Latin American and Caribbean Bulletin of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants

The Latin American and Caribbean Bulletin of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, or Boletin latinoamericano y del caribe de plantas medicinales y aromaticas (BLACPMA, ISSN-0717 7917) is a bimonthly scientific publication directed to diverse professionals and technicians linked to the field of medicinal and aromatic plants. It accepts papers related with the Bulletin's areas of interest, which are agronomy, anthropology and ethnobotany-ethnopharmacology, industrial applications, botany, quality and normalization, ecology and biodiversity, economy and markets, pharmacology and phytochemistry -and therefore phytopharmacology and pharmacognosy, as well as legislation, information and diffusion of events, courses, prizes, regulations, news, market questions, reports, bibliography, or any other material type that is important to publish. The Bulletin publishes articles on original research, reviews, and short communications, written in Spanish, English, Portuguese or French language. It is now indexed by all major international and regional indexation systems, including SCIENCE CITATION INDEX EXPANDED (SCISEARCH), JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS/SCIENCE EDITION, BIOLOGICAL ABSTRACTS, BIOSIS Previews, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and CAB International (Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International, NAPRALERT, Index Copernicus (Impacto 5), IMBIOMED, LATINDEX, QUALIS, REDALYC, and Biblioteca. Virtual em Saúde – BVS.

History

The first BLACPMA was issued five years ago, after a talk held by José L. Martínez (UNICIT, Chile) and Jorge Rodríguez Chanfreau (CIDEM, Cuba), as a communication tool to keep the Latin-American community informed on the many events related to medicinal and aromatic plants taking place around the world. This primary objective is still achieved by means of the so-called “supplements” issued in between each bulletin.

The official launch of the bulletin took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the First Latin-American Congress of Phytochemistry, and it was backed by an Editing Board composed by Arnaldo Bandoni, Argentina; Patrick Moyna, Uruguay; Francisco Morón, Cuba, and Lionel Robineau, Guadalupe, recently replaced by María E. Medina de Nicaragua.

BLACPMA started to feature scientific contributions in its second year of life. Since then, the number of papers submitted to our bulletin has increased steadily as well as their quality, and some of them are signed by highly recognized authors. The Bulletin now receives papers from all over the world on a regular basis. This “step-up” was possible after the radical change that BLACPMA underwent under the impulse of José María Prieto (University of London, UK), who, after January 2004, became fundamental in raising the standards of the bulletin, and putting it in the international scientific arena. Proof of this is the fact that articles published in BLACPMA has started to be cited by other articles published by major journals in the field like Journal of Ethnopharmacology and Economic botany. In 2007 BLACPMA changed definitively from a newletter format publishing occasional articles to a FULL FEATURED JOURNAL FORMAT, publishing more than 5 original papers per issue and programming the publication of special issues on important subjects about diverse aspects of medicinal plants research and production. As a result, in 2008 the journal was successfully accepted for indexation by all major Institutions.

Following this the journal changed to a new web site [http://www.blacpma.org blacpma.org] with a built in online submission system based on the Open Journal System. BLACPMA publishes under the Creative Commons Attribution License and access to its repository is free. Authors doe not have to pay publication fees but encouraged to donate a small sum to sustain the journal's activities.

BLACPMA Annual Meetings and BLACPMA Young Scientist Awards

It has been a few years already that under the initiative of Lionel Robineau, we started to work on the idea of organizing our own Symposia. Thanks to the generodity of the Cuban Pharmacological Society and the support of Dr Rene Delgado and Dr Gabino Garrido, Our efforts have been fruitful and we are now the first Symposium BLACPMA was celebrated in Varadero, Cuba (Nov 2006). A second meeting was held in La Plata (Nov 2007) and a third will be held in Chillan (Chile) in Jan 2009.BLACPMA aims at boosting the career of young scientist dedicated to the study of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, and natural products in general. To do this BLACPMA awards the best scientific communications at the congresses hosting its Annual BLACPMA meetings. Past winners were:2007 Diana Retta for her work "Normalización farmacopéica de la Marcela (Achyrocline satureioides LAM.DC): validación del método de cuantíficación" by Daiana Retta, Paula López, Martha Gattuso, Susana Gattuso, Graciela Ferraro y Arnaldo Bandoni (Buenos Aires, Argentina) presented at the X Simposio Argentino y XII Simposio Latinoamericano de Farmacobotánica (Tucuman, Argentina)2006 Edison Osorio for his work "In vitro ANTIPROTOZOAL ACTIVITY OF ALKALOIDS FROM Phaedranassa dubia (AMARYLLIDACEAE)" byOsorio E, Brun R, Viladomat F, Codina C, Cabezas F and Bastida J (Colombia).

External links

* [http://www.blacpma.org Official website]
* [http://www.blacpma.cl Original website, to be discontinued by the end of 2009]