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Pharmacy Practice (Granada)

versão On-line ISSN 1886-3655versão impressa ISSN 1885-642X

Pharmacy Pract (Granada) vol.14 no.4 Redondela Out./Dez. 2016

https://dx.doi.org/10.18549/pharmpract.2016.04.847 

Original Research

Analysis of ten years of publishing in Pharmacy Practice

Antonio E. Mendes1  , Fernanda S. Tonin2  , Fernando Fernandez-Llimos3 

1Pharmaceutical Sciences Postgraduate Program, Department of Pharmacy. Federal University of Paraná. Curitiba (Brazil). mmendesantonio@gmail.com

2Pharmaceutical Sciences Postgraduate Program, Department of Pharmacy. Federal University of Paraná. Curitiba (Brazil). fer_stumpf_tonin@hotmail.com

3Editor-in-chief, Pharmacy Practice. Institute for Medicines Research (iMed.ULisboa), Department of Social Pharmacy, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Lisbon. Lisbon (Portugal). f-llimos@ff.ul.pt

ABSTRACT

Objective:

The aim of this study is to characterize the patterns and trends in the editorial process and features of the first decade of Pharmacy Practice, with the final goal of initiating a benchmarking process to enhance the quality of the journal.

Methods:

Metadata of all of the articles published from 2006 issue #3 to 2016 issue #2 were extracted from PubMed and complemented by a manual data extraction process on the full-text articles. Citations of these articles were retrieved from Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, and Google Scholar on August 15, 2016. The references from all of the articles published by Pharmacy Practice in 2015 were also extracted. International collaboration was explored with a network analysis.

Results:

A total of 40 issues were published in this timespan, including 349 articles, 91.1% of which were original research articles. The number of citations received by these articles varies from 809, as reported by the WOS, to the 1162 reported by Scopus and the 2610 reported by Google Scholar. The journals cited by Pharmacy Practice are mainly pharmacy journals, including Pharm Pract (Granada), Int J Clin Pharm, Am J Health-Syst Pharm, Am J Pharm Educ, and Ann Pharmacother. Only 17.3% of the articles involved international collaboration. Delays in the editorial process increased in 2013, mainly due to an increase in acceptance delay (mean=138 days).

Conclusion:

Pharmacy Practice has improved its visibility and impact over the past decade, especially after 2014, when the journal became indexed in PubMed Central. The editorial process duration is one of the weaknesses that should be tackled. Further studies should investigate if the low international collaboration rate is common across other pharmacy journals.

Key words: Periodicals as Topic; Bibliometrics; Authorship; Publishing; Cooperative Behavior; Pharmacists

INTRODUCTION

Pharmacy Practice, officially abbreviated by the National Library of Medicine as Pharm Pract (Granada) (electronic-ISSN 1886-3655; print-ISSN: 1885-642X), was created in 2006 by a group of academics and researchers who were interested in the area of pharmacy practice. Pharmacy Practice continued a national-scope Spanish journal, Seguimiento Farmacoterapeutico, with the first issue published under the Pharmacy Practice banner appearing in the third quarter of 2006. Since its inception, Pharmacy Practice has been committed to the following principles:

  • Being a gratis journal, also known as an article processing charge-free (APC-free) journal.

  • Having a global scope.

  • Publishing research articles in the broad area of pharmacy practice.

