Aims:

Perspectives in Medicinal Chemistry (PMC) is an exciting peer-reviewed open access on-line journal. It was developed to help medicinal chemists keep apace with the expanding volume of information published in their field. Rather than providing exhaustive reviews of published work, PMC calls upon leading researchers to succinctly summarize observations from numerous original publications as hybrid review-commentaries. These articles are published continually on the website and are often commissioned by the Editor in Chief. While the submission of completed manuscripts is acceptable, we encourage proposals for future articles sent to the Managing Editor. These proposals should provide a rationale and brief outline (<250 words) for the article.

Scope:

Articles published in PMC are succinct and carefully-illustrated works intending to provide a thoughtful overview of a significant research area in medicinal chemistry. Importantly, these articles provide a representative but not exhaustive overview of recent advances in a particular research field. Articles in PMC provide insight on the implications of the new developments and provide an opportunity for authors to discuss their ideas of 'the road ahead' in their research areas. These articles are carefully peer-reviewed to ensure a balanced representation of the literature.

Perspectives in Medicinal Chemistry will publish articles that combine aspects of commentaries and reviews, allowing medicinal chemists to discuss drug design without the necessity of revealing proprietary information. Authors are encouraged to submit review-type manuscripts which go beyond conventional reviews by incorporating a sense of perspective to enhance articles' value to readers and to allow authors to demonstrate and share their perspectives in drug discovery.

Editorial standards and procedures:

Submissions, excluding editorials, letters to the editor and dedications, will be peer reviewed by two reviewers.  Reviewers are required to provide fair, balanced and constructive reports.  

Under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy authors may appeal against reviewers' recommendations which are ill-founded, unobjective or unfair.  Appeals are considered by the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor.

Papers are not sent to peer reviewers following submission of a revised manuscript. Editorial decisions on re-submitted papers are based on the author's response to the initial peer review report.

Indexing:

This journal is indexed by the following services:

• Embase
• Google Scholar
• CAS
• DOAJ

SPARC Europe Seal award winner:

This journal has been awarded a SPARC Europe Seal. The Seal is an initiative of SPARC Europe (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which is awarded to journals applying a Creative Commons CC-BY copyright license and that make journal metadata accessible to DOAJ.  

Amongst other important services DOAJ makes metadata OAI-compliant.  This in turn enhances the visibility of papers and allows OAI-harvesters to include the details of journal articles in their services. We encourage readers to make use of this valuable resource.  The DOAJ search page is available here.

National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy compliant:

As of April 7 2008, the US NIH Public Access Policy requires that all peer reviewed articles resulting from research carried out with NIH funding be deposited in the Pubmed Central archive.

If you are an NIH employee or grantee Libertas Academica will ensure that you comply with the policy by depositing your paper at Pubmed Central on your behalf. 

Call for papers:

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

The Editor in Chief welcomes submissions.  All submissions are subject to prompt, objective and fair peer review.  Copyright in published articles remains with the author(s).  Authors are continually informed of the progress of their paper and our staff are friendly and responsive. 

All submissions are subject to prompt, objective and fair peer review in compliance with our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.  Copyright in published articles remains with the author(s).  Authors are continually informed of the progress of their paper and our staff are friendly and responsive. 

One author recently wrote: "I would like to say that this is the most author-friendly editing process I have experienced in over 150 publications. Thank you most sincerely."

Criteria for publication: 

Publication is dependent on peer reviewers' judgement of papers.  Reviewers are asked to provide thoughtful and unbiased feedback to authors to ensure that the conclusions of papers are valid and manuscripts achieve reasonable standards of scholarliness and intelligibility. 

Previous work in the field must be acknowledged and papers should read without unreasonable difficulty.  Papers should fit comfortably within the scope of the journal.

Reviewers are asked to act in a fair, objective and constructive manner which maintains quality standards and helps authors to communicate their research.  They are instructed that in areas of genuinely novel research issues may be raised which cannot immediately be resolved and that absolutely rigorous validation of data may therefore not be possible. 

More information on the role of peer reviewers is available on the information for reviewers page.  Where authors consider that reviewers have made recommendations which are unreasonable, unobjective or ill-founded they may appeal them to the Editor in Chief or Associate Editor under our Fairness in Peer Review Policy.

Articles submitted to other journals:

We are willing to consider papers which have been peer reviewed by other journals but not accepted for publication. 

Special manuscript preparation suggestions:

Invited submissions (or approved article proposals) should be relatively short. We suggest a maximum of 4,500 words and 60 references. The article should provide a representative overview of the literature in a narrow topic as opposed to an exhaustive review. The manuscript should be imbued with some perspective based on personal expert opinion.

However, we ask that you avoid dwelling excessively on your own research. Cited references should not be all-inclusive but rather include key leading citations. Importantly, articles should include a sense of perspective by discussing the relative merits of a various published works contributions.

Unlike a more typical review article, papers in PMC can omit some less critical or redundant references for the sake of succinctness.

Prior to peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper's reference style revised to meet our requirements,
• Have your paper's English revised by specialist English-speaking technical editors.

After peer review of your paper we can:

• Have your paper revised in accordance with peer reviewer's recommendations and have a summary of responses to the reviewers created by our specialist external substantive editors,
• Provide bound reprints of your article in colour or black and white ,
• Provide online-early rapid publication if your paper prior to typesetting.

What other authors have said:

Libertas Academica actively requests, receives and acts upon feedback from authors, readers and editorial boards.  Here's what some recent authors have said about us:

"Within a couple of days the reviewers had been procured and the manuscript was out."

"The communication between your staff and me has been terrific.  Whenever progress is made with the manuscript, I receive notice.  Quite honestly, I've never had such complete communication with a journal."

"LA is different, and hopefully represents a kind of scientific publication machinery that removes the hurdles from free flow of scientific thought."

Article processing fees:

All submissions to this journal are subject to an article processing fee if they are accepted for publication.  Article processing fees are used to fund the processing of your paper and development of the journal.  Article processing fees are the only compulsory charge you will face and do not vary according to word count, page count, colour figures or any other factor.  There is no additional charge for the author(s) to make any use of their article and no charge to readers to access it.

Full fee waivers are available for authors working in undeveloped nations and partial discounts of 20-50% are available to authors in other nations.  Authors must be able to verifiably demonstrate their suitability for a discount or waiver.  Availability of waivers and discounts is subject to monthly availability and is given at the publisher's discretion.  Waivers and discounts must be applied for prior to submission.  Neither are available after submission.

Register as a peer reviewer:

Do you wish to register as a peer reviewer?  Or are you already a registered peer reviewer but you need to update your contact details?   To register or update your details visit the peer reviewer registration form. 

Applicants must be able to demonstrate at least five years of continuous experience in the journal's subject area including at least two in the previous 24 months.

Read the Editor in Chief's latest call for papers here.

Journal newsletter sent to subscribers in week 28, 2009. Register to receive future newsletters.

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Peer reviewers are sought. Click here to apply or to update your details.