and services for the tools: the PDRs MedicalBiological any new application for membership. purpose of improvement; Committee, in particular, met regular- ly during this period and helped cat- l by initiating and encouraging the Normally, a corporate group is rep- alyze and pioneer many improvements development of new information ser- resented by a single membership in the in the Derwent literature databases. vices tailored to the needs of the PDR, affiliated and subsidiary compa- pharmaceutical industry; and nies of a particular group being cov- After the PDR relinquished its l by providing a forum for the infor- ered by this membership. Exceptions activities as a database producer and mation industry operating in the to this general rule have been made in developer of indexing systems, during pharmaceutical sector. the past when existing member com- the 1980s a new focal point was found panies became a part of a larger cor- for the organization: that of exchang- The association achieves its aims porate group which, for example, sub- ing experience and intensively testing through its own efforts and by com- sequently became a PDR member. commercial systems and databases of interest to the R&D-based pharmaceu- tical industry. As a result, there was a steady growth in membership of the PDR, which began to surge from 1990 onwards to the present 30 member companies. In its new role, the PDR provides an international platform to discuss and propose improvements for data- bases in the pharmaceutical area. Re- cently, presentations were made and joint papers published on the follow- ing topics: drug information files on development compounds,16 biomed- ical databases1719 and reaction files.20 Guidelines and aims The PDR was a registered associa- tion in Germany from 1958 to 1984. As such, it was governed by statutes that defined objectives and activities. From 1984, although the status of being a registered association was dis- solved to simplify administration, the core part of the original statutes con- tinued to be considered valid. It was, however, recently decided to update and replace them with new guide- Fig. 3. PDR membership conditions. DN&P 7(9), November 1994 553 Membership fees are not exacted. Members must, however, commit to make a positive contribution to the work of the PDR by actively participat- ing in meetings and working groups. Overview of current PDR members The present 30 member companies of the PDR are depicted in Figure 4. PDR companies represent more than 50% of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies worldwide, based either on R&D expenditure or turnover. It is estimated that those R&D-intensive PDR companies invested on average 16% of their pharmaceutical turnover in R&D in 1992 (source: IPS, Wood-Mackenzie, 1993). Another survey,21 conducted by the Dutch ABN-AMRO Bank, showed that in 1991 some 18 of the top 20 European-based pharmaceutical com- panies by R&D expenditure were PDR members. A recent study22 based on the New Chemical Entities (NCEs) introduced Fig. 4. Present corporate members of the PDR. by the leading 25 international phar- maceutical companies during the peri- od 19611990 indicated that PDR member organizations had more than a 60% share of the 961 NCEs listed. Thus, PDR members represent organizations that account for a major sector of the international pharmaceu- tical R&D community. The R&D headquarters of Euro- pean-based PDR companies as well as the European sites of major U.S. phar- maceutical PDR companies are spread over the following eight countries (in parentheses the number of members) (Fig. 5): l Denmark (1); l France (3); l Germany (11); l The Netherlands (2); l Norway (1); l Sweden (2); l Switzerland (2); and l United Kingdom (8).