Truthfully, a clear definition of the area of pharmacy practice does not exist. In 1969, the World Health Organization (WHO) described the mission of pharmacy practice as being “to provide medications and other health care products and services and to help people and society to make the best use of them”.1 This declaration embraced pharmaceutical care philosophy for the first time. Ten years later, the WHO, in collaboration with the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) published the book “Developing pharmacy practice”.2 Although the book contained a number of definitions, one for “pharmacy practice” was not among them. Although embracing pharmaceutical care as the main focus of pharmacists’ activities, this reference book presented a broader scope that included other professional pharmacy services. Other reference books include in the scope of pharmacy practice not only patient care activities but also the use of medicines by populations, including subjects such as pharmacovigilance or pharmacoepidemiology.3 The terminology in this area is made even more complicated when considering social pharmacy and clinical pharmacy.4

Identifying pharmacy practice journals is not an easy task. Minguet et al. used the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) to identify the journals that most frequently used the MeSH term ‘Pharmacists’.5 They found ten journals with a high prevalence of this MeSH term. However, this method is limited by the fact that not all of the journals included in PubMed are also indexed in Medline. MeSH terms are assigned only to Medline-indexed journals, so they could have missed several pharmacy practice journals.6 Additionally, their study raises some doubts about the quality of MeSH assignment in the area of pharmacy practice.5

Using the ‘Pharmacology and Pharmacy’ subject category in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) may not improve the identification of pharmacy practice journals. First, this category is a merged group of journals in the areas of pharmacology and pharmacy. Second, the coverage in JCR is highly restricted, particularly for pharmacy subjects. Finally, some of the journals that Minguet et al.5 identified as pharmacy journals are actually classified in other JCR subject categories (e.g., Res Soc Admin Pharm).

Pharmacy Practice adopted the broad concept of pharmacy practice in its scope, including among its areas of interest all potential pharmacist services – in any setting and environment – and all of the determinants that affect their success (e.g., education, quality assurance, epidemiology). With the final goal of creating the basis for a benchmarking process, the objective of this study is to examine the features and trends of the first decade of publication of Pharmacy Practice in three areas: editorial process delay, submitting authors (including collaboration patterns), and citation patterns (both received and produced).

METHODS

Articles published in the first decade of Pharmacy Practice were included for analysis (2006-2016). Metadata were compiled by importing a file with all of the articles indexed in PubMed using the MEDLINE format. This file contained all authors (full and abbreviated name and complete affiliation) and full references for each article (publication year, volume, issue, and pages), and the publication type was obtained through a manual search of the journal’s table of contents.

Editorial process dates (received, accepted, published) were extracted from PubMed and then corroborated from submission records. The editorial process duration for original research articles was computed as three different time periods: acceptance delay (time from submission to acceptance), publication delay (time from acceptance to publication); and editorial process delay (time from submission to publication).

Citations for each published article were obtained on August 15, 2016, from three different sources: the Web of Science (apps.webofknowledge.com/), Scopus (www.scopus.com ) Google Scholar (scholar.google.com ). To evaluate the patterns in the referencing practices observed in Pharmacy Practice and its potential influence in other journals’ 2015 Impact Factor, all bibliographic references in articles published in 2015 were manually compiled. The citation half-life was computed as the median value of the distribution of the cited articles’ publication years.

Authors were retrieved from PubMed records, and their affiliations were retrieved from a manual search of original articles. For each article, the countries of the authors’ affiliation were noted, and a collaboration network was created using the Gephi software (gephi.org). The network graph was built using the ForceAtlas2 algorithm.7 The size of the nodes was set to be proportional to the number of publications in Pharmacy Practice by an author from each country. The color of the nodes represents the respective proportion of articles written in cooperation, with a spectrum ranging from red 0.0% to green 100.0% articles with international collaboration. The thickness of the edges represents the intensity of collaboration between two countries.

RESULTS

During the decade under analysis, Pharmacy Practice published 40 issues that included 349 articles (mean 8.7 per issue, SD=0.9). A total of 318 (91.1%) of the contributions were original research articles, followed by 23 (6.6%) reviews, 5 (1.4%) editorials and 3 (0.9%) guidelines/statements. Table 1 presents the distribution of contributions by publication type and year.

Table 1 Distribution of articles classified by publication type. 

