About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences is a free-access peer-reviewed journal with multidisciplinary content opened to National and International scientific communities. The journal publishes papers in different fields of the Pharmaceutical Sciences on relevant issues involving basic and applied research, which can be submitted as original works, review articles, and technical reports. The manuscripts may be sent in Portuguese, English, or Spanish.

SPONSORSHIP

Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences is a scientific journal linked and sponsored by the Federal Council of Pharmacy (CFF, Brazil). Due to this sponsorship, the submission, publication, and D.O.I. deposit are free for authors, meaning no publication cost (APC).

It is important to note that, although Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences is sponsored by CFF, the Editorial Board works independently, and the Good Practices of Editorial Process is granted.

ETHICS STATEMENTS

Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The COPE Guidelines encourage and recommend the ethical conduct of editors and authors, stimulating the active identification of plagiarism in research, fraud, and possible ethics violations, among others.

All research involving humans must follow the declaration of Helsinki (https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/268312) and the National Commission of Ethics in Research (http://conselho.saude.gov.br/comissoes-cns/conep/). Concerning Clinical Trials, Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences supports the statements of Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trial (CONSORT), available at http://www.consort-statement.org/. These principles make informed consent mandatory for research involving human participants, and it means that a research participant must be informed about all aspects of the trial. The study should be carried out only when the participant voluntarily confirms his or her disposition to participate in the clinical trial and the significance of the research for the advancement of medical knowledge and social welfare.

Participants' names or any other identifiers must be removed from all sections of the manuscript, including supplementary information. In the methods section, the authors should include that informed consent to publish identifying information/images has been obtained.

Any manuscript involving organs/tissues from prisoners will be immediately rejected. It includes manuscripts describing human transplantation research involving organs/tissues obtained from prisoners. The privacy of organ donors should be granted and details of the institutions through which all organs/tissues were obtained should be included.

All research involving animals must follow the Universal Declaration on Animals Welfare (https://www.worldanimalprotection.ca/sites/default/files/media/ca_-_en_files/case_for_a_udaw_tcm22-8305.pdf), and the Brazilian Law 11795/2008 (Arouca's Law), available at http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2007-2010/2008/lei/l11794.htm.

In the section Material and Methods, authors must inform the name of the Ethics Committee with approved the research and the approval protocol number. If the study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed.

Moreover, Authors and Editors are strongly advised to access http://publicationethics.org for Ethics in Research and Publication information.

Briefly, the recommendations followed by Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences can be highlighted:

Editor-in Chief, Associate Editors

 -Ensure that good editorial practices are followed and maintained.

-Ensure the autonomy of editorial decisions.

-Ensure the protection of the identity of authors and reviewers throughout the arbitration process through double-blind evaluation.

-Analyze submitted manuscripts regarding the scope of Infarma- Ciencias Farm, instructions for authors, legal (copyright infringement, plagiarism), and ethical aspects.

-Preserving authors' rights

-Advice Guest Editors, Authors, and Reviewers regarding the editorial flow and the peer review process

-Select reviewers who must have expertise in their fields of expertise.

-Organize and update the list of reviewers.

-Answer questions about published articles related to editorial misconduct

-Publish, if necessary, corrections and withdrawals

 

Reviewers

 -Inform Editors of availability to evaluate a manuscript.

-Inform the Editors of any identification in the manuscript o.f malpractice, copyright infringement, or plagiarism.

-Refuse an invitation if you are not qualified to review the manuscript, if there is a conflict of interest, or if you identify any sign that could lead to recognition of the manuscript's authorship.

-Consider the manuscript as a confidential document and do not use the information contained in that document for your benefit.

-Issuing an opinion based on good editorial practices, especially about ethics and respect for individual and collective rights.

 

Authors

 Know the focus and scope of Infarma Ciencias Farm and follow the guidelines for submission.

-Ensure that the submitted manuscript is original and has not been previously published in national or foreign journals

-Write the manuscript based on good research practices and writing scientific papers.

 - Ensure that the manuscript has not been submitted for consideration by another journal at the same time as Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences

-Ensure compliance with the recommendations of the Research Ethics Committee, when relevant. Experiments must follow the ethical standards defined by the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) or the EU Directive 2010/63/EU.

Ensure that ethical practices and the approval protocol number by the Ethics Committee are included in the Material and Methods section of the manuscript.

-Ensure that the manuscript does not present expressions and contents that constitute plagiarism. Authors must be careful about the reproduction of figures, tables, and charts. Plagiarism is taken seriously by the journal.

- Guarantee credit to consulted sources.

-Ensure that good authoring practices are followed.

Maintain communication with the Editors throughout the editorial process, ensuring that the Editors will be immediately informed if there is a need for corrections or retractions.

 

Thus, only original contributions submitted exclusively to the journal will be considered. Previous or duplicate publications are not permitted. The author must inform any submission or reports that may be considered as a duplicate or previous publication. Authors are strongly encouraged to check for plagiarism before submission through detection software to ensure that the manuscript has a minimum similarity to other documents.

All manuscripts accepted are subject to change during editing to best suit the journal’s style and aims.

SPECIAL NUMBERS AND SUPPLEMENTS

Special numbers and supplements may be published from time to time. In the case of complete articles, the peer review will be carried out according to the usual editorial flow of Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences.

