International Pharmacy Acta (IPA), published by the Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center (PSRC) at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU), is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics and scientific integrity. The journal enforces a rigorous double-blind peer-review model in full adherence to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct and Core Practices, as well as the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Peer-Review Policy and Initial Editorial Screening
All submitted manuscripts are treated as strictly confidential privileged communications. Before formal peer review, an Editorial Committee comprising the Editor-in-Chief, Section Editors, and editorial board members conducts an initial technical and editorial assessment of every manuscript.
Aims, Scope, and Novelty Assessment: The initial screening aims to determine whether the manuscript fits within the specialized scope of pharmaceutical sciences, demonstrates sufficient scientific rigor and originality, and offers clear academic value. Manuscripts failing to meet foundational scholarly criteria or lacking adequate novel contributions may be desk-rejected promptly to avoid undue publication delays for authors seeking alternative venues.
Plagiarism and Integrity Screening: All manuscripts are subjected to rigorous pre-review screening via anti-plagiarism software. Submissions exhibiting significant textual similarity, redundant publication, or evidence of academic misconduct are rejected immediately.
Institutional Ethics Committee Approval: Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants, patient data, clinical samples, or experimental animals must explicitly state the official Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval code granted by the affiliated university or research institution.
Preliminary Revisions: In select instances, a manuscript may be returned to authors with requests for initial technical or linguistic corrections before an editorial decision is reached regarding peer-review routing.
Initial Decision Timeline: Authors can expect an initial screening decision (desk rejection, return for initial revision, or progression to peer review) within 1 to 2 weeks of submission.
The Double-Blind Peer-Review Process
Submissions that successfully complete initial editorial screening are allocated to independent international experts.
Double-Blind Anonymity: IPA operates a strict double-blind evaluation process. The identities of both the authors and the reviewers are concealed throughout the entire reviewing workflow. Authors are strictly responsible for removing all self-identifying markers—including explicit institutional affiliations, recognizable funding acknowledgments within the blinded text, and self-referential citations—prior to manuscript submission. If an author inadvertently or intentionally compromises anonymity within the text, the review process will default to a single-blind format (wherein author identity is disclosed to the reviewer, but reviewer anonymity remains protected).
Expert Allocation: Each manuscript is evaluated by at least two (and frequently three) independent external reviewers possessing verifiable expertise in the corresponding pharmaceutical or biomedical discipline, supervised by the relevant Section Editor and the Editor-in-Chief.
Review Timelines: Invited reviewers are expected to deliver their formal evaluation within 4 weeks of accepting an assignment. Occasional delays may arise due to the technical complexity of the investigation, reviewer availability, or the recruitment of supplementary adjudicating reviewers. Authors are advised to allow a minimum of 6 weeks from the date of initial submission before inquiring with the Editorial Office regarding manuscript status.
Final Editorial Authority: Reviewers act in an advisory capacity. The Editor-in-Chief retains exclusive and final authority regarding the editorial decision: acceptance, minor revision, major revision, or rejection.
Peer reviewers constitute the core quality assurance pillar of International Pharmacy Acta. By accepting an invitation to evaluate a manuscript, reviewers assume clear legal, academic, and ethical responsibilities:
Timely Response and Communication: Reviewers are requested to accept or decline review invitations promptly. If a reviewer feels the subject matter is outside their direct scientific expertise, or if professional commitments preclude meeting the 4-week deadline, they should decline immediately so that an alternative expert may be engaged without delaying the editorial pipeline. Reviewers declining an invitation are warmly encouraged to recommend qualified alternative colleagues.
Declaration of Conflicts of Interest: Although double-blind reviewing minimizes bias, researchers often recognize methodologies, datasets, or theoretical stances. Reviewers must immediately recuse themselves and notify the Editorial Office if a significant financial, personal, institutional, or collaborative conflict of interest exists that could reasonably be perceived as impairing impartial judgment.
Strict Confidentiality: Reviewers must treat all submitted manuscripts, data files, associated protocols, and editorial correspondence as strictly privileged, confidential material. Reviewers are explicitly prohibited from discussing the manuscript with third parties, disclosing its findings, or appropriating the authors’ conceptual or empirical methodologies for their own ongoing studies prior to publication.
