ACCP members share core professional values, including the recognition that drugs are essential elements for preventing disease and maintaining health. Proper drug use requires oversight by professionals dedicated to promoting and ensuring optimal pharmacotherapy. Pharmacotherapy specialists require regular exposure to new data and reviews of new findings in the context of existing data to stay current with the fast pace of scientific advances. Pharmacotherapy helps disseminate these data and reviews through published research reports and therapeutic reviews. This function in turn informs the membership and the larger body of readers of advances in human pharmacology and drug therapy.

The editors take a global view of Pharmacotherapy’s influence and are increasingly conscious of the public as part of the journal’s readership. Many of Pharmacotherapy’s articles are easily retrieved by anyone with Internet access. Indeed, the advent of the Internet has allowed Pharmacotherapy to reach an unprecedented readership in its 37-year history. The public has become thus part of the readership. For individual authors, electronic access to the journal means a greater impact of their work because an increased readership correlates with increased citations. For ACCP, this translates to increased awareness of its missions and activities.

In performing its function of providing ACCP members with new knowledge in pharmacotherapy, the editorial staff is keenly aware of its responsibility to publish unbiased content with scientific integrity. Authors are required to acknowledge any potential conflicts of interest—a widely accepted standard procedure in biomedical publishing. The peer review process is also essential in ensuring the validity of research results.

Academic and professional journals must improve the public’s understanding of science and instill public trust in scientific results. For example, although scientists rarely debate the reality of human-induced climate change, many segments of the public continue to be skeptical of climate change and what has caused it.

Better communication, not additional scientific information, will lead to a better scientifically informed public. When the Pharmacotherapy readership easily understands the authors’ discoveries, the public is more likely to appreciate them as well. This process is supported by the journal’s policy of developmental editing for most accepted articles, which ensures a consistent style and readability across all published content in each issue.

Many topics covered in Pharmacotherapy can be complex. For example, public understanding of the issues surrounding the rising costs of pharmaceuticals may be lacking. This topic was explored with an editorial and a series of reports in a special issue of Pharmacotherapy devoted to this topic in January 2017. This special issue will likely be viewed by many individuals in the lay public and the press and by policy-makers. For this reason, editorials often accompany new findings of importance when the editors find it useful to place new data in a larger context for the journal’s global readership.

Everyone involved in Pharmacotherapy has a responsibility to communicate to the public. This includes authors, editors, the publication staff, and the ACCP membership. Improving public understanding of science will contribute to ACCP’s mission to improve human health.