About the Journal

Focus and Scope

“News of Pharmacy” journal is a scientific publication in the field of pharmaceutical sciences. It was founded by the National University of Pharmacy (NUPh) in 1993 and since 2019 has been published in electronic form (Online ISSN 2415-8844).

The goal of the journal is to promote professional communication of specialists in the field of pharmacy and medicine, in particular, to draw the attention of scientists to new promising research in creating medicines based on chemical, physicochemical, biopharmaceutical, pharmacological, biochemical, microbiological, organizational, economic and other research methods.

On its pages “News of Pharmacy” journal publishes scientific articles containing the results of research on the synthesis and analysis of biologically active substances; studies of medicinal plants as sources of medicinal compounds of the chemical nature determined with the proven therapeutic effect; studies of the composition substantiation, technology development, quality control of natural, synthetic and combined medicines; formation of the range, sale, storage, circulation and consumption of medicines; optimization of the pharmaceutical supply of the population, groups of patients by individual nosological forms; pharmaceutical pricing; improvement of the forms and methods of organizing and managing pharmacy; scientific and analytical reviews in all these areas and letters to the Editorial Office.

The target audience of authors and readers of the publication are scientists in the field of pharmacy and medicine, organizations, specialists from health authorities; teachers of scientific and higher educational institutions of Ukraine and abroad, doctoral candidates, postgraduate students and Master’s degree students, drug manufacturers, pharmacists.

Peer Review Process

General provisions

The review procedure is carried out for all articles submitted to the Editorial Board, with the exception of reviews and informational reports. The review is carried out in order to provide the most objective assessment of the contents of a scientific article, determine its compliance with the requirements of the journal, comprehensively analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the article information, make specific recommendations for their improvement, as well as select relevant and original author’s articles for publication. Only those articles that have scientific significance and contribute to the solution of topical issues and tasks are accepted for publication. The main purpose of the review procedure is to improve the quality of scientific research and provide harmonization and balance of interests of authors, readers, Editorial Board, reviewers and the institution where the research was conducted. Reviewers evaluate the theoretical and methodological level of the article, its practical value and its scientific significance. In addition, reviewers determine the compliance of the article with the principles of ethics in scientific publications and give recommendations for elimination of cases of their infringement.

Basic requirements for reviewing articles

1. A scientific periodical publication is a peer-reviewed journal, which practices the selection of articles for publication on the basis of their evaluation by independent industry experts using a blind type of review (authors do not know the names of reviewers, reviewers are not aware of the authors names).

2. The articles submitted to the preliminary assessment of the Executive Secretary of the journal (and/or editors) for compliance with the requirements of the publication to the structure, content and design shall be submitted for review. Articles that do not conform to the accepted requirements are not registered and are not allowed for further consideration, their authors are notified about it.

3. The Editorial Board selects reviewers for articles among authors and readers, scientists, who are competent in the problems of the edition, or members of the Editorial Board provided that there is no conflict of interest in relation to the subject of the manuscript. They work on a voluntary and gratuitous basis.

4. The reviewers are the scientists, whose research topics correspond to the profile of the publication, and the scientometric indicators correspond to item 6 of the Order of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine No. 32 dated January 15, 2018.

5. The reviewer must give consent before starting the review procedure and thereby confirm the absence of a conflict of interest in the subject matter of the article. The deadline for the review is one week from the moment the reviewer agrees.

6. The process of reviewing occurs in the form of a closed questionnaire survey of reviewers on the website of the journal.

7. During the review process the reviewer evaluates the article on the aspects outlined in the review, may give a text commentary to the article or make an editorial version of the article with amendments proposed.

8. After completing the review procedure the copies of the reviews are sent to the author’s e-mail from the journal site for revision. The names of the reviewers are not disclosed.

9. After passing the review procedure, the reviewer may decide to recommend: articles to publication without further elaboration; publication of the article after elimination of minor comments (grammatical and stylistic errors, the design of figures and tables, the design of the bibliography, etc.); articles for publication after elimination of serious comments by the reviewer; rejection of the article. The rejection of the article is possible in case if: the subject does not correspond to the direction of the publication; there is no scientific novelty, theoretical and practical significance; uncertain and unreasonable results of the study are presented; the text of the article was previously published, etc.

10. Articles sent to the author for correction of serious comments after re-submission to the Editor are sent to the reviewer who reviewed the initial version of the manuscript for re-review procedure.

