Editorial

Abstract

Having just retired as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (JPharmSci®), I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank the past and the present members of JPharmSci®’s Editorial Team (Editors and Editorial Staff), its Editorial Advisory Board members, its Scientific Advisors to the Editors and its authors, reviewers and readers whom I have had the privilege of “working with” and “working for” over the past 19 years. When I accepted the position of Editor (now Editor-in-Chief) of JPharmSci® in May 2001, I knew that the journal had a long and a rich history and that scientists worldwide, since 1912, had recognized JPharmSci® as an excellent medium for presenting their original, significant and impactful scientific findings. Scientists worldwide also looked to JPharmSci® as a primary source of new knowledge in the pharmaceutical sciences. In May 2001, I was particularly excited by the opportunity to lead JPharmSci® into the “electronic age” and thus provide my fellow pharmaceutical scientists with the most efficient vehicle for disseminating new scientific finding and for learning about new scientific findings being generated by other pharmaceutical scientists worldwide. During my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, the journal's sponsor, publishers and Editorial Team have made significant changes in JPharmSci®. Below I have summarized some of these improvements and changes:•Early in my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, the journal's sponsor and its publishers adopted a web-based submission and review system for manuscripts submitted to JPharmSci®.•JPharmSci® became available electronically via the American Pharmacists Association's (APhA) website <http://www.jpharmsci.org> and the Elsevier website <http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-pharmaceutical-sciences>.•APhA established partnerships with the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) and with the Board of Pharmaceutical Scientists (BPS) of the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) to sponsor JPharmSci®.•The scope of JPharmSci® was redefined slightly but its primary focus remained on 2 key basic questions in the pharmaceutical sciences: what physical and biological barriers limit the access of drugs to their therapeutic targets? and how can drugs, dosage forms and delivery systems be designed to maximize their therapeutic efficacy? <https://www.jpharmsci.org/content/authorinfo> Ultimately, if pharmaceutical scientists in drug design, drug development, and drug manufacturing focus on these questions, safer and more efficacious drugs will become available to patients worldwide.•During my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, 30 exceptional scientists worldwide have served as Editors of JPharmSci® including the 12 current Editors <https://www.jpharmsci.org/content/edboard>.•In addition, hundreds of excellent scientists have served as members of JPharmSci®’s Editorial Advisory Board (EAB). Members of the EAB are actively involved in the journal's peer review process and they serve as strategic advisors to the journal's Editorial Team. Currently the EAB consists of 238 excellent pharmaceutical scientists who have skills that reflect the diversity of the science published in JPharmSci® as well as the diversity of the journal's international audience <https://www.jpharmsci.org/content/edboard>.•In July 2013, JPharmSci®’s Editorial Team established a new group of advisors [i.e. Scientific Advisors to the Editors (SAEs)], whose primary responsibilities were to evaluate the significance and the originality of the scientific content of manuscripts submitted to the journal. The current 177 SAEs are all experts in their respective areas of the pharmaceutical sciences and their scientific interests reflect the scientific scope of JPharmSci® <http://www.jpharmsci.org/content/edboard >.•JPharmSci®’s Editorial Team has also built up a database consisting of approx. 800 pharmaceutical scientists worldwide who have proven themselves to be “qualified and reliable reviewers” for the journal.•The number of manuscripts submitted to JPharmSci® has grown approx. 220% over the past 19 years. In 2001, there were approx. 390 manuscripts submitted to JPharmSci® compared to 1250 manuscripts submitted in 2019.•The expansion of JPharmSci®’s “global reach” over the past 19 years is evident from a comparison of the geographical demographics of the corresponding authors of submitted manuscripts in 2001 vs 2019. In 2001, 43% of the submitted manuscripts came from the United States, 29% came from Europe, 21% came from Asia and 7% came from other parts of the world. In comparison, in 2019, 24% of submitted manuscripts came from the United States, 19% came from Europe, 47% came from Asia, 6% came from South America and 4% came from other parts of the world. The employment demographics of the corresponding authors of submitted manuscripts has also changed significantly over the past 19 years. In 2001, 77% of the corresponding authors of submitted manuscripts were employed in academia, 19% were employed in the pharmaceutical industry and 4% were employed in other venues. In comparison, in 2019, 80% of the corresponding authors were employed in academia, 10% were employed in the pharmaceutical industry, and 10% were employed in other venues.