Publication year Publication type
Editorial Review Guideline Original research Total
2006 - 1 - 16 17
2007 - 3 - 29 32
2008 - 1 - 31 32
2009 - 5 - 30 35
2010 - 4 - 31 35
2011 - 1 3 32 36
2012 1 2 - 30 33
2013 1 - - 33 34
2014 1 2 - 34 37
2015 2 3 - 32 37
2016 - 1 - 20 21
Total 5 23 3 318 349

The total editorial process duration for original research articles was 186 days (SD=77). This time included 138 days (SD=74) for mean acceptance delay and 48 days (SD=32) for mean publication delay. Acceptance delay increased until a reaching a maximum in 2012, where it was 192 days (SD=52). From there, it decreased slightly to 177 days (SD=127) in 2013, 148 days (SD=33) in 2014, and 138 days (SD=40) in 2015 and then rose to 167 days (SD=60) in 2016 (Figure 1). However, publication delay presented less variation and an overall downward trend, ranging from 30 days (SD=18) in 2016 to 79 days (SD=53) in 2007 (Figure 2).

Figure 1 Evolution on the acceptance delay in original research articles. 

Figure 2 Evolution on the publication delay in original research articles. 

The number of citations received differed depending on the source of information. Web of Science identified 809 citations for 223 articles, with 124 uncited and 24 articles receiving more than 10 citations. Scopus reported 1162 citations for 244 articles, with 90 uncited and 7 with more than 10 citations. Google Scholar counted 2610 citations for 295 articles, with 54 uncited and 87 with more than 10 citations. Table 2 presents the differences in citations received for the highly cited articles from the Scopus count. The number of citations, as reported in the Web of Science, continuously increased during the study period: 6 in 2007; 20 in 2008; 36 in 2009; 69 in 2010; 76 in 2011; 81 in 2012; 94 in 2013; 139 in 2014; and 233 in 2015.

Table 2 Citation data of articles cited more than 10 times as reported in Scopus. 

