Pharmacy Journal: Publishing Pharmaceutical Sciences Research

Pharmaceutical sciences research spans formulation development, pharmacology, pharmacognosy, pharmaceutical analysis, pharmacy practice, clinical pharmacy and regulatory affairs. Each sub-field has its own reporting expectations, and manuscripts are most often returned not because the work was weak but because the reporting was incomplete.

This page sets out what pharmacy journals publish, what a reviewer in this field looks for, the ethics documentation that must accompany human or animal work, and how to prepare a manuscript that can be assessed properly.

Article types commonly published in pharmacy

• Formulation and development studies: novel dosage forms, excipient screening, optimisation designs.
• Analytical method development and validation, typically HPLC, UV or LC-MS.
• In vitro and in vivo pharmacological evaluation.
• Pharmacognosy: extraction, phytochemical screening, standardisation of plant material.
• Pharmacy practice and clinical pharmacy: prescription audits, adverse drug reaction monitoring, adherence studies.
• Pharmacoeconomics and drug utilisation reviews.
• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of therapeutic questions.
• Regulatory and pharmaceutical policy analysis.

What reviewers look for in a pharmaceutical manuscript

The recurring theme is reproducibility. A reviewer must be able to see exactly what was done, with what materials, at what quantities, and how the result was measured. Vague method sections are the single most common reason for a revision request in this field.

• Full materials specification: supplier, grade, batch or lot where relevant.
• Complete formulation tables with quantities, not just proportions.
• Instrument make, model and operating parameters for every analytical measurement.
• Validation parameters where a method is claimed: linearity, accuracy, precision, LOD, LOQ, robustness.
• Sample sizes, replicate counts and the statistical test used, with the significance threshold stated.
• Dissolution media, apparatus type and rotation speed for release studies.
• Storage and stability conditions with the ICH condition referenced where applicable.

Ethics requirements you must document

Any study involving human participants requires prior approval from an Institutional Ethics Committee, and the manuscript must state the committee name, the approval reference number and the date. Informed consent must be described. Studies involving animals require Institutional Animal Ethics Committee approval, with the protocol number stated and the applicable national guidelines referenced.

Retrospective prescription audits and record-based studies are not exempt: they still require ethics clearance and a description of how patient data were anonymised. A manuscript that reports human or animal data without documented approval cannot be published, however good the science is.

Structuring a pharmacy manuscript

Introduction should establish the therapeutic or formulation problem and state precisely what this study adds. Materials and Methods must be reproducible in the sense described above. Results present data with appropriate statistics, using tables for numerical comparisons and figures for trends and chromatograms. Discussion interprets the findings against published work and states limitations honestly — sample size, single-centre design, in vitro-only evidence.

Avoid overclaiming clinical relevance from in vitro results. A reviewer will notice a discussion section that leaps from a dissolution profile to a statement about patient outcomes, and it undermines confidence in the rest of the paper.

Common reasons pharmacy manuscripts are returned

• Ethics approval number missing for human or animal work.
• Statistical test unnamed, or applied to data that do not meet its assumptions.
• Chromatograms reproduced at a resolution where peaks cannot be read.
• Formulation tables giving only ratios, making the work impossible to replicate.
• Analytical method claimed as validated without any validation data reported.
• Conclusions about therapeutic efficacy drawn from purely in vitro evidence.
• Plant material identified only by common name, with no authentication or voucher specimen.

Publishing pharmacy research in IJVAST

IJVAST accepts pharmaceutical sciences submissions as part of its multidisciplinary scope, and routes each manuscript to a reviewer from the relevant subject area rather than a generalist. Papers are published in IEEE two-column format, open access under CC BY 4.0, with an editorial decision targeted within 48 hours of submission.

The publication fee is a flat Rs.1,200 for Indian authors inclusive of 18% GST, or $25 USD for international authors, and includes the certificate of publication. IJVAST is published by SkyInnovate Technologies. Its ISSN application and Crossref DOI membership application are both in progress; until those are granted the journal states this openly rather than displaying a number it does not yet hold.

Frequently asked questions