11. In case of conflicts between the author and the reviewer and the impossibility of eliminating comments, the Editor may decide on the appointment of a review procedure for the article and involvement of another reviewer.

12. The final decision on the publication of the article is taken by the Editorial Board and approved by the Academic Board of the National University of Pharmacy.

13. Responsibility for infringement of copyright and non-compliance with the existing standards in the materials of the article rests with the author of the article. The author and the reviewer are responsible for the reliability of the facts and data provided, the validity of the conclusions and recommendations made, as well as the scientific and practical level of the article.

Publication Frequency

The journal is issued 2 times a year.

Open Access Policy

This journal practices the open access policy in accordance with the Budapest BOAI Initiative (https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/), which provides authors and readers the right to read, download, copy, distribute journal materials, and find or attach them to the full relevant articles, use for indexing and other legitimate purposes in the absence of financial, legal and technical obstacles, excluding those that regulate access directly to the Internet.

Fees

The authors pay only the costs of providing services for editorial preparation of articles for publication. Payment is made only after receiving a positive review of the article and the decision of the Editorial Board about publication in the journal. The Executive Secretary of the journal informs the author about this decision. The cost and procedure for providing services regarding editorial preparation (editing, correction, layout of texts) of the manuscripts of the articles submitted for publication are fixed in the calculation of services calculated by the Planning and Finance Department of the NUPh. Editorial preparation of manuscripts submitted for publication does not provide the translation of the manuscript text into English.

There is no charge for submitting and reviewing articles in the journal.

Plagiarism

All manuscripts submitted for publication must be checked to prevent cases of the academic plagiarism. To perform the analysis of documents the Anti-Plagiarism software is used in the NUPh (the licensor is Khmelnitsky National University).

The criteria for the originality of the text in the manuscripts are defined in the Regulations of measures to prevent cases of the academic plagiary (POL A 2.8-03-101) and contain the following indicators:

more than 90 % – the text of the manuscript is original (the insignificant amount of borrowings);
from 80 to 90 % – the originality of the text is satisfactory (the insignificant amount of borrowings); however, it should be convinced that there are correct citations and references to the sources used in the manuscript;
from 60 to 80 % – the manuscript is accepted for consideration after revision by the author(s), and the availability and proper formatting of citations and references to the sources used since it has a significant amount of borrowings;
less than 60 % – the manuscript is not accepted for consideration and cannot be recommended for printing (presentation) since it has a significant amount of borrowings, and it is interpreted as plagiarism.

Editorial ethics issues

Scientific periodical "News of Pharmacy" adheres to recognized standards of publishing ethics. The editorial policy outlined below is based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE – http://publicationethics.org), and the recommendations of the “Vancouver Group” - http://www.icmje.org/), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME - http://www.wame.org/), the American Chemical Society (ACS) https://pubs.acs.org/userimages/ContentEditor/1218054468605/ethics.pdf), Directory of Open Access Journals - DOAJ - https://doaj.org ).

Ethical principles (responsibility) of the editor

The editor is responsible for the publication of copyright works, which makes it necessary to adhere to the following fundamental principles:

- the editor has the authority to accept (reject) the manuscript;

- the editor should not have a conflict of interest with respect to articles that are accepted (rejected) prior to publication;

- the editor accepts an article only when there is complete confidence in such decision;

- when finding errors, the editor promotes the publication of a corrected article;

- the editor has no right without the written consent of the author to use in their own research unpublished materials contained in the submitted manuscript. Confidential information or ideas received during the review should not be disclosed by the editor or used for personal gain;

- when deciding on the publication of the manuscript the editor is guided by the reliability of the data presented and the scientific significance of the work under consideration;

- the editor must evaluate the intellectual content of the manuscripts regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, origin, nationality, social status or political preferences of the authors;

- the editor should not allow the publication of information if there is sufficient reason to believe that it is a plagiarism;

- the editor, in conjunction with the publisher, should not make unanswered claims concerning the manuscripts or published material in question, or, if a conflict situation is detected, to take all necessary measures for restoration of violated rights;

- the editor may be guided by the editorial policy of the magazine, decisions of the Editorial Board of the magazine, being limited by current legal norms concerning defamation, copyright and plagiarism;

- Editor and Editorial Board of the magazine are obliged not to disclose without the need information about the adopted manuscript to anyone, except for those directly involved in the process of its consideration.

