When I prepared the Pharmacotherapy Publications, Inc. (PPI) 2020 report a year ago, I had hoped the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic would have abated by the end of 2021. Alas, that has not happened, and the pandemic continues to affect, if not dominate, the professional lives of American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) members and health care professionals overall. ACCP members continue to vitally contribute to the care of patients with COVID-19.
During the ongoing pandemic, PPI’s mission to improve human health through disseminating pharmacotherapeutic and clinical pharmacy scholarship remains essential. Prospective authors have continued to submit numerous manuscripts on COVID-19 to ACCP’s two journals, Pharmacotherapy and the Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy (JACCP), with 17 manuscripts on the topic published across the two journals over the past year.
In 2021, Pharmacotherapy achieved its highest-ever impact factor (4.705). This represents a dramatic increase from the previous year’s impact factor of 3.473. As a result, the journal’s ranking among pharmacy and pharmacology journals improved from 83rd of 270 journals in 2020 to 75th of 276 journals in 2021. Downloads of articles published in Pharmacotherapy continue to increase; in 2020, there were over 640,000 downloads of papers published in Pharmacotherapy; by the end of October 2021, Pharmacotherapy manuscript downloads had already increased to 573,770. A themed issue on cardiovascular pharmacotherapy will be published in December 2021.
The progress of ACCP’s newest journal, JACCP, continues to impress. JACCP published its first issue in October 2018. In 2020, publication of JACCP increased from six issues annually to eight issues, and in 2021, the journal moved to a monthly publishing schedule. This year, JACCP published a themed issue on clinical pharmacy education and training and clinical pharmacy services provided by telehealth. JACCP is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) and SCOPUS and has applied for indexing in Medline and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). Similar to Pharmacotherapy, papers published in JACCP are downloaded at an increasing rate. In 2020, JACCP articles were downloaded almost 101,000 times; by the end of October 2021, JACCP articles had already been downloaded 101,300 times.
The ACCP Journals podcast audience continues to grow. Each month, a Pharmacotherapy and JACCP editor interviews the authors of selected papers published in the journals, providing deeper insight into the topic of the published manuscript. If you haven’t yet listened to any of the podcasts, I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast to be notified of new episodes. You can explore them all at https://anchor.fm/accp-jrnls.
ACCP’s journals continue to increase their social media presence, and we hope you will engage with our editors and authors on Twitter (@PharmacoJournal and @JACCPJournal) and Facebook (now Meta) (@pharmacotherapy). Readers of the journals are increasingly engaged with social media. From 2020 to 2021, Twitter followers of Pharmacotherapy and JACCP increased from 7554 to 8605 and from 2523 to 3621.
The PPI Board of Directors, editors, and editorial teams are deeply committed to PPI’s mission to improve human health in 2021 and beyond. We look forward to an exciting and productive new year. Our thanks to each of you – authors, reviewers, readers, and all others who support ACCP’s journals – for your contributions in 2021 and for helping us continue to advance our mission.