•The expansion of JPharmSci®’s “global reach” over the past 19 years is also evident from a comparison of the geographical demographics of all authors of published papers in 2001 vs 2019. In 2001, 52% of published papers came from the United States, 27% came from Europe, 16% came from Asia and 5% came from other parts of the world. In comparison, in 2019, 42% of published papers came from the United States, 25% came from Europe, 26% came from Asia, 2% came from South America and 5% came from other parts of the world. The employment demographics of the authors of published papers have also changed dramatically over the past 19 years. In 2001, 57% of the authors were employed in academia, 15% were employed in the pharmaceutical industry, 26% were collaborations between scientists employed in academia and industry, and 2% were employed in government laboratories. In comparison, in 2019, 46% of the authors were employed in academia, 19% were employed in the industry, 23% were collaborations between scientists employed in academia and industry, 3% were employed in government laboratories, 2% were collaborations between scientists employed in academia and government laboratories and 7% from other employment venues.•JPharmSci ®’s Editorial Team over the past 19 years has been committed to accepting only those manuscripts that contain original, significant and impactful scientific findings. The success of this commitment is evident from a comparison of the journal's acceptance/rejection ratio (53%/47%) in 2001 and its acceptance/rejection ratio (35%/65%) in 2019.•In order to give JPharmSci®’s Editors and the Reviewers the time to carefully and thoroughly evaluate the best manuscripts submitted to the Journal, I have in my capacity as Editor-in-Chief taken an active role in the initial evaluations and decisions about manuscripts submitted to the journal. For example, during the period from October 1, 2018 through September 30, 2019, I used the journal's triage option to rejected approx. 495 (40%) of the approx. 1250 manuscripts submitted to JPharmSci®. These rejections were based on: the manuscripts being out of scope (161); the manuscripts lacking scientific merit (306); or the manuscripts being “ethically challenged” (28). The approx. 755 manuscripts that passed this initial screening process were then assigned to the journal's Editors for in-depth peer reviews by scientific experts.•Since 2010, JPharmSci®’s Editorial Team has adopted an aggressive anti-plagiarism screening program which has helped to ensure that only the highest quality and the most original manuscripts are accepted for publication in the journal. Over the past 10 years, the journal's Editorial Staff has screened electronically approx. 11,000 manuscripts for plagiarism. Approx. 280 of these manuscripts were rejected for violations of the journal's Scientific Ethics Policy and the authors were warned about potential punitive actions for second violations of the journal's ethics policies. In addition, the authors of approx. 40 of these manuscripts, which were found to contain major violations of the journal's Scientific Ethics Policy, were banned from submitting manuscripts to JPharmSci® for periods of 3, 5 or 10 years. In a few cases, the employers (i.e., universities, companies) of the authors who submitted “very ethically challenged manuscripts” were notified of these ethical violations.•In spite of JPharmSci ®’s rigorous standards for acceptance of papers for publication (i.e. in 2019 acceptance/rejection ratio was 35%/65%), the number of papers published in the journal has grown approx.100% over the past 19 years as evidenced by the fact that 201 papers were published in 2001 compared to 421 papers published in 2019.•In 2005–2006, JPharmSci ®’s Editorial Team launched a new initiative to increase the number of “review/commentary” type papers published in the journal. Obviously, these types of papers can have a positive effect on a journal's reputation and its impact on a scientific field. The first thing that the journal's Editorial Team did was to refine and to expand the scope of the options available to authors when they submit their “review/commentary” type manuscripts to JPharmSci®. This initiative gave rise to the following manuscript categories: Perspectives, Reviews, Minireviews, General Commentaries, Global Health Commentaries, Clinical Trials and Translational Medicine Commentaries and Special Topic Commentaries.•At about this same time, the journal's Editorial Team recruited John F. Carpenter and Rodney J. Y. Ho as JPharmSci® Editors and they were asked to solicit manuscripts in these new manuscript categories and to conduct the peer review of these manuscripts.