PMID Authors. Title DP Scopus WoS Scholar
25214919 Armour C, Brillant M, Krass I. Pharmacists’ views on involvement in pharmacy practice research: Strategies for facilitating participation 2007 29 21 46
25152791 Niquille A, Lattmann C, Bugnon O. Medication reviews led by community pharmacists in Switzerland: a qualitative survey to evaluate barriers and facilitators 2010 19 16 31
25157287 Al-Gedadi NA, Hassali MA, Shafie AA. A pilot survey on perceptions and knowledge of generic medicines among consumers in Penang, Malaysia 2008 21 11 38
24688612 Adisa R, Fakeye TO, Fasanmade A. Medication adherence among ambulatory patients with type 2 diabetes in a tertiary healthcare setting in southwestern Nigeria 2011 13 11 33
25132881 Pattanaworasate W, Emmerton L, Pulver L, Winckel K. Comparison of prescribing criteria in hospitalised Australian elderly 2010 11 11 19
25152790 Hadi MA, Hassali MA, Shafie AA, Awaisu A. Evaluation of breast cancer awareness among female university students in Malaysia 2010 21 10 38
25152788 Rickles NM, Brown TA, McGivney MS, Snyder ME, White KA. Adherence: a review of education, research, practice, and policy in the United States 2010 14 10 24
25177406 Herborg H, Haugbolle LS, Sorensen L, Rossing C, Dam P. Developing a generic, individualised adherence programme for chronic medication users 2008 14 10 19
25214922 Crook M, Ajdukovic M, Angley C, Soulsby N, Doecke C, Stupans I, Angley M. Eliciting comprehensive medication histories in the emergency department: the role of the pharmacist 2007 11 10 18
25126145 Ali SE, Ibrahim MI, Palaian S. Medication storage and self-medication behaviour amongst female students in Malaysia 2010 15 9 49
25214920 Krivoy N, El-Ahal WA, Bar-Lavie Y, Haddad S. Antibiotic prescription and cost patterns in a general intensive care unit 2007 22 9 45
25143794 Adisa R, Alutundu MB, Fakeye TO. Factors contributing to nonadherence to oral hypoglycemic medications among ambulatory type 2 diabetes patients in Southwestern Nigeria 2009 14 9 40
24155822 Ubeda A, Ferrandiz L, Maicas N, Gomez C, Bonet M, Peris JE. Potentially inappropriate prescribing in institutionalised older patients in Spain: the STOPP-START criteria compared with the Beers criteria 2012 20 9 31
25170352 Martinbiancho J, Zuckermann J, Dos Santos L, Silva MM. Profile of drug interactions in hospitalized children 2007 13 9 27
25214912 Stuchbery P, Kong DC, Desantis GN, Lo SK. Identification by observation of clinical pharmacists’ activities in a hospital inpatient setting 2007 11 9 22
22282720 Farrell J, Ries NM, Boon H. Pharmacists and Natural Health Products: A systematic analysis of professional responsibilities in Canada 2008 15 9 19
25132880 Aaltonen SE, Laine NP, Volmer D, Gharat MS, Muceniece R, Vitola A, Foulon V, Desplenter FA, Airaksinen MS, Chen TF, Bell JS. Barriers to medication counselling for people with mental health disorders: a six country study 2010 11 9 16
24155810 Dylst P, Vulto A, Simoens S. How can pharmacist remuneration systems in Europe contribute to generic medicine dispensing? 2012 11 9 14
25214913 Pote S, Tiwari P, D’Cruz S. Medication prescribing errors in a public teaching hospital in India: A prospective study 2007 20 8 45
25214918 Sharma H, Aqil M, Imam F, Alam MS, Kapur P, Pillai KK. A pharmacovigilance study in the department of medicine of a university teaching hospital 2007 14 8 24
25170353 Ajdukovic M, Crook M, Angley C, Stupans I, Soulsby N, Doecke C, Anderson B, Angley M. Pharmacist elicited medication histories in the Emergency Department: Identifying patient groups at risk of medication misadventure 2007 11 8 13
25170364 Gholami K, Ziaie S, Shalviri G. Adverse drug reactions induced by cardiovascular drugs in outpatients 2008 13 7 15
25170358 Cordina M, Safta V, Ciobanu A, Sautenkova N. An assessment of community pharmacists’ attitudes towards professional practice in the Republic of Moldova 2008 11 6 24
24198861 Palaian S, Ibrahim MI, Mishra P. Health professionals’ knowledge, attitude and practices towards pharmacovigilance in Nepal 2011 11 4 37

When evaluating the consumption of scientific knowledge, the 37 articles published in 2015 included 1086 bibliographic references, with a mean of 29.4 references per article (SD=14.7). A total of 831 (76.5%) references cited articles published in 351 different scientific journals. The five most frequently cited journals accounted for 153 (18.4%) citations (Am J Pharm Educ, n=52; Am J Health-Syst Pharm, n=32; Int J Clin Pharm / Pharm World Sci, n=26; Int J Pharm Pract, n=22; and Ann Pharmacother, n=21) while 232 journals were cited just once. A total of 15 self-citations were found in 2015. The citation half-life was 2009 (or 6 years), with 153 references to articles published in 2014 and 2013 and 25 references to articles published in 2015. When examining the 178 references to articles published after 2012 (or those that would count for Impact Factor calculations), the top five most cited journals are Pharm Pract (Granada), n=8; Int J Clin Pharm, n=7; Am J Health-Syst Pharm, n=6; Am J Pharm Educ, n=5; and Ann Pharmacother, n=5.

