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About Australian Prescriber

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Who we are

Australian Prescriber is Australia's free, national, independent journal of drugs and therapeutics. It is published every two months online.

Our purpose is to help health professionals make informed choices when prescribing, including whether to prescribe a drug or not. To do this we provide independent, reliable and accessible information.

As well as publishing short didactic reviews, we facilitate debate about complex, controversial or uncertain therapeutic areas.

We are published by Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd, an independent, non-profit organisation, well respected in Australia for producing Therapeutic Guidelines, a point-of-care clinical decision support database covering 21 clinical areas and over 2500 diagnoses. Australian Prescriber is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.

The information published on the Australian Prescriber website is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between someone and their health professional.

Readers can subscribe to receive publication updates and can access the full text for free online.

History

Australian Prescriber was first published by the Commonwealth Department of Health in 1975. It has since been published by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, then by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Branch of the Department of Health and Ageing, before finding a home with the National Prescribing Service (NPS MedicineWise) in 2002, and most recently, in 2023, with Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd.

The journal has been published online since 1996. There are over 100 back issues available, including hundreds of editorials, articles, book reviews, comments on new drugs, case studies and much more. All issues from December 1999 onwards are available in both HTML text and PDF. Printing of the journal ceased with the June 2016 issue. Since then, Australian Prescriber has been available as an online-only journal.

Independence

Australian Prescriber was a founding member of the International Society of Drug Bulletins and, in accordance with their policy, accepts no advertising. This allows the journal to comment freely and impartially on controversial issues.

Our readers

Australian Prescriber is aimed at prescribing health professionals, as well as students of medicine, pharmacy and dentistry, and other interested individuals.

Health professionals from Australia and around the world may access Australian Prescriber online and receive an email alert to inform them when new material is published. Anyone can sign up for an email alert.

As Australian Prescriber is written primarily for health professionals, individuals should discuss any issues raised by material on this website with their doctor, pharmacist or other health professional.

Editorial Advisory Committee

The role of the Editorial Advisory Committee is to:

  • select topics for publication in Australian Prescriber
  • commission authors
  • review draft articles and approve these for publication
  • review comments on new drugs that have been prepared by the Editors
  • select correspondence for publication
  • oversee the general direction of the journal.

The Committee currently consists of: the managing editor and 8 representatives from the fields of clinical pharmacology, endocrinology, general practice, geriatrics, internal medicine, pharmacy and psychiatry. It is supported by 3 editors, a production manager, production editor and the publishing director.

The Committee liaises with the Australian Prescriber Stakeholder Network, with other independent Australian medicines information providers and a range of stakeholders engaged in the quality use of medicines in Australia and overseas.

Stakeholder Network 

The Stakeholder Network supports the Editorial Advisory Committee. Its members represent about 50 major Australian specialist colleges and societies, providing a direct link with specialist practice. Panel members contribute suggestions for article topics and authors, and comments on draft articles.

Editorial production

Managing Editor
Rosie Scott

Editors
A/Prof Rohan A Elliott
Melanie Rosella
Sherilyn Wong

Production Manager
Georgina Hickey

Production Editor
Ed Irwin

Publishing Director
Emma Juniper

 

What we do

Journal content

As an independent review of therapeutics, Australian Prescriber aims to provide expert, balanced, impartial, reliable and up-to-date information for its readers by reviewing recent evidence where therapy is evolving and updating readers on therapeutics in their own and other fields. Australian Prescriber is a review journal and does not publish original research or original clinical trial data.

In addition to editorials and articles, Australian Prescriber includes regular features such as medicinal mishaps, and articles on the appropriate use of diagnostic tests and the interpretation of abnormal laboratory results.

Each issue includes brief comments on drugs that have recently been marketed in Australia. These comments can help the readers to decide if a new drug has any advantage over more familiar products. We aim to publish these as soon as the drug becomes available.

How we prepare material for publication

The Editorial Advisory Committee meets face to face six times a year to commission, review and approve all material for publication. It considers suggestions for articles from the Stakeholder Network, readers, and a wide range of stakeholders, then invites authors with particular expertise to write articles for Australian Prescriber. When commissioning an author, the Editorial Advisory Committee selects someone who not only has a detailed knowledge of a topic, but can also write a balanced review. Unsolicited articles are not accepted.

All commissioned articles undergo a rigorous editorial process, including external peer review, before being accepted for publication. The referee's identity remains unknown to the author during the review process, while the referee will be told the author's name. Referee reports are considered when the Editorial Advisory Committee discusses the papers for the first time. After scrutiny by the Committee, articles are returned to the authors for comment, and approved for publication at a subsequent Committee meeting.

As articles are commissioned, there are no article processing or article submission charges.

Authors have the opportunity to respond to comments from the Editorial Advisory Committee and the referees. The Committee has the right to reject an article and their decision is final. The average number of weeks between submission and publication is 36.

Authorship

All authors listed on an article must have contributed in a meaningful way and be accountable for any questions regarding its accuracy and integrity. Authors will be asked to nominate a corresponding author who will take responsibility for communicating with the journal during the publication process. Before publication, authors must declare that the paper is their own work, it has not been previously published or submitted to any other publication, and any non-author who has contributed substantially to the paper has been acknowledged. They will also be asked to declare any conflicts of interest.