Ethical principles (responsibility) of the reviewer

The purpose of the policy of reviewing the scientific periodical is to support the high ethical standards of scientific research, according to which the reviewer's work should be preceded by his awareness of ethical requirements in scientific publications. Orientation of the process of reviewing the manuscripts submitted to the publication of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE – http://publicationethics.org) and the experience of leading research communities helps to improve the quality of printed materials, overcome bias and injustice in rejecting or adopting articles.

The reviewer carries out a scientific examination of the author's materials, as a result of which his actions should be impartial, which is to adhere to the following principles:

- the reviewer is obliged to give an objective and reasoned assessment of the results of the study; personal criticism of the author is not acceptable;

- the reviewer should not have a conflict of interest with regard to the research, authors or research sponsors;

- in the case of a conflict of interest between the results of the research with the personal development of the reviewer or in the case of such professional or personal links between the reviewer and the author, which may affect the judgment of the reviewer, he must return the manuscript, indicating a conflict of interest;

- the reviewer must indicate relevant published works that have not been linked to in the manuscript;

- the review of the manuscript must be confidential;

- the manuscript received for review must be regarded as a confidential document that cannot be communicated to the third parties who are not authorized by the editorial board for review or discussion;

- a reviewer who does not possess, in his opinion, sufficient qualifications to evaluate the manuscript, or may not be objective, for example, in the event of a conflict of interest with the author or organization, must notify the editorial board with a request to exclude him from the process of reviewing the manuscript;

- the objective of the reviewer is to objectively evaluate the quality of the submitted manuscript and determine the degree of its compliance with scientific, literary and ethical standards;

- to ensure the right of each author to the intellectual property of the reviewer, any use of the arguments received and conclusions of the author is prohibited without the permission of the latter;

- the seriousness of the accusation of plagiarism requires the reviewer to provide adequate and substantiated substantiation of his own comments. Any allegation of plagiarism or inappropriate quoting should be accompanied by a relevant reference (the reviewer's findings should not be defamatory or discrediting the author without serious grounds for doing so);

- if the reviewer has doubts about plagiarism, authorship or data reliability, he must obligatorily apply to the editorial board for a collective review of the author's version of the manuscript;

- since the reviewer should mark any cases of inadequate citation by the authors of the works of other scholars working in the field of the reviewed article, the comments on the inadequate citation of their own research by the reviewer are identified as biased;

- support for the constant periodical publication of a scientific journal requires a reviewer of high self-discipline, which is disclosed through the timely submission of a review of the manuscript and in respect of the authors of the manuscript (in the case of lack of education in relation to the authors or the systematic provision of reviews of poor quality or violation of the deadlines for the submission of reviews of the relationship with this reviewer stopped);

- when a reviewer is not allowed to use or disclose unpublished information or the author's argument, it is not considered contradictory to the ethical rules of termination of some of his own research reviewers if they believe in it to be ineffective.

Requirements for publication and authors

- availability of a qualitative list of literature;

- Publish data on financial support for research;

- lack of plagiarism and fraudulent data;

- Prohibition of publishing the same results more than in one journal.

Ethical principles (responsibility) of the author

The author (or collective of authors) realizes that he has primary responsibility for the novelty and reliability of the results of scientific research, which implies observance of the following principles:

- the author having a publication in the journal may participate in the process of reviewing the manuscripts of other authors;

- All authors should contribute to the research, that is, the participation of all authors in the study and in the preparation of the article should be determined; the co-authors of the article should indicate all persons who made a significant contribution to the research. Among co-authors it is unacceptable to indicate persons who did not participate in the study;

- it is necessary to recognize the contribution of all persons who have somehow or other influenced the course of the research, in particular, references should be given in the article to the works that were important during the research;

- All authors should provide refutation or correction of errors in case of their detection; if there are significant errors or inaccuracies in the article at the stage of its consideration or after its publication, the author should inform the editorial staff as soon as possible;

- the author must provide reliable results of the research. Known false or false allegations are unacceptable;

- the author should not submit to the journal a manuscript that was sent and / or published in another edition;

- the author must ensure that the results of the study, set forth in the attached manuscript, are completely original. The borrowed fragments or statements must be made with the obligatory indication of the author and the original source. Excessive borrowing, as well as plagiarism in all forms, including unformed citations, rephrasing or assigning rights to the results of others' research, are unethical and unacceptable.