The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7344 p425
9 April 2005

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Letters to the Editor

The Journal

New decisions need to be taken

From Mr H. Patel, FRPharmS

I fully support the view that the editorial freedom means that The Pharmaceutical Journal has the right to publish contributions from readers and investigate stories, as well as the right not to, without fear or favour. I also support the view that the PJ should be both informative and interesting to read.

For that reason it would be useful to take account of the views recently expressed by a number of Council election candidates (PJ, 2 April, p393) and also of the following advice from the World Association of Medical Editors.

It says: “Editors should:

(1) Respect their journal’s constituents (readers, authors, reviewers, and the human subjects of research) by: making the journal’s processes (eg, governance, editorial staff members, number of reviewers, review times, acceptance rate) transparent; thanking reviewers for their work; protecting the confidentiality of human subjects.

(2) Promote self-correction in science and participate in efforts to improve the practice of scientific investigation by: publishing corrections, retractions and critiques of published articles; taking responsibility for improving the level of scientific investigation and medical writing in the larger community of potential authors and readers.

(3) Assure honesty and integrity of the content of their journal and minimise bias by: managing conflicts of interest; maintaining confidentiality of information; separating the editorial and business functions of the journal.

(4) Improve the quality of their journal by: becoming familiar with the best practice in editing, peer review, research ethics, methods of investigation, and the rationale and evidence base supporting them; establishing appropriate programmes to monitor journals’ performance; soliciting external evaluations of the journal’s effectiveness.”

I am confident that The Pharmaceutical Journal with its history and with its relation to the Royal Pharmaceutical Society is focused on these issues but there always is an opportunity to reassess the position at regular intervals.

Having said that, there needs to be a discussion about what to do “when there is a topic of great interest” and “correspondence inevitably becomes repetitive”. It seems that a balance needs to be struck because inevitably there would be no new points.

But what if the PJ’s constituents in such circumstances are still interested in discussing the matter? If we take Iraq War as an example would it be right to say that the war is now over and there should be no more debate on the issue now?

I think that following the discussions at the new board new decisions need to be taken to ensure that an impression is not created that reinforces an image of censorship.

Hemant Patel
Council Election Candidate
Brentwood, Essex

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