No Unauthorized Delegation: Reviewers must personally evaluate the manuscript assigned to them. Under no circumstance may a reviewer transfer, assign, or outsource the evaluation of an article (whether to post-doctoral fellows, laboratory members, or departmental colleagues) without prior formal, written consent from the Editor-in-Chief.
Detection of Ethical Infractions: Reviewers must alert the Editorial Office immediately if they suspect academic misconduct, including data fabrication, image manipulation, text duplication, redundant submission, or unauthorized appropriation of third-party intellectual property.
Guidance for Peer Reviewers
The primary objective of peer review is to provide constructive, rigorous, and actionable feedback that helps authors improve the methodological quality, analytical depth, and clarity of their manuscript.
Tone and Professional Demeanor: Reviewers should offer critical evaluations that are intellectually robust, fair, and polite. Hostile, derogatory, or patronizing language is entirely unacceptable. Reviewers are encouraged to evaluate manuscripts with the constructive courtesy they would expect for their own scholarship.
Linguistic Accessibility: Because authors represent an international scholarly community, critiques should be formulated in clear, concise English. Complex colloquialisms, ambiguous phrasing, or needlessly intricate sentence structures that may hinder comprehension should be avoided.
Structured, Evidence-Based Feedback: Specific comments must be numbered sequentially and directly mapped to the manuscript by citing exact page and line numbers. When challenging conclusions or empirical deductions, reviewers must provide supporting rationale, clear explanations, and, where appropriate, primary literature references.
Review Evaluation Parameters: Reviewers evaluate manuscripts across key structural and scientific dimensions:
Scientific Rigor and Originality: Novelty of hypotheses, empirical validity, clarity of study objectives, and contribution to pharmaceutical sciences.
Methodological Robustness: Appropriateness of experimental designs, reproducibility of synthetic or analytical protocols, sample sizes, adequate negative/positive controls, and proper statistical validations.
Structural Organization: Logical progression from Introduction to Discussion, alignment with Author Guidelines, concise framing of research questions, and well-substantiated conclusions.
Data Presentation and Citation Integrity: Clarity, resolution, and authenticity of tables, spectra, and figures; comprehensive referencing without unwarranted omissions or self-citation manipulation.
Linguistic Clarity: General readability, punctuation, and typographical accuracy. Reviewers should indicate whether formal native-speaker language editing is required.
Reviewer Recommendations: Reviewers evaluate the manuscript against standard criteria (novelty, methodology, scientific rigor, and presentation) directly within the journal’s online submission system and provide narrative comments for authors along with confidential remarks for the editor. Recommendations are selected from the standard editorial designations: Accept as is, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, Reject with Invitation to Resubmit, or Outright Reject.
Privacy, Confidentiality, and Proprietary Rights
Consistent with ICMJE recommendations and international data protection standards:
Privileged Information: Submitted manuscripts constitute the exclusive intellectual property of the authors. Editors, reviewers, and journal management staff are bound by non-disclosure principles. Manuscripts must not be copied, archived locally, shared across non-secure networks, or uploaded to unauthorized digital servers.
Destruction of Review Files: Upon completing an assessment, reviewers must permanently delete and securely purge all downloaded manuscript files, supplementary datasets, and working review drafts from personal storage drives.
Post-Review Archiving: The Editorial Office preserves archived records of accepted manuscripts in compliance with scholarly archival standards, while files of definitively rejected submissions are handled confidentially and are not made accessible for secondary uses or legal inquiries without statutory authority.
Confidentiality of Reviewer Identities: Reviewer comments are transmitted to authors anonymously. Reviewer names, score sheets, and internal editorial deliberations remain strictly confidential and will never be made public without explicit written authorization from both the reviewer and the Editor-in-Chief.
Adherence to COPE Standards and Dispute Resolution
International Pharmacy Acta strictly aligns its editorial governance, peer-review management, and ethical oversight with the flowcharts, codes, and procedural directives established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any allegations of reviewer misconduct (such as deliberate delay of competitors’ papers, breach of confidentiality, or coercive citation practices) are formally investigated under standard COPE protocols and may result in permanent removal from the IPA reviewer panel and institutional notification.
