About

Aims and scope

Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice (formerly known as Southern Med Review) provides a platform for researchers to disseminate empirical research findings with the aim that people everywhere have access to the medicines they need and be able to use them rationally.

The Journal encompasses all aspects of pharmacy including clinical, social, administration, and economics. It also covers pharmaceutical aspects of healthcare policy, providing a platform to researchers, academics and practitioners from around the world to share evidence, concerns and perspectives on pharmacy systems, management, ethics, and financial analysis.

Open access

All articles published by Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers. Further information about open access can be found here.

As authors of articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice you are the copyright holders of your article and have granted to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate your article, according to the BMC license agreement.

For those of you who are US government employees or are prevented from being copyright holders for similar reasons, BMC can accommodate non-standard copyright lines. Please contact us if further information is needed.

Article processing charges (APC)

Authors who publish open access in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice are required to pay an article processing charge (APC). The APC price will be determined from the date on which the article is accepted for publication.

The current APC, subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, is: £1590.00/$2390.00/€1990.00

Visit our open access support portal and our Journal Pricing FAQs for further information.

For information about the APC applicable for articles accepted for publication next year, please see our journal lists.

Open access funding

Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.

Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs. Learn more about our open access agreements to check your eligibility and discover whether this journal is included.

Springer Nature offers APC waivers and discounts for articles published in our fully open access journals whose corresponding authors are based in the world’s lowest income countries (see our APC waivers and discounts policy for further information). Requests for APC waivers and discounts from other authors will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need (see our open access policies for journals for more information). All applications for discretionary APC waivers and discounts should be made at the point of manuscript submission; requests made during the review process or after acceptance are unable to be considered.

Indexing services

All articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice are included in:

BFI List
CAB Abstracts
CNKIChinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) – GeOA
DOAJ
Dimensions
EBSCO Academic Search
EBSCO Discovery Service
EMBASE
Emerging Sources Citation Index
Gale
Google Scholar
International Pharmaceutical Abstracts
National Library of New Zealand
Naver
OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service
ProQuest Central
ProQuest Health & Medical Collection
ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Database
ProQuest Pharma Collection
ProQuest-Ex Libris Primo
ProQuest-Ex Libris Summon
PubMed Central
Reaxys
SCImago
ScopusTD Net Discovery Service
UGC-CARE List (India)
WHO's Essential Medicines Documentation Database

The full text of all articles is deposited in digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. You can also access all articles published by BioMed Central on SpringerLink.

We are working closely with relevant indexing services including Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics) to ensure that articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice will be available in their databases when appropriate.

Peer-review policy

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. You can read more about the peer-review process here.

Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers do not know the names or affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to the authors are anonymous.

Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

Benefits of double-blind peer review
Double-blind peer review allows reviewers to judge the manuscript based on content alone, and are not biased by knowledge of who the authors are.

Editorial policies

All manuscripts submitted to Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice should adhere to BioMed Central's editorial policies.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Citing articles in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice

Articles in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice should be cited in the same way as articles in a traditional journal. Because articles are not printed, they do not have page numbers; instead, they are given a unique article number.

Article citations follow this format:

Authors: Title. J Pharm Policy and Pract [year], [volume number]:[article number].

e.g. Roberts LD, Hassall DG, Winegar DA, Haselden JN, Nicholls AW, Griffin JL: Increased hepatic oxidative metabolism distinguishes the action of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor delta from Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor gamma in the Ob/Ob mouse. J Pharm Policy and Pract 2009, 1:115.

refers to article 115 from Volume 1 of the journal.

Appeals and complaints

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should follow the procedure outlined in the BMC Editorial Policies .

Benefits of publishing with BMC

High visibility

Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice's open access policy allows maximum visibility of articles published in the journal as they are available to a wide, global audience.

Speed of publication

Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice offers a fast publication schedule whilst maintaining rigorous peer review; all articles must be submitted online, and peer review is managed fully electronically (articles are distributed in PDF form, which is automatically generated from the submitted files). Articles will be published with their final citation after acceptance, in both fully browsable web form, and as a formatted PDF.

Flexibility

Online publication in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice gives you the opportunity to publish large datasets, large numbers of color illustrations and moving pictures, to display data in a form that can be read directly by other software packages so as to allow readers to manipulate the data for themselves, and to create all relevant links (for example, to PubMed, to sequence and other databases, and to other articles).

Promotion and press coverage

Articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice are included in article alerts and regular email updates. Some may be highlighted on Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice’s pages and on the BMC homepage.

In addition, articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice may be promoted by press releases to the general or scientific press. These activities increase the exposure and number of accesses for articles published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice. A list of articles recently press-released by journals published by BMC is available here.

Copyright

As an author of an article published in Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice you retain the copyright of your article and you are free to reproduce and disseminate your work (for further details, see the BMC license agreement).

For further information about the advantages of publishing in a journal from BMC, please click here.