Jerry L. Bauman, Pharm.D., FCCP, FACC
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy

Gee, that’s what we need: another new journal. Like many of you, I receive almost daily invitations to either contribute papers or be on the editorial board of journals of which I have never heard. This is in addition to the as-frequent invitations to speak at meetings around the world of which I have also never heard. Although these invitations are of great value to my ego and perceived self-importance (“you can be the Keynote”!), I have often grown suspicious when the meetings are about topics not exactly in my wheelhouse (e.g., mining and minerals or some engineering journal). They must believe me to quite broad in my expertise … or could it be they don’t even know me? Say it’s not so.

Many of these invitations are from open access journals, which have been characterized as “predatory” – meaning that open access publication carries a hefty fee and perhaps a less-than-rigorous peer review process. You can publish open access in credible journals, but the term predatory, of course, has quite negative connotations, which has sparked controversy and legal action in the biomedical publishing world. Originally, Jeffrey Beall, a librarian at the University of Colorado, composed and disseminated a list of these suspect journals, known as “Beall’s list.” As a follow-up, Science conducted an investigation (called a “sting”) by submitting an intentionally flawed fake scientific paper to open access journals. A high acceptance rate resulted, most with no evidence of peer review – many of these journals were on Beall’s list (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6154/60.full).

With this sordid background, ACCP and Pharmacotherapy Publications, Inc. asked me to become the inaugural editor of a new journal: Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (JACCP). JACCP is not strictly an open access journal (though it has an open access option). In fact, it doesn’t even charge a publication fee, and the peer review is quite rigorous. It was created as the second official journal of ACCP to fill an observed gap and provide an additional benefit to members. I feel and have always felt that clinical pharmacists are different from other pharmacists. To this end, we require a journal that provides a forum for issues specific to us, whether reports of innovative practice, international clinical pharmacy issues, clinical education, or health policy affecting our practice. We aim to make JACCP that forum. One can simply describe JACCP as “all things clinical pharmacy” – except for drug therapy and therapeutics (please send those papers to Pharmacotherapy). In other words, the main audience is … us.

Although JACCP is a new journal, and despite the numerous venues available to authors to publish their clinical pharmacy-related work, we are off to a great start: as of this writing, 43 papers have been received (about 12 per month, on average), and 5 well-known authors have accepted my invitation to write topical reviews on subjects of importance to clinical pharmacists. I invite you to send your best work to JACCP – and if you don’t agree with what you read in its contents, write a letter to the editor. After all, it’s a forum for your thoughts.