 

Peer Review Process

Infarma follows the rules of the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" (Vancouver Rule - http://www.icmje.org). The style and format of the references are based on the American National Standards Institute adopted by the National Library of Medicine NLM for its database. Authors should consult: Patrias K. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd. Ed. Wendling DL, technical editor. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (U.S.), 2007 [updated 2009 Jan 14]:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine

  It is forbidden the total or partial submission of the manuscript to any other journal. The responsibility of the article's content is exclusive of respective authors.

Authors should submit at least three suggestions for potential reviewers (name and e-mail). However, there is no obligation on editors to use these names.

The Reviewers must be expert in the theme, preferentially linked to a Research Institution, and should be published papers on the subject in the last three years. Reviewers are asked to send the review within three weeks. Additional reviewers may be requested to assist the editors in their final decision.

The evaluation of a manuscript goes through three stages:

1) preliminary assessment of the form and plagiarism: when submitted, it is verified whether the manuscript follows the guidelines for authors, mainly in terms of style of references and citations, absence of identification that could compromise the double-blind evaluation, and need or not for approval by CONEP, according to Resolution 466/2012 (http://conselho.saude.gov.br/comites-de-etica-em-pesquisa-conep?view=default). Authors must inform, in the manuscript, all the relevant information, including the free and informed consent form.

Besides, it is checked whether the references cited are current and relevant. If all the questions are in agreement, the manuscript goes to the second stage. Otherwise, it returns to authors who have up to 15 days to adjust and re-submit.

2) Preliminary content assessment: this step is the responsibility of the Associate Editor. An evaluation is carried out in order to verify methodological, conceptual, and quality problems. Furthermore, the occurrence of plagiarism is verified through the use of tracking software, for example, CopySpider (http://www.copyspider.com.br/main/). If it is verified that the manuscript does not meet the scope and minimum criteria required by Infarma - Pharmaceutical Sciences, the manuscript will be rejected. Otherwise, it will proceed to the third step.

3) Peer review: the manuscript is sent to at least two reviewers who have a deadline of up to 15 days to submit the opinion. If the reviewer does not meet this deadline, he is replaced immediately to prevent delay of the evaluation process. The reviewers' suggestions are sent to the authors to review the manuscript. The revised manuscript must be submitted within a maximum of 15 days. If the deadline is not met, it will be automatically deleted from the evaluation queue.


In addition to the quality of the manuscript, during the evaluation, special attention must be given to the data presented, special attention should be given to the following items:

1- Is there a protocol number for approval by the Ethics Committee (when applicable)?

2- is there information about the Free and Informed Consent Form (when applicable)?

3- Is the text original? (we ask that reviewers search, in databases and use screening software, for possible occurrences of plagiarism)

4- Are the bibliographic references up-to-date, comprehensive and relevant?

5- Did the authors fully follow the Author Guidelines?


4) Re-peer review: the manuscript reviewed by the authors is sent back to the reviewers to check if all changes have been made and whether the manuscript can be accepted. The reviewer has up to 15 days to forward the response. If approved, the manuscript is sent to the edit queue. If the changes have not been made correctly, the document will return to the authors, who have a deadline of up to 5 days to send the new revised file.

If the manuscript is not forwarded within that period, it will be automatically withdrawn from the evaluation queue.


At the end of the process, the average time between evaluation and publication is about 90 days. Possible delays occur due to the need to replace reviewers and/or delays in meeting deadlines, both by reviewers and authors.

Publication Frequency

The periodicity of the journal is quarterly.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers free access to its content, considering that providing free scientific knowledge to the public leads to a greater democratization of knowledge worldwide.

Authorship Criteria

 Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies a responsibility for published work. The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors, but also that contributors credited as authors understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for the manuscript to be published.

The corresponding author is the one who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the submission peer review and publication process. The author must ensure that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed.

Infarma - Pharmaceutical Sciences recommends that authorship be based on the following criteria:

  1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
  2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for relevant intellectual content.
  3. Final approval of the version to be published.
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The Infarma-Pharmaceutical Sciences recommends that the authorship be based on the following criteria:

  1. All authors should meet all criteria for authorship, and all who meet the criteria should be identified as authors.
  2. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged.
  3. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work.
  4. The individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria and ideally should do so when planning the work, making modifications as appropriate as the work progresses. It is the collective responsibility of the authors.

Sources of Support

Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences is a journal funded by the Federal Council of Pharmacy (CFF). Thus, no fee for submission, publication, or D.O.I. registry is charged to the authors. It is important to emphasize that the entire editorial process is independent and follows good editorial practices.

Journal History

Infarma (ISSN 0104-0219) started in 1992 as a scientific supplement of the Revista Pharmacia Brasileira, the dissemination vehicle of the Federal Council of Pharmacy. The journal continued to be published in this format until 2012, when it underwent a reformulation, disassociating itself from the Revista Pharmacia Brasileira, becoming Infarma – Pharmaceutical Sciences, with an international editorial board and online publication (e-ISSN 2318-9312), publishing papers in Portuguese, English or Spanish. As of 2013, one volume per year has been published, consisting of four quarterly issues. Each issue has been published on the fifth day of April, July, October, and January.