About the Journal

Mission
Vision
Peer review process
Publication ethics
Business model
Copyright policy
Self-archiving policy
Social networks

 

RBFHSS (Brazilian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy and Health Services – Revista Brasileira de Farmácia Hospitalar e Serviços de Saúde) is one of several journals in comportment with the Granada Statements publishing high-quality, peer-reviewed content in health services research specifically as it relates to some aspect of the medication use process. The medication use process includes but is not limited to the prescribing, preparation, dispensing, administration, adherence to, evaluation, monitoring, and outcomes associated with legend or with over-the-counter medications, incorporating the concept of clinical pharmacy which aims to optimize utilization of medicines to achieve person-centered and public health goals. The medication use process includes attitudes, perspectives, knowledge, and behaviors of any actor in this process, including prescribers, pharmacists, pharmacy personnel, other health practitioners, patients, and caregivers. As such, the Granada Group journals often refer to "pharmacy" in their title or description, as these persons are central to medication use process; however, research articles reviews, and commentaries can refer to any person involved in this process, as well as any evaluation (e.g., pharmaceoepidemiological) of the drug products themselves or systems employed to optimize the use process. The Granada Group journals share certain commonalities and also goals to improve the medication use process and the outcomes emanating from this endeavor; however, each journal has an established niche and optimally suited for certain types of manuscripts. Further description of the aims and scopes of RBFHSS follows below.

RBFHSS (Brazilian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy and Health Services – Revista Brasileira de Farmácia Hospitalar e Serviços de Saúde) is a peer-reviewed, diamond open-access journal published by the Brazilian Society of Hospital Pharmacy and Health Services (SBRAFH). RBFHSS adopts a continuous flow of publication, in four volumes per year. RBFHSS does not charge any submission or publication fee or article processing charges.

RBFHSS publishes articles on topics related to hospital pharmacy and other health services. The journal has a particular interest in studies regarding pharmaceutical services, clinical pharmacy, patient safety, pharmacotherapy, pharmacogenetics, integrative and complementary practices, health technology assessment, hospital pharmacotechnics, applied legislation, waste management, drug stability and compatibility, pharmacoeconomics, pharmacoepidemiology, and pharmacovigilance. More detailed description of the requisites that each manuscript must comply are available at: "Submissions"

 

MISSION

RBFHSS publishes scientific articles that contribute to the advancement of knowledge of hospital pharmacy and pharmaceutical services in other health services. RBFHSS presents innovative information, conceptual, technical, social, and political trends for fundamental actions by professionals in the field.

 

VISION

RBFHSS wants to be a high quality scientific journal indexed in bibliographic databases recognized nationally and internationally.

 

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

RBFHSS relies on a rigorous peer-review process to ensure the trustworthiness of the articles published. Peer reviewers act on an altruistic base, with no remuneration for their services. Their contribution is acknowledged, with the presentation of a list containing the full names and the number of reviews carried out in the editorial of the subsequent edition's first issue. Peer reviewers are selected among prestigious Brazilian and international authors who have previously published articles about a similar topic. Peer review runs in a double blind review system. However, reviewers can voluntarily unveil their identity.

Peer reviewers are contacted by email, and full-text manuscript (without any author identification details) is provided after they accept the review. In no more than four weeks, a reviewer should send the editor a confidential opinion on the manuscript and some comments to be sent to authors. The editor decides if a manuscript is accepted or needs major or minor modifications. Author(s) should submit the new version in no more than three weeks, and the new version is reviewed by the same peer-reviewers as the original version.

RBFHSS encourages reviewers to submit two different sets of comments:

  • A peer reviewer’s report addressed to the authors containing the suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript.
  • A confidential paragraph addressed to the editorial board providing personal insight about the quality of the paper and the chances for it to be improved.

A typical peer reviewer’s report for the authors expected in RBFHSS is a two- to three-page report with comments for the authors aiming to help them improve the quality of the manuscript, specifically addressing the following topics:

  • Validity: Specific comments about potential major methodological flaws of the study that prohibit manuscript publication. Comments about the data-gathering process and the data analysis are of particular importance in this evaluation. Focus on statistics is advised here. A specific subsection of limitations of the study should always be included at the end of the discussion section.
  • Originality and relevance: Reviewers are invited to provide their opinions about the originality of the work and its relevance for the practice of pharmacy. The objective of the study should be clearly described at the end of the introduction section. Note that local studies may have interest for an international audience if they are properly reported with details of the environment allowing their comparability with other environments. At the end of the discussion, authors should provide their opinions about the potential implications to practice of the findings reported.
  • Structure of the article: Reviewers should evaluate if the scientific article writing standards were achieved: Does methods section provide sufficient detail to ensure reproducibility? Does result section objectively present the findings obtained after applying the methods previously described? Are the results appropriately analyzed and discussed in the discussion section, with the limitations acknowledged? Are conclusions supported by the main results of the study aiming to respond the stated objective, avoiding exaggerated or generalist statements? Are bibliographic references sufficient, but not excessive, to frame the state-of-the art and support the discussion of the findings?
  • When a reviewer suggests additional references, abusive promotion of reviewer’s own articles must be avoided.
 

PUBLICATION ETHICS

RBFHSS expects that all the authors submitting contributions to the journal fulfills the highest ethical publishing and academic standards, namely all the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authorship

Authors submit manuscripts to RBFHSS to release information that ultimately will improve patients and populations health, but also to be rewarded with the credit for the knowledge released. Being author of a scientific article is a privilege and a responsibility. Being authors implies accepting for the good and the bad, responsibility and accountability for published work.

