Pharmacovigilance refers to the science and activities relating to the detection, assessment, understanding, and prevention of adverse effects and other drug-related safety problems. Related to this general definition, the underlying objectives of pharmacovigilance are to prevent harm from adverse reactions in humans that arise from the use of health products within or outside the terms of marketing authorization and in relation to the life cycle of these health products. Before a medicine is authorised for use, evidence of its safety and efficacy is limited to the results from clinical trials, where patients are selected carefully and followed up very closely under controlled conditions. This means that at the time of a medicine's authorisation, it has been tested in a relatively small number of selected patients for a limited length of time. Pharmacovigilance – also known as drug safety - is a broad term that describes the collection, analysis, monitoring and prevention of adverse effects in drugs and therapies. It is a completely scientific and process-driven area within pharma. This information can be published in our peer reviewed journal with impact factors and are calculated using citations not only from research articles but also review articles (which tend to receive more citations), editorials, letters, meeting abstracts, short communications, and case reports. The inclusion of these publications provides the opportunity for editors and publishers to manipulate the ratio used to calculate the impact factor and try to increase their number rapidly.
