Peer reviewers and authors: Thank you!

Abstract

Peer reviewers and authors: Thank you! Peer-review is a process which assesses the quality of manuscripts submitted to scientific journals. The foundation of this process dates back hundreds of years.1Spier R. The history of the peer-review process.Trends Biotechnol. 2002; 20: 357-358Google Scholar In 1752, The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge assumed responsibility for a journal titled Philosophical Transactions. The Royal Society of London implemented a process in which materials sent to the journal were reviewed by a knowledgeable group of society members who made recommendations about the publication. Fast forward to the 20th century. As publications became more diverse and specialized, editors started to increase their use of the peer-review process. The Journal of the American Medical Association started to use peer reviewers in 1940. With the advent of the Xerox printer in 1959, the dissemination of papers to peer reviewers became easier, and the use of peer reviewers increased. Now today, the peer-review process is widely used. The pharmacy community’s work is broad in nature, and we rely on the expertise of our reviewers to ensure the quality of manuscripts. Feedback from reviewers is invaluable in improving both the scientific rigor and the clarity of our manuscripts. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association (JAPhA) truly could not succeed without the vital input we receive from our peer reviewers. In this issue, we recognize our wonderful and hard-working reviewers. While all our reviewers are critical to the success of JAPhA, there is a select group who have gone above and beyond and have contributed in substantial ways either through the number of reviews or the very high quality of reviews they completed. We recognize reviewers who completed 4 or more reviews during the past calendar year or who were selected by the Associate Editors as contributing exceptionally high-quality reviews. In addition, we wish to acknowledge our outstanding authors. We selected the authors of the 10 most frequently downloaded articles from our website during the past calendar year. We choose this method because we appreciate that it may take an extended period of time before manuscripts are cited in the scientific literature. The most frequently downloaded article was downloaded 12,978 times (range 1872–12,978). We know that you have multiple journals to which you could send your valuable work, and we thank you for choosing JAPhA. To our reviewers and authors — Thank you, thank you! Each and every day, it is a privilege to engage with you. Together, may we continue to advance pharmacy, improve health, and make a difference in the lives of so many patients.