An ontology of Pharmaceutical Services in the pages of Journal Ciência & Saúde Coletiva

Abstract Pharmaceutical Services (PS) is a growing field which has established itself over the last 25 years in Brazil through scientific publications. This work investigates the evolution of the field in the Brazilian periodical Journal Ciência & Saúde Coletiva. We conducted a scoping review of relevant literature produced in four separate periods (1996-2003, 2004-2010, 2011-2015, and 2016-2019). A search for articles that contained one or more of the pre-established key words in the title was performed by separate pairs of reviewers. The search resulted in 307 articles, 260 of which were included. The findings show that the number of publications increased steadily over the study period. The papers were predominantly open-topic and original articles and written in Portuguese. Most of the lead authors were from the South and Southeastern regions of Brazil and from public universities and Fiocruz. The predominant primary theme was medicine utilization (161 articles), followed by management (56), and tangential aspects of the PM cycle (43). An ontology of PS was created based on the classification of the articles. The findings show that the field of PS encompasses public policy and management and frontline activities involved in the delivery of health care to the population. It is hoped that the diverse range of interrelations in the field of PS will be increasingly addressed in future publications.