https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1051-3240
In December 2008, Southern Med Review was launched at the University of Auckland and the aim was to promote research, related to access to as well as rational use of medicines. The journal's initial focus was low- and middle-income countries and the journal was supported by colleagues from WHO. One of the strong supporters of the journal was Dr Richard Laing (then at the WHO's Essential Medicines Department). He commented that the journal fulfilled a global need. From the very beginning, the Journal published studies with impact including influencing medicine pricing policies in Vietnam and Thailand. The launch was also supported by other journals, including the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacy (IJCP) (Babar & Beswick, Citation2009).
In 2013, the journal was renamed as the Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice (JoPPP) and BMC started publishing the journal. The journal's scope was broadened by not only publishing studies from LMICs but also high-income countries. The journal's scope is an interesting mix of policy and practice, it not only covers studies on ‘traditional pharmacy practice’, but also issues related to the broader policy domain including medicine access, pricing, patents, affordability, and ‘pharmaceutical system strengthening’.
In 2018, the Helen-Clark-JoPPP Award was started to recognise exceptional individuals in the field of pharmaceutical policy research. In 2019 and 2020, the first JoPPP conferences were organised. In 2020, the journal also launched a very successful series on ‘Pharmacists and the COVID-19 Pandemic’, publishing high-impact studies (Pharmacists and the COVID-Citation19 Pandemic). In 2023, the journal published Granada Statements advancing the paradigms of social and clinical pharmacy practice research (Fernandez-Llimos, Citation2023). The journal also received its first impact factor of 4.2 in 2023.
In the last 15 years, the number of submissions has increased, and so have the challenges we face in terms of handling these manuscripts. In this context, we have decided to move publication of the journal to Taylor and Francis (T&F). We hope that this change will give more stability, visibility, and growth to the journal. The journal will remain the same, with the same objectives, scope, and coverage, and it will remain indexed in the same databases.
In this journey, we thank all our valuable contributors and editors, and members of the advisory board. Especially I would like to thank Dr Shane Scahill, Prof John Shaw, Prof Sanjay Garg, Prof Mohamed Izham Mohamed Ibrahim, Prof Richard Laing, Dr Helle Hakonsen, Dr Andy Gray, Dr Sabine Vogler, Dr Marg Ewen and Prof Albert Wertheimer.
With the exciting times ahead in science, technology and medicine, we are looking forward to receiving high-impact papers in the broader domains of medicines policy, medicines use and pharmacy practice research.
We thank BMC/Springer Nature for their contribution, and we look forward to working with Taylor and Francis in the years ahead.
References
- Babar, Z. U. D., & Beswick, T. L. (2009). Southern Med Review: A new forum to publish “Local Pharmaceutical Policy in a Global Context”. Pharm World Sci, 31(2), 143–144. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11096-009-9286-z
- Fernandez-Llimos, F., Desselle, S., Stewart, D., Garcia-Cardenas, V., Babar, Z., Bond, C., Dago, A., Jacobsen, R., Nørgaard, L. S., Polidori, C., Sanchez-Polo, M., Santos-Ramos, B., Shcherbakova, N., & Tonin, F. (2023). Improving the quality of publications in and advancing the paradigms of clinical and social pharmacy practice research: The Granada statements. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice, 16(1), [43]. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40545-023-00527-2
- Pharmacists and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Thematic series. Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice. https://www.biomedcentral.com/collections/PharmCovid