Article Submission Guidelines

Updated February 2024 Download PDF

Aims and scope

Dissolution Technologies is a peer reviewed quarterly publication reporting ongoing, useful information on dissolution testing of pharmaceuticals. It provides an international forum for dissolution analysts to receive and exchange information on various dissolution topics.

Dissolution Technologies welcomes submissions related to dissolution, in vitro release, and disintegration testing. These topics should be the major focus of the article. Do not submit articles where the focus is formulation development with dissolution testing as one of many tests.

Submissions that do not fit the scope of Dissolution Technologies will not be considered for publication.

If you have questions, please submit your article to the Research Editor, vagray@rcn.com, for prescreening.

Indexing

Dissolution Technologies is indexed in:

• Science Citation Expanded
• Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition
• International Pharmaceutical Abstracts
• Chemical Abstracts (CAS)
• SCOPUS
• EMBASE
• CrossRef

Peer review policy

To be considered for publication, all articles should be submitted online via website, https://www.editorialmanager.com/dt. All authors should be entered into the system upon submission.

All research articles are peer-reviewed by at least two experts in the field. The process may take as long as 2 months. All articles will be prescreened for plagiarism using Ithenticate software. If plagiarism is found, the article will be rejected and cannot be resubmitted.

Authors are encouraged to review their articles before submission to verify accuracy, correct typographical errors, and clarify acronyms or abbreviations. The author, not Dissolution Technologies, is responsible for any statements made in the article.

Editorial policies

Language and format

Before submitting an article, authors should prepare the manuscript according to the instructions provided below. Detailed information on grammar, format, and content may be found in the ACS Style Guide. Authors are encouraged to use the pre-submission checklist to prepare their manuscript for submission.

Articles that contain poor grammar and syntax will be either requested to have a professional editor revise the manuscript or be rejected outright, regardless of scientific merits.

Scientific content

Dissolution Technologies follows an editorial policy focused on transparency, openness and reproducibility (DOI: 10.1126/science.aab2374, DOI: 10.14227/DT250218P6). Because solubility and dissolution rate measurements for drug compounds and their dosage forms are central to Dissolution Technologies, it is imperative that authors provide evidence of using up-to-date methodology, with documentation from authoritative sources, so as to ensure well-defined and clearly described methods that enhance data quality and enable data reproducibility (DOI: 10.14227/DT260419P6). In support of this editorial policy it is intended that all data, materials, and methods necessary to reproduce, understand, and support the conclusions of the study must be made available to the readership (DOI: 10.1126/science.aar8654).

Ethical considerations

Dissolution Technologies follows the recommendations of the American Chemical Society (ACS) regarding ethics in scientific publication (see Chapter 1, ACS Style Guide). These recommendations outline the responsibilities of the editors, authors, and reviewers. For any human or animal studies, the ethical approval should be provided.

Authorship

All authors of a publication should have made a significant and substantial intellectual contribution to the work being reported. Each author should have read the manuscript carefully and understood the findings. The responsibility of the corresponding author is to ensure that all authors have approved the manuscript before submission and for all subsequent revisions.

Acknowledgments should be made for people who assisted in the project but do not sufficient qualify for authorship. Administrative or editorial assistance does not qualify for authorship.

Disclosures of conflicting interests and financial support

Authors are required to disclose any study-related financial support and possible conflicts of interest when submitting a paper. These can include financial conflicts of interest (e.g., patent ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, speaker's fee). All conflicts of interest (or information specifying the absence of conflict of interest) should be included at the end of the article under "Conflicts of Interest." This information will be included in the published article.

If the author does not have any conflict of interest, the following statement should be included: "No conflict of interest has been declared by the author(s)."

Financial support, such as grants and other study-related funding, should be included at the end of the article under “Funding.” The grant number should be included as well as a statement regarding the role of the funder or sponsor (i.e., did the sponsor have a role in study design, data analysis, manuscript writing, and/or the decision of where to publish?).

If the authors do not have study-related funding, the following statement should be included: “No financial support has been declared by the author(s).”

