Instructions to Authors

About the Journal

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes 12 issues per year in print and online formats.

Please read these instructions carefully and follow them closely. The Editors may return manuscripts that do not follow these instructions.

Scope of the Journal

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology publishes manuscripts pertaining to the design, delivery and mechanism of action of drugs and dosage forms with a view to developing and improving current therapeutic drug strategies.

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology keeps pace with new research on how drug action may be optimized by new technologies, and attention is given to understanding and improving drug interactions in the body. At the same time, the journal maintains its established and well-respected core strengths in areas such as pharmaceutics and drug delivery, experimental and clinical pharmacology, biopharmaceutics and drug disposition, and drugs from natural sources. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology publishes at least one special issue on a topical theme each year.

Editorial Policies

For full details of Oxford University Press’s editorial policies, please see Publication Ethics
Original research studies involving animals or human volunteers must include details of ethical approval. These should include:

(a) the name of the Institutional Review Board or Ethics Committee that approved the study and all protocols,

(b) the date of this approval and

(c) the number of the certification or document which verified approval of the study.

Manuscripts reporting randomised controlled trials should include a checklist and flowchart in accordance with the CONSORT Statement guidelines. The checklist should be submitted as a supplementary file, and the flowchart as a figure.

Systematic reviews must be submitted together with a checklist and flowchart in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines. The checklist should be submitted as a supplementary file, and the flowchart as a figure.  

The use of Natural Products

In studies that describe the use of natural products, the source organism must be authenticated by an expert and include reference to appropriate voucher specimens. All organisms must be validated taxonomically (in case of non-cultivated plant species http://mpns.kew.org/mpns-portal/ or http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/ or http://www.ipni.org/ need to be used.

Chemical Composition of Extracts from Natural Products

All extracts from natural products should be fully characterised to ensure that full details of the chemical composition is known. For this purpose, separative methods (e.g. HPLC) following by structural elucidation methods are required (e.g. spectroscopy). Furthermore, an HPLC chromatograph should be included, where appropriate.

Peer Review

This journal uses single blind peer review. For full details about the peer review process, see Fair Editing and Peer Review. 

ORCID

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology requires all submitting authors to provide an ORCID ID at submission to the journal. You can find out more about ORCID, and the benefits of using an ORCID ID here. If you do not already have an ORCID ID, you can register for free via the ORCID website. 

Data Policy

Availability of Data and Materials

Where ethically feasible, Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology strongly encourages authors to make all data and software code on which the conclusions of the paper rely available to readers. We suggest that data be presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, or deposited in a public repository whenever possible. Information on general repositories for all data types, and a list of recommended repositories by subject area, is available here.

Data Citation

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology supports the Force 11 Data Citation Principles and requires that all publicly available datasets be fully referenced in the reference list with an accession number or unique identifier such as a digital object identifier (DOI). Data citations should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite: 

    [dataset]* Authors, Year, Title, Publisher (repository or archive name), Identifier

*The inclusion of the [dataset] tag at the beginning of the citation helps us to correctly identify and tag the citation. This tag will be removed from the citation published in the reference list.

Preprint Policy

Authors retain the right to make an Author’s Original Version (preprint) available through various channels, and this does not prevent submission to the journal. For further information see our Online Licensing, Copyright and Permissions policies. If accepted, the authors are required to update the status of any preprint, including your published paper’s DOI, as described on our Author Self- Archiving Policy.

Self-Archiving Policy

You may self-archive versions of your work on your own webpages, on institutional webpages, and in other repositories. If you want more information about the reuse rights you retain if you publish with us, please visit our Author Self- Archiving Policy page.

Conflict of Interest

When submitting a paper, you and your co-authors must declare any potential conflicts of interest. You must do this by including a Conflict of Interest statement in your submitted manuscript.

A detailed definition of conflicts of interests is available.

Use of Chatbots and Large Language Models

Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology supports the World Association of Medical Editors’ recommendations on chatbots and scholarly manuscripts. If a chatbot or similar program is used in the development of a paper for Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, the following is required:

• The Large Language Models (LLM) cannot be credited as an author, as authorship requires that the author be accountable for the submitted/published work, and artificial intelligence cannot fulfil this requirement of authorship;
• Authors listed on the paper must review the content generated by the LLM and take full responsibility for it, as they would for any other content within the submitted/published work;
• The use of LLM tools must be noted in the cover letter;
• The use of LLM tools must be documented in the Methods, Acknowledgments, or another appropriate section of the paper.

Submission

We will consider your manuscript as long as

• it is your own original work and does not duplicate any previously published work, including your own;
• it is not under consideration, in peer review, or accepted for publication in any journal other than Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology;
• it has not been published in any other journal; and
• it contains nothing abusive, defamatory, libelous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Authors should observe high ethical standards and obey publication best practices. The following are all unacceptable:

• data falsification or fabrication
• plagiarism, including duplicate publication of your own work without proper citation
• misappropriation of work

We treat any case of ethical or publication malpractice very seriously. We will address them in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Further information about OUP’s ethical policies is available.