The 349 published articles since 2006 were written by 1264 authors, comprising 1020 different researchers. The median number of authors differed depending on the publication type: 1 for editorials, 2 for reviews and for guidelines/statements, and 3 for original research articles, with a mean of 3.7 (SD=1.6) in the last category. No differences were found in the number of authors per original research article over the years (Figure 3). In addition, the average number of author collaborations has not changed over the past ten years. Authors represented 58 different countries, with the United States as the most prevalent, followed by Australia (Table 3). Only 62 articles (17.8%) were written by a collaboration of authors from more than one country. The construction of an international collaboration network for these 62 articles revealed a graph (Figure 4), with 58 countries (nodes) and 74 edges (articles in collaboration) connecting the countries. However, 14 nodes remain isolated in the graph: Brazil, Ghana, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Palestine, Poland, Trinidad, and Turkey. International collaboration indicators are described in Table 3.

Figure 3 Evolution on the number of authors in original research articles. 

Table 3 Bibliometric indicators about international collaboration by affiliation country of the authors. 

Country Authors (n) Articles (n) Articles in international collaboration Countries co-authoring (n)
N (%)
USA 336 113 9 7.96 12
Australia 74 33 6 18.18 10
Brazil 59 16 0 - -
Nigeria 52 23 3 13.04 3
Malaysia 39 25 15 60 9
UK 37 16 8 50 6
India 30 11 3 27.27 8
Spain 29 8 2 25 1
Canada 24 9 2 22.22 2
New Zealand 19 5 0 - -
Thailand 19 7 3 42.86 3
Denmark 17 9 3 33.33 4
Sweden 17 8 2 25 3
United Arab Emirates 17 7 4 57.14 2
Norway 16 5 1 20 2
Japan 14 3 0 - -
Portugal 14 13 7 53.85 6
Malta 12 6 2 33.33 3
Palestine 12 3 0 - -
France 11 6 5 83.33 5
Lebanon 11 2 0 - -
Saudi Arabia 11 13 11 84.62 6
Belgium 10 9 5 55.56 9
Bulgaria 10 4 2 50 2
Finland 10 4 2 50 5
Iran 9 4 1 25 1
Ethiopia 8 3 2 66.67 2
Germany 7 4 1 25 1
Switzerland 7 3 1 33.33 1
Turkey 7 1 0 - -
Ghana 6 2 0 - -
Israel 6 2 0 - -
Kuwait 6 5 4 80 4
Mexico 6 1 0 - -
Trinidad 6 1 0 - -
Indonesia 5 2 1 50 1
Jamaica 5 2 0 - -
Jordan 5 2 2 100 2
Nepal 5 2 1 50 2
Ireland 4 2 0 - -
Kosovo 4 1 0 - -
Pakistan 3 4 3 75 2
Poland 3 1 0 - -
Sudan 3 2 2 100 3
Estonia 2 3 3 100 7
Latvia 2 1 1 100 5
Netherlands 2 2 2 100 2
Qatar 2 2 2 100 3
Republic of Macedonia 2 1 1 100 1
Republic of Moldova 2 1 1 100 2
Serbia 2 1 1 100 1
Albania 1 1 1 100 1
Cameroon 1 2 2 100 1
China 1 1 1 100 1
Egypt 1 2 2 100 1
Netherlands-Antilles 1 3 3 100 1
Philippines 1 1 1 100 1
South Africa 1 1 1 100 1

Figure 4 International collaboration network in Pharmacy Practice. 

DISCUSSION

Pharmacy Practice has achieved the 10-year milestone while trying to reduce the dispersion of pharmacy-specific literature among a myriad of journals5 and simultaneously keeping its original philosophy of being one of the few open-access journals in this area without APC. The goal of making research freely available is only partially satisfied by APC open-access journals because these merely shift the financial burden of publishing from the readers to the authors. The Pharmacy Practice editorial board decided to make it a gratis journal, which means that no one pays (neither readers nor authors).8 This is only possible in a collaborative publishing schema where authors submit papers for the sake of communicating the results of their research, where editorial and advisory board members collaborate with the editorial process to maintain a gratis journal in their area of interest, and where peer-reviewers comment on manuscripts to improve their quality. This is not a new model but is actually a traditional scholarly publishing system in which societies and groups of studies run journals for no profit. At this point, it may be important to highlight that open-access APC-free journals cannot, by definition, be predatory journals.8