Publishing policy

Copyright and permissions

If accepted for publication, a manuscript becomes the property of Dissolution Technologies. Written permission must be obtained from Dissolution Technologies to reprint an article, or figures or tables from an article, elsewhere. If the article has been published previously in another publication, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain written permission to republish in Dissolution Technologies.

Copyediting

After acceptance, the article will be formatted and copyedited by the Associate Editor. The primary author will receive a doc file of the edited article for review and a pdf file of the article before it is printed in an issue.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material may be provided for reviewers, but Dissolution Technologies does not publish supplemental material online or in print. Readers should contact the corresponding author to request a copy of the supplement.

Generic comparison articles

Generic comparison articles present data on two or more manufacturers of the same drug product and compares the dissolution profiles. Sometimes this comparison will include the innovator product as the reference. The usual outcome is to show that the profiles of these products are, or are not, bioequivalent using the similarity factor (f2) calculation (when applicable) or some other statistical means of comparison. The dissolution media used is commonplace and usually compendial, or sometimes the comparison can be made using alternative media containing surfactant. These comparisons are unique to a certain country or region. These articles are informative but rarely have novel dissolution approaches. Dissolution Technologies is an international journal, so it is important to publish these studies to inform the community of the status of generic product quality; however, space is limited in the print journal with only four issues per year and restricted page extent. As of October 2020, the journal policy is to publish generic comparison studies on the Dissolution Technologies website only (www.dissolutiontech.com), not in the printed journal. Web-only articles will still be assigned a DOI number for referencing and indexing purposes. These articles will still be reviewed to the same standard as stated in journal’s peer review policy. These articles will be presented in the online issue contents and in a separate section of the website called “Generic Comparisons.”

Preparing the manuscript

Length

• Articles should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages including references, figures, and tables.
• Figures and tables should not exceed six combined without justification

Acceptable file types

• The main text should be submitted as a word file (doc or docx).
• Tables should be submitted in an editable format, i.e., word or excel file type.
• Figures should be submitted as the original file type generated by the program used to create the figure (can be image files [tiff, jpeg, png, gif] or editable word/excel files).
• PDF files are not accepted.

Title page and author information

• The list of authors and their affiliation details (including department, institution, city state, and country) should be included on the first page of the manuscript.
• Do not include professional or official titles or academic degrees for the authors.
• The corresponding author should provide his or her preferred email address on the title page as well.

Main text

The main text should have the following headings: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion (or Results and Discussion), Conclusion, and References.

• The abstract should be approximately 250 words or less, followed by a list of 3-5 keywords for search engine optimization.
• For research articles, the abstract should be structured with subheadings for the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusion. Review articles and case reports should be unstructured (no subheadings).
• The introduction should clearly justify the rationale and objectives for the study.
• The methods should include sufficient detail to reproduce the study, including all materials, equipment, procedures, and tests as well as the approach for analyzing data (see Scientific Content section above).
• The model number and manufacturer should be provided for all equipment and proprietary materials. The version number should also be given for software programs.
• Appropriate references should be included.
• For any human or animal studies, the ethical approval should be mentioned in the methods.
• In the results, please do not include methodology information. Present the findings without providing interpretations.
• The discussion section should include a comprehensive summary of the results with interpretation relative to the study’s objectives and comparison to published literature. Strengths and limitations of the study should be presented at the end of the discussion.
• The conclusion section should be a brief paragraph that restates the key findings and highlights any future research needs.
• The acknowledgements and disclosures should be presented after the conclusion section.

References

The list of references should be numbered according to the order of mention in the manuscript and be formatted according to ACS style.

• In-text citation numbers should be italicized, in parentheses, on the line of text and inside the punctuation.
• All references should be grouped together in a section at the end of the text in numerical order.
• In the References list, include all author names in a reference citation (i.e., avoid the use of "et al.").
• If a website is cited, the author must verify that the URL is valid at the time of submission and note the date the link was accessed.
• If a reference contains a DOI link, it should be included in the reference text. Authors are encouraged to use Crossref to obtain DOIs for all references: search.crossref.org/references.