How to Submit

You must submit your paper via our web-based submission system, which may be found on ScholarOne Manuscripts submission  page. If you have not published with Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology before, you will need to create an account. For more information, please see ScholarOne Manuscripts Author Support . Authors are invited to suggest up to three potential referees, at least two of whom should be from outside the submitting author’s country. Please include affiliation and a contact email address is essential. For reasons of conflict of interest, or perceived conflict of interest, referees from author’s institutions should not be included. Referees without institutional email addresses should not be proposed.

Questions about submitting can be sent to the editorial office at: JPPEditorialOffice@oup.com

Article Type

This journal publishes several different article types.

Original research papers  

Original research papers should not normally exceed 4000 words.

Critical reviews

These are normally commissioned by invitation from the Editors but suggestions are welcome. Please contact the Editorial Office before submitting a review article.

Mini reviews

These are discussion articles of up to 6000 words in length. Please contact the Editorial Office prior to submission of such articles. 

Third-Party Permissions

If you wish to reproduce any material for which you do not own the copyright—including quotations, tables, or images—you must obtain permission from the copyright holder. The permissions agreement must include the following documents:

• nonexclusive rights to reproduce the material in your article in Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology
• both print and electronic rights, preferably for use in any form or medium
• lifetime rights to use the material
• worldwide English-language rights

Further information on obtaining permissions is available.

Manuscript Preparation: Format, Structure, and Style

This journal offers format free submission. Authors are welcome to submit new manuscripts in a single PDF file, in any format or layout as long as the manuscript is complete and can be used by reviewers. If you are invited to revise your manuscript, or if it is accepted, you will be asked to format your manuscript according to the journal layout style described below.

Authors are urged to be succinct, to use the minimum number of tables and figures necessary and to avoid repetition of information between these two media. Given the competition for space within the journal, the length of submission in relation to its likely contribution will be taken into account with regard to acceptability. Guidelines on length are provided below. A separate file should be uploaded at submission that describes the highlights of the study.  This involves the description of the main areas of novelty in no more than 5 bullet points.

The pages and lines of the manuscript must be numbered.

Pre-submission Language Editing

If you are not confident in the quality of your English, you may wish to use a language-editing service to ensure that editors and reviewers understand your manuscript. The RPS Journals partner with Enago, a leading provider of author services. Prospective authors are entitled to a discount of 30% for editing services at Enago, via the Specialist English Editing Services for Oxford University Press Authors page.

Enago is an independent service provider that will handle all aspects of this service, including payment. As an author you are under no obligation to take up this offer. Pre-submission language editing is optional and does not guarantee that your manuscript will be peer reviewed nor accepted.

Title Page

Please include the following:

• the title of your paper
• all author names and affiliations
• mailing address and email address of one corresponding author
• a short running head of 50 characters or less

Abstract

Structured abstracts are required for all papers and should include objectives, methods, key findings and conclusions. Abstracts have a maximum length of 200 words and must not contain reference citations or abbreviations.

Keywords

Three to six keywords should be supplied for all papers.

Graphical abstract

Authors of Original research papers, Critical reviews or Mini reviews are encouraged to submit a graphical abstract in addition to a text abstract for their manuscript at initial submission.

A graphical abstract is a single figure prepared by the authors that summarizes the key point(s) of an article and serves as a visual introduction to encourage interest in the content. When preparing your graphical abstract, keep in mind that they are ideally suited for promoting your article on social media, so text should be large enough to be read in that context and the image should be oriented in landscape format.

Please also consider the accessibility of your graphical abstract to all readers. See OUP’s Guidelines for making figures accessible.

Graphical abstracts are peer reviewed and published as part of the article online and in the PDF. It also appears in the table of contents and some other journal pages including in search results.

Submission instructions:

Your graphical abstract should be submitted as a separate file, selecting the appropriate file type designation in the online submission system. The file should be named “graphical_abstract”. Please see OUP's guidance on appropriate file format and resolution for graphics.​ 

Introduction

An introduction should provide a background to the study (appropriate for an international audience) and should clearly state the specific aims of the study. Please ensure that any abbreviations and all symbols used in equations are fully defined. Approximate length: 500-1000 words

Materials and Methods

This section should describe the materials and methods used in sufficient detail to allow the study to be replicated. Please include details of ethical approval in this section, and sources and purities of all chemicals used in the study must be provided. A separate section must be included that provides full details of the statistical methods used to validate the outcomes of the study.  This aspect will be independently reviewed by the Statistical Editor who may request reanalysis of the data. Approximate length: 500-1000 words  

Results

This section should provide detailed response rates. It is essential to include statistical analyses or other indicators to enable assessment of the variance of replicates of the experiments. Data should not be repeated in figures and tables. Approximate length: 1000-1500 words  

Discussion

The discussion section should summarise the main findings of the study, followed by a critique of the strengths and limitations of the research. The results should then be discussed in the context of international published literature and the contribution made to the field. Any policy limitations should be included. Approximate length: 1000 words    

Conclusions

A brief conclusions section should summarise the salient findings of the study. Authors are strongly advised to emphasise the contribution made to the field by their study in this section. Approximate length: 200 words  

Style

The journal follows Oxford SCIMED style. Please refer to these requirements when preparing your manuscript. UK spelling should be used throughout, except in quotations and in references.