•These initiatives have been met with great success as illustrated by the following facts. During the period from 2001 to 2006, 77 Reviews, Minireviews and General Commentaries were published in JPharmSci®. This represented approx. 13 papers/year in these three manuscript categories. In comparison, during the period from 2007 through 2019, 603 Perspectives, Reviews, Minireviews, General Commentaries, Global Health Commentaries, Clinical Trials and Translational Medicine Commentaries and Special Topic Commentaries were published in JPharmSci®. This means approx. 46 papers/year in these 7 categories were published in the journal. From the Editorial Team's perspective, these new “review/commentary” type papers have been well received by JPharmSci®’s readers and authors and they have had a significant impact on the growth of the journal's Impact Factor and the number of downloads over the past 10 years.•In 2019, JPharmSci®’s 2-year Impact Factor had risen to 2.997, its 5-year Impact Factor had risen to 3.246 and its CiteScore had risen to 5.0. With respect to JPharmSci®’s downloads, the journal has demonstrated solid, consistent growth and performance over the past 5 years. For example, since 2016, JPharmSci®’s downloads have grown 18%, to nearly 800,000 downloads per year. The “global reach” of JPharmSci®’s is evident from the fact that nearly 70% of the journal's usage is from outside the United States.•In 2007, JPharmSci® launched another new initiative which involved the annual publication of a Dedicated Issue honoring a “Giant in the Pharmaceutical Sciences.” To date, 16 “Giants in the Pharmaceutical Sciences” have been recognized including: David Grant (deceased), William I. Higuchi, Michael J. Pikal (deceased), Stephan R. Byrn, Akira Tsuji (deceased), Valentino J. Stella, Leslie Z. Benet, George Zografi, Gordon Amidon, Ronald T. Borchardt, Marcus E. Brewster (deceased), Peter York, Yuichi Sugiyama, Samuel Yalkowsky, John F. Carpenter and Theodore W. Randolph. Please note that the contents of these Dedicated Issues are “fully and freely available” to viewers of the journal's website <http://www.jpharmsci.org/giants-of-pharmaceutical-sciences>.•I am pleased to inform the readership of JPharmSci® that the next 2 “Giants in the Pharmaceutical Sciences” will be Per Artursson and Jennifer Dressman and their Dedicated Issues will be published as the January 2021 and the January 2022 issues of JPharmSci®, respectively.•In addition to publishing Dedicated Issues, the journal's Editorial Team has also produced in the past 5 years 2 Special Issues of JPharmSci®. As the February 2015 issue of JPharmSci®, the journal's Editorial Team produced the Special Issue entitled “Two Decades of Publishing in Pharmaceutical Biotechnology” <https://www.jpharmsci.org/issue/S0022-3549(15)X4200-6> and as the January 2019 issue of JPharmSci®, the journal's Editorial Team produced the Special Issue entitled “Fifty-Eight Years and Counting: High-Impact Publishing in Computational Pharmaceutical Sciences”. <https://www.jpharmsci.org/issue/S0022-3549(17)X0002-6>Please note that the contents of these Special Issues are “fully and freely available” to viewers of the journal's website.•From JPharmSci ®’s Editorial Team's perspective, these Dedicated and Special Issues have been well received by journal's readers and authors and they have been impactful on the growth of the journal's Impact Factor and downloads over the past 5 years.•In 2015, the journal's Editorial Team launched another new initiative focused on publishing “Clusters” of Reviews and Commentaries on special topics. The first Cluster, which was published in the March 2015 Issue of JPharmSci®, arose from a symposium entitled “Achieving Continuous Manufacturing”, which was held at MIT in Cambridge, MA in May 2014. The second Cluster, which was published in the April 2015 Issue of JPharmSci® was entitled “Technical Decision-Making with Higher Order Structure Data: Starting a New Dialogue”.•Currently, the journal's Editors are working with authors on manuscripts for 5 more “Clusters” dealing with the following topics: “Current State and Future Perspectives of Translational Modeling Strategies to Support Drug Product Development, Manufacturing Changes and Controls”; “Quantitative and Systems Pharmacology”; “The Role of the Immune Response in Pharmacokinetic Variability”; “Translating Cell and Gene Biopharmaceuticals Products: Lessons Learned and Future Outlook”; and “Advancement in Formulation, Characterization and Performance of Amorphous Solid Dispersions.”•The creation in 2015 of the APhA JPharmSci® website <http://www.jpharmsci.org> has given the journal's Editorial Team the opportunity to more effectively communicate with pharmaceutical scientists worldwide. This is done through the posting of News Articles which are linked to “fully and freely available” Editorials.