A few variations in publication times were observed in Pharmacy Practice over the years. The time to acceptance increased significantly in the last several years, which may be associated with changes in the review process. The peer review process is a key element of scientific publishing. In 2013, Pharmacy Practice modified its process of selecting potential peer reviewers for a manuscript. Instead of using a closed database of individuals who offered to be reviewers, reviewers were selected from PubMed among authors of similar articles. By using this process, Pharmacy Practice ensures that the reviewers have participated in research with similar characteristics to the study that they are asked to evaluate.9 However, this selection process consumes more time due to lower task acceptance, which may delay the entire editorial process.10

Citations are the most commonly used measure for visibility and impact of a journal. Over the years, many different indexes of citations have been created, which indicates that this is a very controversial topic. Although these indexes have limitations that have been reported in the literature11, the idea of counting citations remains valuable. However, the source of citation data for counting may be one of the more important limitations for these indexes, resulting in significant differences between them.12 In our analysis, we identified massive differences between the databases that we used as sources for citation data. As in previous studies, Google Scholar gathered the highest number of citations, although they may not all be from other scientific articles.13,14,15 When comparing Scopus and Web of Science, Scopus’ more comprehensive coverage of the field results in higher counts, which is consistent with previous comparisons.13,14,15 The number of citations received increased during the study period, but the journal’s indexation in PubMed Central in 2014 and subsequent inclusion in PubMed produced a significant increase in citations.

The incomplete coverage of some databases, such as Web of Science, in pharmacy practice becomes more evident when analyzing the journals that are cited in Pharmacy Practice more frequently. As expected, our analysis demonstrated that a journal more frequently cites journals in the same area of knowledge; the five most cited journals in 2015 were pharmacy journals. This means that the immediate consequence of missing references for Pharmacy Practice is a reduction in the Journal Impact Factor not only for other pharmacy journals but also for Pharmacy Practice itself. In a recent editorial, using data from the Web of Science, it became apparent that Pharmacy Practice should have appeared in the Journal Citation Reports with an Impact Factor of 0.754.16 If self-citations were counted, this value should rise to 0.942.

Another measure of the visibility of a journal is the degree of internationalization. Pharmacy Practice published articles from authors representing 58 different countries. As is usually the case, the USA was the most prevalent country, confirming previous studies identifying it as the main contributor to medical sciences. 17,18 Not surprisingly, Australia stood in second place, thus demonstrating the advanced position of this country in pharmacy services and pharmacy practice in general. Despite the variety of different national affiliations, international collaborations are rare in Pharmacy Practice with less than 20% of papers written by international. Internationally collaborative articles enhance the efficiency and productivity of the team, facilitate the mobility of researchers, help reinforce communication, and allow results to be achieved in less time.19,20,21,22,23,24 To better understand the essential features of cooperative practices that can lead to a future partnerships19,21, network analysis may be a useful technique. The network built of the authors’ national affiliations revealed 14 countries with no collaborative production, thus demonstrating the lack of robust and permanent international collaborative links among authors publishing in Pharmacy Practice.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis of the first decade of articles published in Pharmacy Practice serves as a valuable benchmark for enhancing the quality of the journal going forward. During this decade, Pharmacy Practice was admitted to major databases, resulting in increased growth in terms of both visibility and impact. The editorial process duration increased with the implementation of a more rigorous reviewer selection process. International collaboration among authors is low. Some of these patterns and trends deserve further analysis to identify potential tendencies in the field of pharmacy practice that may result in weaknesses for all journals in the field.

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Received: September 06, 2016; Accepted: December 09, 2016

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

FF-L is editor-in-chief of Pharmacy Practice. No other conflicts of interest to declare.

Creative Commons License This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.