Abbreviations

Please define nonstandard abbreviations at the first occurrence.

Tables 

You must number all tables (e.g., table 1, table 2, table 3) and reference them in the text. You must place all tables at the end of the main text. Tables should be in an editable format, and not embedded as an image file.

References

You may format references in any readable numbered style at submission. If an author/date system is used then this will be queried by the production team for a resupply. Please also note that the author is responsible for the accuracy of reference information. Please include the full DOI link where available.

Acknowledgments and Funding

Acknowledgments and funding information should be included at the end of your manuscript. Please fully cite any relevant funding information, including specific grant numbers. Funding acknowledgements should be written in the following form: “This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number xxx]”

If the research has not been funded by any specific project grant, please include the statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors”

LaTeX

Information on LaTeX files and formatting is available.

Figures

You must include figure titles and legends within the manuscript file—they should not be included in the image file.

You must submit each figure as an individual image file. Submit all panels of a multipanel figure on a single page as one file. For example, if the figure has 3 panels, the figure should be submitted as one file. Each panel should be labeled as a letter (A, B, C, D, etc.) in the upper-left corner of each panel.

Images of photographs or paintings can be provided as raster images. Common examples of raster images are .tif/.tiff, .raw, .gif, and .bmp file types. The resolution of raster files is measured by the number of dots or pixels in a given area, referred to as “dpi” or “ppi.”

• minimum resolution required for printed images or pictures: 350dpi
• minimum resolution for printed line art: 600dpi (complex or finely drawn line art should be 1200dpi)
• minimum resolution for electronic images (i.e., for on-screen viewing): 72dpi

Images of maps, charts, graphs, and diagrams are best rendered digitally as geometric forms called vector graphics. Common file types are .eps, .ai, and .pdf. Vector images use mathematical relationships between points and the lines connecting them to describe an image. These file types do not use pixels; therefore resolution does not apply to vector images.

Figures prepared as .doc/.docx or .jpeg/.jpg files will not be accepted. 

Figure accessibility and alt text

Incorporating alt text (alternative text) when submitting your paper helps to foster inclusivity and accessibility. Good alt text ensures that individuals with visual impairments or those using screen readers can comprehend the content and context of your figures. The aim of alt text is to provide concise and informative descriptions of your figure so that all readers have access to the same level of information and understanding, and that all can engage with and benefit from the visual elements integral to scholarly content. Including alt text demonstrates a commitment to accessibility and enhances the overall impact and reach of your work.  

Alt-text is applicable to all images, figures, illustrations, photographs, and it isn’t required for tables and large datasets (unless the tables are provided as figures). 

Alt-text is only accessible via e-reader and so it won’t appear as part of the typeset article. 

Detailed guidance on how to draft and submit alt text. 

Supplementary Material

You must submit supplementary data or supplementary material at the same time as the main manuscript.

• Supplementary material must be cited in the text of the main manuscript.
• Supplementary material will be available online only and will not be copyedited or typeset.
• Style and formatting of supplementary material should be consistent with that of the manuscript. 
• Supplementary material should be formatted to function on any internet browser.
• Supplementary material files should be no larger than 2MB each.

Production

Licence to Publish and Open Access Options

JPP offers the option of publishing under either a standard licence or an open access licence. Please note that some funders require open access publication as a condition of funding. If you are unsure whether you are required to publish open access, please do clarify any such requirements with your funder or institution.

Should you wish to publish your article open access, you should select your choice of open access licence in our online system after your article has been accepted for publication. You will need to pay an open access charge to publish under an open access licence.

Details of the open access licences and open access charges.

OUP has a growing number of Read and Publish agreements with institutions and consortia which provide funding for open access publishing. This means authors from participating institutions can publish open access, and the institution may pay the charge. Find out if your institution is participating.

Manuscript Charges

Author Portal

You can pay open access charges on the same Author Portal site you used to sign your licence to publish. You can pay immediately online or request an invoice by email or post. You may also refer the charges to an institutional prepayment account. Any applicable discounts can also be applied prior to payment.

You can pay your open access charges immediately after you sign your licence. If selecting a standard licence instead of open access, there is no charge. 

OA Licence Charges

Charges for the open access licence options offered by Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology are listed below. The standard licence to publish does not carry a charge. 

Charges for CC BY:

Regular charge: £2,772

 

Charges for CC BY−NC:

Regular charge: £2,772

 

Author Toll Free Link and Discounts

All corresponding authors will be provided with a free access link to their article upon publication.  The link will be sent via email to the article’s corresponding author who is free to share the link with any co-authors.  Please see OUP’s Author Self-Archiving policy for more information regarding how this link may be publicly shared depending on the type of license under which the article has published.  

All authors have the option to purchase up to 10 print copies of the issue in which they publish at a 50% discount. Orders should be placed through this order form. Orders must be made within 12 months of the online publication date.