•The APhA JPharmSci® website <http://www.jpharmsci.org> has also given the journal's Editorial Team the opportunity to organize the journal's content into “fully and freely available” Virtual Issues including: Ebert Prize Papers; Most Original and Most Significant Scientific Findings Papers; and Biowaiver Monographs. Other “fully and freely available” material on the APhA JPharmSci® website include: Dedicated Issues, Special Topic Issues and Featured Papers.•The APhA JPharmSci® website <http://www.jpharmsci.org> also offers viewer other Virtual Issues including: Clinical Trials and Translational Medicine Commentaries; Global Health Commentaries; Special Topics Commentaries; General Commentaries; and Perspectives, Reviews and Minireviews.•In June 2019, JPharmSci ® began a presence on Twitter (@JPharmSciences) to initiate a broader outreach to those in the scientific community networks interested in research in the pharmaceutical sciences. In this way, the journal can immediately and automatically share information with Twitter followers on all newly accepted and posted articles. The tweeted information comes from and continues to reside on JPharmSci's home website; however, following @JPharmSciences on Twitter will facilitate the ability of authors and readers to easily retweet information to their respective professional networks.•During my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, I was proud to annually manage the Editorial Team's process for the selection of the winning Ebert Prize paper. This is the paper published in JPharmSci® in the preceding year that contained “particularly new, original, and novel findings that have a high probability of significantly impacting the pharmaceutical sciences in the future” <https://www.jpharmsci.org/ebert-prize>.•I was also proud to annually manage the Editorial Team's process for selecting the “Top Reviewers” for JPharmSci ®. Through the hard work and dedication of these top reviewers and hundreds of other reviewers, manuscripts accepted for publication in JPharmSci ® continue to contain only high-quality experimental data and new and significant findings. In conclusion, I would like to publicly thank the people who have made my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of JPharmSci® enjoyable and productive! First, I would like to thank Tammy Dunning and Rebecca (Becky) Whaley, who joined JPharmSci®’s Editorial Office at The University of Kansas when I became Editor-in-Chief of the journal in 2001. For 19 years they have tolerated my “obsessive and compulsive behavior” with respect to JPharmSci®. Tammy and Becky have carried out their responsibilities as Editorial Assistants in a “professional manner” and they are amongst the most reliable, hardworking and productive staff members that I have had the opportunity to work with during my almost 50 years of service at The University of Kansas. I would also like to use this forum to publicly thank the 22 Editors that I had the opportunity to work with over the past 19 years including the following: Bradley D. Anderson, Kenneth L. Audus, Harry G. Brittain, Marcus E. Brewster (deceased), John F. Carpenter, William N. Charman, Jenny Chien, Ferdinando Giordano, David J.W. Grant (deceased), Richard H. Guy, Michael Hageman, Bruno C. Hancock, Rodney J. Y. Ho, C. Russell Middaugh, Gary M. Pollack, Thomas Rades, Tetsuya Terasaki, Elizabeth Topp, Akira Tsuji (deceased), Ijeoma Uchegbu, Jashvant Unadkat, and Gaylen M. Zentner. These Editors were (are) all incredibly talented and accomplished scientists who were (are) dedicated to JPharmSci® and to the success of the journal. Evidence of their dedication to JPharmSci® is the fact that 3 of the current Editors have served the journal for more than 20 years, 8 have served the journal for 10–20 years and 2 have served the journal for approx. 5 years. All 30 of these Editors were (are) modest individuals, who worked together well as members of “JPharmSci®’s Editorial Team.” I have many fond memories of our annual Editorial Team meetings and dinners and my daily interactions with everyone on this Editorial Team. I also would like to take this opportunity to thank the APhA staff members, particularly Julian I. Graubart and Mary Warner, and the staff members at John Wiley and Sons, Inc and Elsevier Publishing for their advice, support and encouragement over the past 19 years. In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Kenneth L. Audus on his appointment as Editor-in-Chief of JPharmSci®. I have known Professor Audus as a colleague in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at The University of Kansas and as a friend for approx. 35 years. He is an accomplished scientist, educator, mentor, administrator, and journal editor. Professor Audus became a JPharmSci® Editor in July 2007 and he has served effectively and faithfully in this capacity for the past 13 years. In my opinion, Professor Audus has the scientific breadth and depth of knowledge in the pharmaceutical sciences as well as the organizational and leadership skills and the experience as a JPharmSci® Editor to eventually become an exceptional JPharmSci® Editor-in-Chief.