Pharmacoepidemiology

Foto: Ben Kerckx.

Pharmacoepidemiology

When a drug enters the market, we know little more than what controlled clinical trials tell us, and such trials are experiments that have tested drugs in ideal conditions, not always free from bias.

Given that pharmacoepidemiology is the discipline that studies the use of drugs in real life, connecting controlled trials, common practice, and health needs of the population, it is relevant as a support for decision-making, as well as to achieve a healthier use of the drugs. Furthermore, this discipline enables us to know the results of drug use in our populations and improve access to them or prevent adverse reactions.

For those reasons, Salud Colectiva calls for the submission of papers on the following topics:

Drug utilization studies

Drug use in pediatrics. Off-label drug use
Drug use among the elderly
Gender and drugs
Drug use in chronic pathologies
Use of antibiotics
Use of generic drugs

Drug utilization studies as tool for pharmacovigilance

Preventive pharmacovigilance
Inappropriate use of drugs

Impact of drug use policies

Impact of drug use policies
Registering of new drugs and therapeutic innovation: patents
Pharmaceutical regulation
Pharmaceutical policies
High cost drugs: judicialization
Drug access: essential drugs
Biosimilars

The guest editors of this call will be Claudia Patricia Vaca González, associate professor, director of the Centro de Pensamiento Medicamentos, Información y Poder, at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Colombia); Albert Figueras, full professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, director of Fundación Institut Català de Farmacologia (Spain); Martín Urtasun, associate professor of Pharmacology at the Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche, Pharmacology area of the Federación Médica de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (FEMEBA) (Argentina); Martín Cañás, associate professor of Pharmacology at the Universidad Nacional Arturo Jauretche, Pharmacology area of the Federación Médica de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (FEMEBA) (Argentina).

Original article submission

Submissions must be sent through the platform as a single file containing all of the required elements (cover page, tables, figures, etc.), according to the guidelines of each section open to submissions.

Works must be original and unpublished and written in Spanish, English or Portuguese [see Submission and publication languages]. Starting in 2019, the journal accepts works previously deposited in the preprint platforms SocArXiv, bioRxiv, arXiv o PsyArXiv. All manuscripts will be subject to a preliminary review to determine whether the article is in alignment with the goals, editorial policies and standards of the journal.

If the article is deemed eligible in this pre-evaluation, the authors will be notified and the peer review process will commence. Regardless of the submission language, works accepted will be published in Spanish or bilingually in both English and Spanish. The journal covers the costs of editing, publishing and distribution, and authors must cover the costs of translation [see translation service].

All work should be submitted via the journal’s webpage using the option “Submit an article.” If you do not yet have a username and password you can create them there. For more details, see How to submit and article. The basic formal requirements are:

Cover page

Reference to the thematic call “Pharmacoepidemiology”
Title of article: in both Spanish and English.
Personal information for each author: first and last names; last academic degree earned; current position and institution; country; e-mail address, ORCiD code.
Article abstract: no more than 12 lines written in a single paragraph without structuring titles, in Spanish and English.
Keywords: 3-5 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) or Health Science Descriptors (DeCS), using the option “DeCS search".

Body of the text

Suggested maximum length: 7,000 words (not including references and tables or figures).
Submission languages: Texts should be submitted in Spanish. Authors who are not Spanish-speaking may submit works in Portuguese or English. If they are accepted, they will be published in Spanish or bilingually in both Spanish and English. The journal will cover editing, publishing, and distribution costs, and authors must cover the cost of translation. [see translation service]
Research Ethics: Research on human subjects (including ethnographies using in-depth interviews or any other type of research in which people participate) must explain within the text (in the Methodology section) the obtaining of the informed consent of participants and the approval of research protocol by the relevant Ethics Committee.
Endnotes and footnotes: Neither endnotes nor footnotes may be included. All necessary clarifications should be incorporated into the body of the text.
Textual citations: If the article contains citations of texts published in other languages, the citation should be translated into Spanish and the original citation in the publication language should also be included.
Conflict of interests: The mention of a conflict of interest does not imply the rejection of the article. Any real or potential conflict of interest, any obligations on the part of the author/s with regards to sources of funding, or any other type of relationship or rivalry that may be deemed to constitute a conflict of interest must be declared. The lack of conflict of interest must also be stated.
Acknowledgements: All collaborators that do not meet authorship criteria must appear in the “Acknowledgements” section. If the article is the partial result of a larger study for which funds or scholarships were awarded, the title of the study that originated the article should be included in the Acknowledgements section, indicating the name of the gifting institution(s) as well as the name and code number of the project. It is the authors' responsibility to obtain the permission of those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section, as readers may infer their approval of the data and conclusions.
References: Correlative numbering system (Vancouver) based in the style of the National Library of Medicine. Maximum: 100 references.
Figures and tables: No more than seven tables and/or figures will be accepted. They should be submitted within the same file as the text, at the end of the text, and should include:

Consecutive numbering (tables and figures should be numbered independently, in series according to their designation)
A descriptive title that specifies the geographic and temporal dimensions of the data presented
A mention of the source of the data used

Confidentiality: In order to preserve confidentiality in the peer review process, all mention of the research group, earlier works and the study giving rise to the article (or any other information that could reveal the identity of the authors) should be highlighted in such a way that the editorial board can easily identify these mentions and replace them with the appropriate phrase in the review phase.
Declarations: The following files must be downloaded, filled out and included as Supplementary Files (Step 2 of the submission process): "Declaration of Originality, Ethical Considerations and Conflict of Interests" (in Spanish).

Article processing charge (APC): Salud Colectiva does not charge for editorial processing of articles. All editing, publishing and distribution costs are financed by the Instituto de Salud Colectiva of the Universidad Nacional de Lanús.

Open Access policy: Salud Colectiva ratifies the Open Access model in which scientific publications are made freely available at no cost online, with no time embargos and with no publication costs transferred to the authors. Authors are offered full access to the final published versions so as to include them in institutional repositories. All of the material included in Salud Colectiva is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC).

Submission period

Given that the thematic issue has guest editors from different countries, a specific timeframe is proposed for article submission. Thus, articles may be submitted for evaluation from September 1 to September 30, 2020.