The story of Pharmacology Matters
Since its launch in 2008, Pharmacology Matters has provided a platform for pharmacologists in the UK and worldwide to share their research, explore key topics in the field, and highlight their experiences running events, developing their careers, and educating others. It also provides a platform for our thriving pharmacology community to share personal anecdotes, experiences and even hobbies.
Pharmacology Matters began with Professor Cherry Wainwright, who was tasked with refreshing our approach to delivering content to members. After an ideas session with a variety of stakeholders, the idea of a physical magazine, the themes that magazine should cover, and crucially, its name, were agreed.
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A small handful of front covers, dating from 2008 to 2012.
Reflecting a change in how members wanted to receive content, Pharmacology Matters became a PDF magazine, before shifting to its current format in 2019. Since then, we have published three issues a year, but as individual articles, allowing readers to explore each piece at their own pace and allowing for easier reading of articles on the go. We continued to spotlight the work of our members, and to run competitions for Early Career Professionals and young budding scientists alike. The magazine continues to evolve and develop innovative ways of keeping our readers informed and engaged with the content, and the ever-changing world.
Our new content strategy
We are now moving to the next phase of the magazine’s structure and format, to enable more effective sharing of thought-provoking content. The way we read content has changed, and most people prefer to read one or two pieces at a time. We also seek out content in a different way, now finding it through social media, or through sharing it with their peers. To keep apace with this pattern of content consumption, we’re moving away from publishing issues, and instead will upload new content on a weekly basis, starting from Summer 2024. This means that every time you visit the BPS website, you will find something new and exciting to learn about, whether it’s a piece of longform content about a new scientific development, an interview with someone in a unique career field, or a blog discussing recent BPS work.
Our motivation will remain unchanged from the objective we had in 2008: we want to provide the community with inspiration, information and insight into the work we’re all doing to further the field. But this strategy will allow us to be more flexible, and to increase the ways in which we communicate these ideas. We recently opened recruitment to join our Content Board, which will expand our skillset, bringing in people who are keen to deliver multimedia content such as videos and podcasts. Additionally, we are prioritising increasing representation of early career professionals, clinical pharmacologists, and people working in industry, providing us with more opportunities to showcase the exciting developments in these areas.
We will continue to spotlight our key organisational priorities, such as education, safe prescribing, ethics, equity diversity and inclusion, and drug development, as well as contemporary themes such as artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmacology and pharmacogenomics.
What we need from you
The flexibility of the new strategy also allows us to work more closely with authors, whether you’re producing your first piece of content, or you’re looking to develop a series based on a specific research topic or area of interest.
If you have an idea you want to share with our membership, this is the place to do so. We will be working to make the way you pitch ideas to us more inclusive and accessible, and we will support you in developing your piece and promoting your work.
If you would like to be part of this journey, we encourage you to pitch your ideas for written and multimedia content to the team. As always, we are looking for well-researched, unique ideas that bring a new perspective to a pharmacological topic. Additionally, if you would like to talk to us about your career path, journey through academia, or experience as a member, please get in touch.
And of course, our content would be nothing without our readers. If you like the content you read on our website, share it with others who will share your enthusiasm, post about it on social media or let us know your thoughts by commenting on the post. This is an excellent way to encourage authors and to keep the conversation going long after we hit ‘publish’.
So please join us on this exciting journey of interest, innovation and imagination, we look forward to hearing from you and working with you in the new age of Pharmacology Matters!
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