By Neil Nachbar
Two University of Rhode Island chemical engineering professors will serve as editors of a special issue of the journal Pharmaceutics in 2021.
Associate Professor Samantha Meenach and Assistant Professor Jie Shen will review submitted papers and write an editorial for the special issue, “Particle Engineering for Drug Delivery Applications.”
“I was contacted by the journal to be a guest editor,” said Meenach. “Since Jie and I work together on similar research topics, we asked if both of us could serve as editors and they agreed that it was a great fit.”
Meenach and Shen develop particles, at nanoscale and microscale, for their research on drug delivery applications.
“The topic of the issue involves the engineering of these particles to have optimal characteristics for the applications we are pursuing, in terms of particle size, the type of drugs, how much is in the particle, and much more,” said Meenach. “It’s directly related to our research.”
This will be Meenach’s first time serving as an editor or guest editor of a journal. Shen was a guest editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Pharmaceutics in 2018 that was titled “Advances in Drug Delivery Related Biosensors and Medical Devices.”
“Samantha and I are very excited about working on this Pharmaceutics special issue,” said Shen. “We’ve received a lot of support from our colleagues.”
The submission deadline for the issue is May 31, 2021. Once a paper is received, the professors will make an initial decision on whether it’s a good fit for the issue. Then the paper will go out for peer review. Based on the peer review results, Meenach and Shen will determine if it should be published in the issue.
“We don’t have a specific number of papers or a percentage of submitted papers in mind,” said Meenach. “We’re just looking for the highest quality papers overall. We have complete autonomy over the acceptance and rejection decisions.”
Pharmaceutics is a peer-reviewed, open access journal on the science and technology of pharmaceutics and biopharmaceutics. It is published monthly online.