Reference examples

Journal articles: Include all author names, abbreviated journal title, year of publication, volume number (if any), and pages of cited article. Zatz, J. L.; Segers, J. D. Techniques for measuring in vitro release from semisolids. Dissolution Technol. 1998, 5, 3—17.

Books: Include all author and editor names, book title, publisher, city of publication, and year of publication. Hanson, R.; Gray, V. Handbook of Dissolution Testing, 3rd ed; Dissolution Technologies, Inc.: Hockessin, DE, 2004. Wilkinson, A. The manufacture of metered dose inhalers. In Metered Dose Inhaler Technology; Purewal, T. S., Grant, D. J. W., Eds.; Interpharm Press: Buffalo Grove, IL, 1998; pp 69—116.

Government Publications: Include all author names (if any), Document Title; Government Publication Number; Publishing agency: Place of Publication, Year; Pagination. Guidance for Industry: Dissolution Testing of Immediate Release Solid Oral Dosage Forms. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1997. <711> Dissolution. In The United States Pharmacopeia and National Formulary USP 41—NF 36. The United States Pharmacopeial Convention, Inc.: Rockville, MD, 2018; pp 6459—6469.

Tables and figures

• Please do not embed the tables or figures within the main text.
• All tables and figures should be cited in the text and placed at the end of the manuscript or in a separate file.
• All tables and figures should include a descriptive title and appropriate footnotes.
• All abbreviations, symbols, and/or markers must be defined below the table or figure.
• Figure legends should be presented with the figures or listed on the last page of the manuscript.
• Figures should be of sufficient size and quality for print — ideally, 5 inches wide, 14-point font size, and 300+ dpi resolution.
• For photographs, it is the responsibility of the author to ensure that all rights for reproduction of photos have been obtained from the photographer.
• For any material that has been published before, permission to reprint (or modify) in Dissolution Technologies must be obtained and included with the submission.

Equations

• Single-line equations should be run-in with the text (not numbered).
• Follow ACS guidelines for superscripts, italics, and spacing.
• Variables should be defined in the text; preferably immediately following the equation.
• Equations that are not unique to the study should be referenced only, do not include in the main text.

Language and format

Detailed information on grammar, format, and content may be found in the ACS Style Guide.

In general:

• American English spelling is preferred.
• Times New Roman, 12-point, double spaced font should be used
• Limit the use of formatting (bold, italic, etc.).
• Do not italicize Latin words or abbreviations (e.g., in vitro, in vivo, in silico, et al.).
• Use only one space after a period at the end of a sentence.
• Include spaces around all symbols and between numbers and units.
• Numbers and symbols should be formatted per ACS style guide. Italicize "N" and "n" and "p" and "R2" and "f2".
• Remove ® or ™ symbols and substitute generic name, if possible.
• Spell out symbols (<, >, =, etc) in text except when inside parentheses

Pre-submission checklist

Title page includes all authors (full names) and their affiliations and disclosures.
Abstract is 250-300 words in length, structured with subheadings (research articles only), followed by 3-5 keywords
Rationale to support the objectives and approach are given in the introduction.
Ethical approval is mentioned, as appropriate.
Methods section includes sufficient detail to reproduce experiments including all materials, equipment, techniques, and statistical analysis methods.
All methods are described in the methods section, not in the results.
All results are presented in the results section, not in the discussion.
Discussion section is thoughtful and mentions strengths and weaknesses, generalizability, and future research directions, as appropriate.
All claims are supported by data (avoid speculation)
Data in the text, tables, figures, and abstract agree.
All references are numbered, cited in numerical order, and written in English.
All abbreviations are defined at first mention in the abstract and main text.
All abbreviations and symbols are explained in the table footnotes / figure legends.
Figures are optimized for print quality: at least 5 inches wide, 14-pt font size, and 300 dpi.
Permission has been obtained to reprint and/or modify all tables / figures that have been published previously, and the appropriate credit line is included with the material.
Entire manuscript has been proofread for typographical errors and correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling (follow American English language rules).