Membes web banner extra small_1d5d1ntnklzf

The College welcomes submissions from members, other pharmacists, and industry professionals for consideration for publication in "Pharmacy at the Frontline". The following instructions to authors help guide development of these submissions. These have been developed under guidance from the College Academic Advisory Board. If you would like further guidance, please email accreditation@acp.edu.au

Manuscript topics

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Quality use of medicines
  • Professional pharmacy services
  • Pharmacists working to their full scope of practice
  • Clinical governance
  • Treatment of chronic and acute illness
  • Leadership
  • Business best practice
  • Pharmacy clinical and business practice guidelines

Manuscript methods

Accepted manuscript methods include:

  • Features
  • Structured reviews
  • Original research
  • Best practice guidelines
  • Continuing professional development activities - clinical or leadership and management reviews
  • Pharmacy practice brief
  • Case studies
  • Letters to the editor

Peer review

Pharmacy at the Frontline uses a double blinded peer review process, whereby the identities of the two reviewers and the author/s are concealed.

Manuscript submission

Manuscripts for consideration must:

  • Include a statement about implication/s of the content for pharmacy practice
  • Include a list of key points
  • Be practical and usable by pharmacists and/or industry professionals
  • Not currently be considered for publication or in a peer review process with another journal
  • Not be previously published in another journal
  • Contain nothing abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal
  • Not contain falsified data or fabrication
  • Not be plagiarised, including from the author/s own previous works
  • Contain attribution for the work of other people via referencing
  • Not contain the works of others obtained by misappropriation

Manuscript descriptions

All submitted manuscrips should include a statement about the implication/s of the content for pharmacy practice, and a list of key points.

Attributes of submitted manuscripts also  include:

Features (Maximum 2000 words excluding references)

Not sure you can tackle a full CPD accredited review activity just yet? Or maybe you have something important to write that is unlikely to be accredited for pharmacist CPD. Consider submitting a feature.

Features are like CPD accredited clinical or leadership and management reviews, but provide the reader with a more broader view of the topic, that may prevent the content from being accredited under the APC accreditation Standard. The topic might be applicable to community pharmacists and their practice, but not fall into one of the pharmacy practice competencies (retailing and merchandising is a good example of this). Or perhaps the content is primarily drawn from expert opinion rather than published evidence. Perhaps it's just that your writing style is more conversational than instructive.

The content of a feature must still be unbiased, relevent to commnity pharmacists or the pharmacy industry, be informative, and not promotional in nature. Opinions must be identified as such.

Systematic reviews (Maximum 3000 words exlcuding references)

The College recommends use of the Equator Guidelines for improved reporting of systematic reviews.

  • Be derived from peer reviewed literature
  • Be critically analysed
  • Use a structured review process
  • Include stated aim/s of the review
  • Describe the literature search methodology and quality inclusion criteria
  • Include meta-analysis (if not possible, be a robust descriptive review)

Research articles (Maximum 3000 words excluding references)

The College recommends use of the Equator Guidelines for improved reporting of research articles including those for randomised trials and observational studies and qualitative research. Other Equator Reporting Guidelines may be useful and can be searched here.

  • Include the following components:
    • Abstract (max 250 words)
    • Introduction
    • Ethics approval (if applicable)
    • Methods
    • Results
    • Discussion
    • Conclusion
    • Implication/s for pharmacy practice
    • List of key points.
  • Studies can report new research or verification of existing data
  • Research articles will be made available via open access to all readers on the College website. There is currently no fee to publish research articles open access
  • The College will accept papers previously published on pre-print platforms and encourages data and code sharing
  • The College welcomes preregistration of research articles, outlining methods

Best practice guidelines

The College recommends use of the Equator Guidelines for improved reporting of clinical practice guidelines. These help the author write a meaningful guideline and enable the College review process.

  • Be underpinned by a structured review
  • Be informed by input from practitioners
  • Include an executive summary
  • Include the evidence grading methodology used
  • Present recommendations graded by evidence
Continuing professional development activities - Clinical and Leadership and Management Reviews (Maximum 3000 words excluding references)
  • Include the outcome of the needs analysis that underpins the development of the activity
  • Include practical guidance for pharmacist practice
  • Include a case study that exemplifies the education
  • Comply with the College CPD Accreditation Guidelines

Pharmacy practice brief (750-1000 words excluding references)

A brief communication on a clinical or leadership and management topic that is relevant to contemporary community pharmacy practice.

Case studies (Maximum 1500 words excluding references)

Have you come across an interesting case in your practice that you feel needs to be shared to instruct your peers? A case study may be ideal. A case can be either clinical or leadership and management in nature and should be applicable to community pharmacist practice. The structure of the case will depend on the context and situation of the case.

The College recommends use of the Equator Guidelines for clinical case reporting. These help the author write a meaningful case and enable the College review process.

In general, clinical cases should contain:

  • Deidentified demographic details of any patient/s
  • Patient health and social histories
  • Medicines taken (including prescription, OTC, complementary, illicit)
  • Pathology or monitoring
  • A comprehensive description of the clinical challenge presented
  • The process you undertook to consider the case
  • Your solution, including a justification
  • How you used the knowledge you gained from the case to change your pracrtice
  • How you incoporated the outcomes of the case into you quality improvement processes
  • Resources and references you used when considering the case
  • Key learning/s from the case for other pharmacists

In general, leadership and management cases should contain:

  • How did you identify the leadership/management challenge in the business?
  • What steps did you take to investigate the challenge further?
  • How did you formulate an action plan to address the challenge?
  • What resources (including people) did you consult when formulating the plan?
  • What processes did you take to address the challenge?
  • What were the outcomes of these processes?
  • How did you incorporate the outcomes into your quality improvement processes and business planning?
  • What process do you have in place to minimise the challenge occurring again?
  • On reflection, how can the challenge have been handled differently?

Letters to the editor (Maximum 500 words)

The Journal of Community Pharmacy Practice and Leadership is committed to engaging with the pharmacy profession, we value your input, ideas, successes, and concerns.

For consideration for inclusion in the journal, a letter to the editor should be:

  • Deidentified
  • Unbiased
  • Constructive in criticism
  • The opinions of the author only

Letters to the editor will NOT be published if they are:

  • Defamatory
  • Malicious or threatening in intent
  • Discriminate about another person, their background, race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, age, or professional practice.

Referencing

Pharmacy at the Frontline prefers the Vancouver style of referencing.

  1. Number all references in the order they appear in the text
  2. Write the reference number in Arabic numerals in square brackets e.g. [1], [1,2], [1-3,5] etc (No superscript, or footnotes)
  3. If there are more than 3 authors, use "et al" after the third author
  4. Use official abbreviations of journal names where possible (refer to the NLM)
  5. Include web links where possible
  6. Direct quotes should be placed in quotation marks e.g. Smith stated,"the evidence indicates ....'
  7. Personal communications such as discussions, emails, lectures etc should be identified as such in the text (ensure you have the person's permission to quote their personal communication)
  8. Often it is easier to site references directly by copying using the "Cite" button on the PubMed reference page
  9. Ideally, references should arise from a full text article and not the abstract
  10. More referencing examples can be found at the NLM

Declarations of conflicts of interest

All submissions to Pharmacy at the Frontline must include a declaration of conflict of interest for each author/speaker and reviewers who have contributed to the content. Declarations of conflicts of interest will be published where necessary.

Submit your manuscript or an enquiry

Please email your manuscript or enquiries about submission to the College to info@acp.edu.au