Any change in authors after initial submission must be approved by all authors. Authors are encouraged to register for and/or provide their ORCID identifier, which is published alongside their name.

If publishing personal information about a patient, including images, authors must seek the patient's written consent prior to submission to Australian Prescriber.

Conflicts of interest

Authors of articles for Australian Prescriber are asked to provide a written interest statement related to the article at the time of commissioning. Interests may be academic, professional, commercial or personal, and may be financial or non-financial. The Editorial Advisory Committee will decide if any declared interests of authors should be published based on a consideration of whether they are real, perceived, or potential conflicts of interest. The Committee reserves the right not to publish a paper if there is a concern that conflicts of interests may prevent readers from considering the paper to be objective.

Peer reviewers are also asked to provide a written interest statement related to the article they are reviewing. Peer reviewer feedback is important to improve content quality, provide a diversity of perspectives and balance any declared interests by an author.

Before appointment, members and the Chair of the Editorial Advisory Committee must provide written interests statements relevant to their role. These are collated in a register of declared interests. The register is reviewed at the start of each Committee meeting.

For more information, see Therapeutic Guidelines’ Conflict of Interest Policy.

Post-publication discussion

The Editorial Advisory Committee welcomes Letters to the Editor, which should be less than 250 words. Before a decision to publish is made, letters that refer to a published article may be sent to the author for a response. Any letter may be sent to an expert for comment. When letters are published, they are usually accompanied in the same issue by any responses or comments. The Committee screens out discourteous, inaccurate or libellous statements. The letters are subedited before publication. Authors of letters are required to declare any conflicts of interest. The Committee's decision on publication is final.

Notification of errors and requests for corrections are reviewed by the editors and authors. If needed, a correction notice outlining the error and the correction is published promptly, and linked to the original article. The original article is also corrected online with the date of correction and a link to the correction notice.

Indexing

Australian Prescriber is indexed by

      • Academic Search Complete
      • Academic Search Ultimate
      • Biomedical Reference Collection: Corporate
      • EMBASE
      • Emerging Sources Citation Index
      • Publicly Available Content Database
      • PubMed
      • Scopus

Archiving

Australian Prescriber is archived by the National Library of Australia and is in PubMed Central.

Affiliations

Australian Prescriber is a founding member of the International Society of Drug Bulletins.

It is also a partner of healthdirect, a consumer web portal of the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.

Australian Prescriber is a member of CrossRef/Publishers International Linking Association, Inc.

Australian Prescriber is a member of the Committee on Publishing Ethics.

Australian Prescriber is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals.

Readership surveys

To ensure a high-quality publication, Australian Prescriber conducts annual readership surveys.

Altmetric Attention Score

Australian Prescriber incorporates the Altmetric Attention Score on its website. This colourful doughnut provides a real-time indication of how much and what type of online attention an article has received. Hover above the doughnut and you will get a pop-up summary of the various mentions the article has received. Click on the doughnut and you will be taken to the details page where you can read the original mentions and references that have contributed to the attention score.

The score in the middle of the doughnut is an automatically calculated, weighted count of all the attention an article has received. The colours of the doughnut represent the various sources of attention (e.g. news items are red, blogs yellow, X (Twitter) aqua, Facebook navy blue, policy documents purple).

The Altmetric Attention Score isn't just about numbers. It shows who is saying what about the article, and where in the world it is being talked about. The score is also put into context with the levels of attention for other articles published around the same time.

Copyright

Copyright belongs to Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd. Australian Prescriber is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available. Individuals are allowed to read, download, print, search or link to the full text of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, provided that the source of the material is acknowledged, it is not used for commercial purposes, and any text, figure, table or box is reproduced in its entirety. If content is used outside of these parameters, permission must be sought from Therapeutic Guidelines Ltd.

Except where otherwise noted, all articles published in Australian Prescriber can be used under the CC BY-NC-ND licence.

ISSNs

Print ISSN: 0312-8008. Online ISSN: 1839-3942

 

Editorial Advisory Committee

Managing editor
Ms Rosie Scott
Australian Prescriber VIC
Australia

Member
Ms Judith Coombes
Pharmacist
Princess Alexandra Hospital QLD
Australia

Member
Dr Doug Wilson
Psychiatrist
West Lakes SA
Australia

Member
 Dr Mary-Ann Ryall
 General physician/Geriatrician NSW & ACT
Australia

Member
Dr Jay Ramanathan
General physician/Clinical pharmacologist
Royal Prince Alfred Hospital NSW
Australia

Chair
Dr Tilenka Thynne
Clinical pharmacologist/Endocrinologist
Flinders Medical Centre SA
Australia

Member
Dr Simon Morgan
General practitioner
Awabakal Medical Service NSW
Australia

Member
Dr Elizabeth Sturgiss
General practitioner
Directions Health Services ACT
Australia

Member
Dr Amy Legg
Pharmacist
Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital QLD
Australia

 

Stakeholder Network

The Australian Prescriber Stakeholder Network supports the Editorial Advisory Committee. Its members represent major Australian specialist colleges and societies, providing a direct link with specialist practice. Panel members contribute suggestions for article topics and authors, and provide comments on draft articles.