Article Types
Article Types
Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy
The Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy accepts manuscripts that make a clear, original, and scientifically meaningful contribution to public health, pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences, health services, health policy, clinical pharmacy, community pharmacy, pharmacotherapy, pharmacoepidemiology, medication safety, health promotion, disease prevention, and other related disciplines.
All submissions must be relevant to the journal's Focus and Scope and must demonstrate originality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, analytical depth, scientific relevance, and transparent reporting. Manuscripts must not have been published previously and must not be under consideration by another journal.
Authors must select the correct article type during submission. A manuscript may be returned for technical revision or declined during editorial screening when the selected article type does not correspond to the study design, manuscript structure, scientific content, or reporting approach.
1. Original Research Article
An Original Research Article presents complete findings from an empirical study using quantitative, qualitative, experimental, observational, laboratory-based, health-services, implementation, or mixed-methods approaches. The manuscript must address a clearly defined research question and provide a substantive contribution to public health, pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences, healthcare delivery, medication management, or related disciplines within the journal scope.
Eligible research approaches
- Cross-sectional studies
- Cohort studies
- Case-control studies
- Randomized controlled trials
- Experimental and quasi-experimental studies
- Implementation research
- Program and policy evaluation studies
- Qualitative studies
- Mixed-methods studies
- Health policy and health-system research
- Population-based and community-based studies
- Clinical pharmacy and pharmaceutical-care studies
- Pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacovigilance studies
- Medication-use and medication-safety studies
- Pharmacoeconomic and health-technology assessment studies
- Drug-utilization and prescribing-pattern studies
- Pharmaceutical formulation and drug-delivery studies
- Pharmacological, toxicological, and laboratory studies with clear health or pharmaceutical relevance
Required manuscript structure
- Title
- Structured abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments, when applicable
- Author contributions
- Funding statement
- Conflict-of-interest declaration
- Ethics approval and informed-consent statement, when applicable
- Data-availability statement
- References
- Tables, figure legends, and supplementary materials, when applicable
Methods reporting
The Methods section must provide sufficient information to permit scientific evaluation, reproducibility, and, where applicable, replication. Authors should describe the study design, setting, study period, participants or data sources, eligibility criteria, sampling procedures, sample-size calculation or justification, variables, interventions or exposures, outcomes, measurement instruments, validity and reliability procedures, laboratory procedures, data collection, quality control, analytical methods, statistical software and version, ethical approval, consent procedures, and study-registration information when applicable.
Statistical methods must be appropriate for the study objectives and data structure. Authors should report measures of effect, uncertainty estimates, confidence intervals, assumptions, missing-data procedures, adjustment variables, sensitivity analyses, and model diagnostics when relevant. Reliance solely on p-values without effect estimates and scientific interpretation is discouraged.
2. Review Article
A Review Article synthesizes and critically evaluates existing evidence relevant to public health, pharmacy, pharmaceutical sciences, clinical pharmacy, community pharmacy, health policy, medication safety, pharmacotherapy, or related fields. Review manuscripts must use a transparent and reproducible methodology, present a clearly defined review question, and explain how evidence was identified, selected, evaluated, and synthesized.
Eligible review approaches
- Systematic review
- Systematic review and meta-analysis
- Scoping review
- Umbrella review
- Rapid review with a clearly justified methodology
- Other structured evidence-synthesis designs approved by the editors
Minimum review requirements
- A clearly formulated review objective or research question
- A justified review design
- Explicit eligibility criteria
- Clearly identified information sources
- A complete and reproducible search strategy
- A transparent study-selection process
- Clearly described data-extraction procedures
- Critical appraisal or risk-of-bias assessment when applicable
- Appropriate qualitative or quantitative evidence-synthesis methods
- An assessment of heterogeneity when meta-analysis is performed
- An assessment of publication bias when appropriate
- A study-selection flow diagram
- Compliance with the relevant PRISMA guideline or extension
- Protocol registration information when available
Narrative reviews that do not explain their search, selection, and synthesis methods are generally not considered unless specifically invited by the editorial team.
3. Reporting Standards
Authors must prepare manuscripts in accordance with the reporting guideline appropriate to the study design. The relevant checklist and flow diagram should be submitted as supplementary files when required.
- CONSORT for randomized controlled trials
- STROBE for observational studies
- PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
- PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews
- CARE for case reports, when exceptionally considered
- COREQ or SRQR for qualitative studies
- STARD for diagnostic-accuracy studies
- TRIPOD for prediction-model studies
- CHEERS for health-economic evaluations
- SQUIRE for healthcare-quality-improvement studies
- ARRIVE for animal research
- TIDieR for detailed reporting of interventions
4. Research Ethics and Publication Integrity
Research involving human participants, identifiable personal data, biological specimens, or animals must comply with applicable ethical standards and receive approval from an authorized ethics committee before the study begins. The manuscript must state the name of the approving institution, approval number, approval date, and informed-consent procedures when applicable.
Clinical trials must be registered in a publicly accessible trial registry before participant enrollment, in accordance with applicable international requirements. The registration number must be included in the abstract and Methods section.
Authors must disclose all sources of funding, institutional support, financial relationships, nonfinancial interests, and other circumstances that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation. Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contributions and comply with accepted international authorship criteria.
5. General Writing Requirements
- The manuscript must be written in clear, concise, and academically appropriate English.
- The title must accurately represent the study design, population, intervention, exposure, or principal topic.
- The abstract must accurately summarize the purpose, methods, principal results, and conclusion.
- Keywords should use recognized scientific or indexing terminology whenever possible.
- The Introduction should establish the scientific context, research gap, rationale, and study objective.
- The Results section must present findings objectively and without unnecessary interpretation.
- The Discussion should interpret the findings in relation to previous evidence, mechanisms, implications, strengths, and limitations.
- The Conclusion must be supported directly by the results and must not overstate causality, effectiveness, or generalizability.
- Tables and figures must be self-explanatory, appropriately numbered, and cited in the manuscript text.
- Abbreviations must be defined at first use and used consistently.
- Generic names should be used for medicines unless a trade name is scientifically necessary.
- International System of Units should be used wherever applicable.
- References must be relevant, accurate, traceable, and formatted according to the journal requirements.
- Authors must verify all references, digital object identifiers, statistical values, and factual statements before submission.
6. Manuscripts Generally Not Considered
- Manuscripts outside the current Focus and Scope
- Community-service reports without a defined research design
- Incomplete studies or preliminary reports without adequate scientific justification
- Fragmented publication or unnecessary division of one study into multiple manuscripts
- Purely descriptive manuscripts without sufficient analytical or scholarly contribution
- Case reports without a substantial public-health, clinical-pharmacy, or pharmaceutical contribution
- Studies with inadequate methodological information
- Reviews without a transparent evidence-search and study-selection method
- Manuscripts without adequate ethical documentation when ethical review is required
- Manuscripts with unverifiable, fabricated, manipulated, duplicated, or substantially inconsistent data
- Manuscripts containing plagiarism, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed competing interests, or redundant publication
- Manuscripts that make causal claims unsupported by the study design
- Manuscripts whose conclusions are not supported by the reported findings
Before preparing and submitting a manuscript, authors should review the Focus and Scope , the Author Guidelines , the applicable reporting guideline, and all submission requirements.
Failure to comply with the journal requirements may result in the manuscript being returned for correction or declined during editorial screening.