RBFHSS strictly follows the ICMJE the minimum requirements to be considered author of a manuscript, namely:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • 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.

Other individuals that contributed to the work but do not comply these four requirements may be acknowledged in two different forms: Collective authorship, or acknowledgements paragraph. RBFHSS encourages the use of these two contributors’ recognition forms.

Competing interests

As defined by ICMJE, competing interests or conflict of interests exist “when professional judgment concerning a primary interest may be influenced by a secondary interest”. Being the primary interest publishing an article reporting findings of a well conducted research, the secondary interest may be more difficult to describe. An author’s relationships or activities may represent conflicts of interests or may not, however it always represents a potential for conflicts of interests. To allow the editor, the reviewers, and ultimately the readers to make an educated guess of the existence of conflict of interests, all authors are obliged to disclose their relationships, financial or other (including “personal relationships or rivalries, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs”) when submitting a manuscript to RBFHSS. Unreported potential conflicts of interests represent a form of scientific misconduct.

Study design and ethical approval

A research involving human participants aiming to be published in RBFHSS must strictly comply the Declaration of Helsinki. Manuscripts describing animal research must include a justification for the use of animals, and for the particular species used.

Manuscripts submitted to RBFHSS must include a statement that the study obtained ethics approval (or a statement that it was not required and why), including the name of the ethics committee (that approved or waived the approval), the number/ID of the approval(s). Documents and forms associated to the approval process should be available if RBFHSS editorial board requests them and could be shared with peer reviewers.

Study registry and Data deposit

RBFHSS promotes a priori registration of all the study protocols, however this practice is mandatory for randomized controlled trials (preferably using clinicaltrials.gov) or systematic reviews (preferably using Prospero or Joanna Briggs Institute’s registry).

RBFHSS encourage authors to share free of charge the raw data of their studies by depositing them in any data repository (e.g., Mendeley Data, Open Science Framework).

Plagiarism

Although a universally accepted definition of plagiarism does not exist, common understanding refers to using others’ texts or ideas without crediting their source. As a general rule, all sources should be disclosed. The use of massive amounts of text or images from other sources requires an explicit permission from the copyright holder.

RBFHSS uses CrossRef plagiarism software (Similarly Check) to identify similarities, which are case-by-case analyzed.

Redundant publication

Scientific articles, especially original research articles, require originality. In general, RBFHSS is not interested in publishing articles already published elsewhere. In special occasions, RBFHSS could be interested in translating a version of an article previously published, which will require previous authorization from RBFHSS editor-in-chief.

Simultaneous submission to another journal is not accepted for a manuscript submitted to RBFHSS, or vice versa. Authors submitting a manuscript to RBFHSS accept they have not and will not submitting it elsewhere during the editorial process of ever if accepted in RBFHSS.

Salami slicing (or salami publication), the unnecessary splitting of results aiming to produce more than one article, is considered by RBFHSS as a form of redundant publication.

Dealing with misconduct

All suspects or allegations of misconduct will be strictly investigated. If unethical conduct is suspected, the RBFHSS Editorial Board will initiate an unrestricted investigation following the COPE flowcharts. Full authors’ collaboration is expected during the investigation. An omission in the collaboration duty will be understood as an evidence of intention to commit fraud.

When the results of the misconduct investigation show evidence of fraud, actions of RBFHSS Editorial Board will not be limited to the manuscript rejection or the retraction of a published article. Non-serious misconduct will originate mild reactions like a letter of explanation or a letter of reprimand

When evidence of serious misconduct exists (especially for fabricated data or violations of ethical approval), RBFHSS may refuse to accept future submissions from the authors involved. Additionally, RBFHSS Editorial Board will contact authors’ employers requesting them to perform an internal investigation. If employers of authors committing serious misconduct fail to report the actions taken, RBFHSS may also refuse to accept future submissions from authors from that institution.

Article retraction

Article retraction in RBFHSS is not the common system to correct an error in a published article. In these occasions, corrigendum pieces are preferred. If any of the authors of a published article want to retract an article, a detailed description of the reasons for retraction must be provided to the Editor-in-chief, who will immediately initiate an investigation.

However, when scientific misconduct existed or after the detailed justification of any of the authors, the editorial board will retract the published article. To support the retraction, the editorial board will publish an expression of concern providing the reasons for the retraction. When an article is retracted, the original version will be substituted by an identical version containing a red banner at the first page and a watermark in each page to identify the article as retracted. Additionally, indexing databases will be informed so they can apply their different information policies about retracted articles. Only in extremely dangerous situations (for patients or for legal reasons) the original formatted version of the retracted article will be substituted by a version containing only the title, the authors and the red banner, but no other text from the original version.

 

BUSINESS MODEL

RBFHSS is owned by The Brazilian Society of Hospital Pharmacy and Health Services. RBFHSS does not produce any economic revenue for the SBRAFH. The SBRAFH fully supports publication costs of RBFHSS as part of its social and corporate responsibility. To increase the internationalization of articles published in RBFHSS, the SBRAFH supports the costs of translating accepted contributions into English when they are submitted in Portuguese.

 

COPYRIGHT POLICY

RBFHSS is published under a license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Authors maintain the copyright of the text.

 

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

RBFHSS permits and encourages authors to post and archive the final PDFs of their respective articles submitted to the journal on personal websites or institutional repositories after publication while providing bibliographic details that credit its publication in this journal. Find here Sherpa/Romeo information.

To ensure permanent preservation, RBFHSS is deposited into PKP Private LOCKSS Network.

 

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rbfhss.sbrafh

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rbfhss.sbrafh/