Abstract
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the first issue of Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety. This journal will cover all aspects relating to the safe use of drugs in different age and ethnic patient groups. Thus, we will cover drug safety, therapeutic drug monitoring, pharmacoepidemiology, adverse drug reactions, drug interactions, pharmacokinetics, pharmacovigilance, basic and clinical toxicology, medication/prescribing errors, risk management, ethics and regulation issues.
I am delighted to have support from an excellent team of Associate Editors as follows: Roy L. Soiza (Woodend Hospital, Aberdeen, UK), W. Stephen Waring (York Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, York, UK), Matthew P. Doogue (Flinders Medical Centre, Adelaide, Australia), Joris Berwaerts (Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development, Titusville, NJ, USA) and Lesley Wise (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, London, UK).
In addition, we have recruited an Editorial Board with worldwide representation from academia, regulators and industry. Full details of the team are given on the journal masthead (facing page). I would like to thank all Associates and Board members for participating in this exciting new venture.
Reviews, Editorials, and Commentaries will be specifically commissioned; however, we also welcome unsolicited material: Case Reports/Studies and Original Research. All manuscripts will be peer reviewed and, following acceptance, will be available free online within 7 weeks (http://taw.sagepub.com). Print issues will appear every 2 months.
Our aim is to publish high-quality, peer-reviewed papers that add to our knowledge and understanding of drug safety. We will publish a broad range of article types so that we can attempt to capture interesting data and signals as well as publish key commentaries and perspectives.
Our Editorials will analyse the evidence and offer clinical opinion as well as provide educational aspects. Reviews will vary in nature according to topic: they may be systematic or narrative, as required; however, we especially welcome short perspectives and focused reviews. Expert guidance as well as single/class drug reviews will also be published.
Original Research manuscripts are particularly welcomed and may cover basic or clinical research, and negative as well as positive results. Our Letters section will be a forum for letters to the Editor and for rapid publication of Case Reports: unique not previously published case reports/case series. I strongly encourage the submission of preliminary data and negative studies. Whilst the journal has a clinical focus, we will also publish articles that cover in vitro and animal studies that may have a bearing on drug safety in humans.
Why publish another journal in this area? It is clear that the safety of drugs is a continuing and important aspect of therapeutics. The medical literature is still overwhelmingly based on results from efficacy studies, and we all need to correct this bias. We also need to move from reactive to proactive methods of obtaining safety information, and from data management to risk management. We need to improve our evidence of drug safety overall and be better able to find safety signals early and to act upon them. It is also important to look at drug safety issues in developed and developing countries, and to view problems from a clinical, industry and regulatory perspective. Thus, the purpose of this journal is to enable much more early evidence to be published and for concise analyses and reviews to be published together with active discussion from all professional groups interested in drug safety.
Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety is the tenth title in SAGE’s Therapeutic Advances series. All titles are freely available on the award-winning SAGE Journals Online platform for the first 3 years; registration details may be found elsewhere in this issue. Medline and ISI applications will be made following publication of several issues (with retrospective indexing once accepted).
I hope you find this journal an appealing addition to the literature, and I welcome your input into its development. Of course I also invite you to submit letters, case reports, and manuscripts!
Arduino A. Mangoni Editor-in-Chief Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety