Indian Journal of Gastroenterology 2018–2022: Looking back from the Editor’s desk!

It was a great pleasure for me to shoulder the responsibility of the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology for the last five years (2018 to 2022). I remember making some promises in my write-up at the time of taking up this position; [1] now an Arabic proverb reminds me that “A promise is a cloud, fulfillment is rain.” It is therefore important to review the performance of the journal during the last five years to know whether the cloud of promises led to the rain of fulfillment. I am pleased to mention that we could achieve what we planned during the early months of 2018. To reiterate these further, I wish to elaborate on some of these points.

We could attract a great number of submissions of original articles to the journal both from within the country and from outside the country. The number of submissions per year doubled despite discontinuing the case reports and case snippets, which used to negatively influence the impact factor of the journal. Some of the research papers are quite high in standard as reflected by their quality, timeliness and citations [2–8]. The citations of these papers vary between 25 and 60 times to date. Some of the more recently published high-quality research papers have been cited 13–15 times, but in future, more citations are expected [9, 10].

Multiple high-quality review articles have been published in the journal both from within and outside the country by world-renowned experts in the field [11–15]. A new type of review article, more like a mini-review, was introduced, particularly to back up the knowledge related to some important original articles, called a technical note. Some of the review articles and technical notes are worth mentioning. Staging systems of hepatocellular carcinoma by Tellapuri et al. from the USA [11], dietary practices of inflammatory bowel disease by Limdi et al. from the UK [12], epidemiology of the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in Asia by Wong et al. from Malaysia [13], and the review on gut microbiota abnormalities, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease from our group [14] and toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) antagonists as potential therapeutics for intestinal inflammation by Tam et al. from Australia [15] received 57, 39, 26, 21, and 19 citations, respectively, to date and are worth mentioning. The review article on Chicago IV classification of esophageal motility disorders immediately after its release internationally was a great achievement for the journal [16]. I wish to thank Prof. Pondalfino for agreeing to my request.

One of the promises was to attract the submission of Indian consensus and even Asian consensus on important issues in digestive diseases. In the last five years, five important consensuses on different digestive diseases got published, of which two are Asian consensus [17–22]. These consensus documents are on common gastrointestinal diseases such as chronic constipation, dietary issues in inflammatory bowel disease, gastroesophageal reflux disease, Helicobacter pylori infection, portal hypertensive upper gastrointestinal bleeding and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth [17–22]. I would also like to thank the supporting societies such as the Indian Society of Gastroenterology and the Indian Neurogastroenterology and Motility Association (earlier named Indian Motility and Functional Diseases Association) for undertaking these important scientific activities. Two more consensuses have been recently accepted and are waiting for publication.

Attracting such high-quality manuscripts both from within India and other parts of the world, despite increasing international competition in science, particularly for a specialty journal that was not among the most visible journals in the field worldwide, was not an easy task. Several factors played key roles in achieving  this goal. Some of these include (i) an editorial board in which a large proportion of the board members were from outside the country, (ii) support from national experts, many of whom are international key opinion leaders in their field, (iii) support from national and international peer reviewers, who took painstaking efforts to improve the standard of the papers on time, (iv) promotion of papers on social media and other platforms, (v) initiation of two highest cited paper awards, one for the original article and the other for the review article (including the technical note), and (vi) increasing estimated impact factor of the journal over the last five years from less than 1 to 3.3 and the cite score reaching up to 2.6. I also believe that extensive language editing that was undertaken by the editor to improve the papers helped to attract manuscripts from countries whose primary language is not English. Currently, the authors do get such services from many journal publishers for a price! We provided similar services ourselves for free. I thank the Governing Council of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology for deciding not to have a digital object identifier (DOI) for the Presidential write-up and obituaries during its meeting on December 14, 2019, at Kolkata. Since these documents are rarely cited, these would have influenced the impact factor of the journal negatively.

Submission of the manuscript from private-funded institutions is increasing, which is a good sign for the growth of science and its application in the nation. Public funding alone has rarely made a nation successful in science as evidenced by the history of the growth of several developed nations in the world in the days of tough economic competition. A good proportion of the published papers during the last five years from India were from private-funded institutions. This was an important contributor to the adequacy of papers to publish the journal on time and keeping the number of pages at 100 as per the contract with the publisher. It is important that we strive to keep it up as the main source of healthcare for 63% to 70% of the population in urban and rural areas in India is provided by private facilities [23].

It was a pleasure for me to initiate several new aspects of the journal. The bullet point of the study highlights helped readers in grabbing the essence of the paper in a short time. The thumbnail containing the best image of the paper on the Springer site made the online versions of papers more attractive. I believe that starting new types of articles such as technical note and post-graduate corner were useful for the growth of the journal. The editorial snapshots summarizing all papers of an issue helped busy readers in getting the essence of all published papers in an issue in a short time. This might have helped the citation of the published papers. I thank Dr Limdi for his contribution to these articles. Publishing special issues at the beginning of the year on various aspects of digestive diseases with scientific novelty helped in increasing the impact factor of the journal. For example, 14 citable articles published in the special issue on coronavirus disease-19 in the May-June 2020 issue have been cited 126 times to date; similarly, 14 citable articles published in the special issue on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in the January–February 2020 issue have been cited 106 times to date. A special cover composed using the most attractive figures chosen from the articles published in that issue also made it appealing as is done by many frontline journals.

One of the thoughts was to change the name of the journal to avoid a regional bias. However, it was consciously decided not to do it for the following reasons: (i) we started receiving manuscripts from all over the world, (ii) there are several successful journals with regional names such as the American Journal of Gastroenterology and Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology, (iii) several senior members of the editorial board discouraged it, (iv) worry about losing what we already achieved came in mind and (v) patriotism prevailed. Hence, on the cover page, it was written below the name of the journal “An International Journal of Clinical and Translational Research on Digestive Diseases” to project its global reach. I wish the publisher attempts to project it in the online version of the journal and PubMed in future. A few other plans that did not succeed are worth mentioning. A dream to hold the Indian Society of Gastroenterology and Indian Journal of Gastroenterology joint symposium in the main congress hall during the Annual Congress of Gastroenterology presenting snapshots of all landmark papers of that year on luminal gastroenterology, hepatology and pancreato-biliary diseases remained unfulfilled. I believe such a symposium would have highlighted the Indian data and publications in the journal on a national and even global stage. This might have even promoted the citation of these papers. An idea of one of the papers in every issue being declared as an Editor’s Choice article allowing it to be free of charge full-text access by Springer also remained unfulfilled.

I promised growth of our journal [1]; I believe that most of these could be achieved. Winston Churchill, an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and leader, said: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” Repeated changes brought in the journal helped its growth. Some of these changes might have posed some difficulties to our reviewers and the authors. As an Honorary Editor-in-Chief, I also had to face several difficulties and challenges and had to put in a lot of effort and time. But when my tenure completed, I felt happy. Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, a great scientist and the 11th President of India said: “Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.” As I complete the tenure of my editorship, the turbulence that I faced during the journey makes it more memorable and enjoyable!

It is my pleasant duty to thank all of them whose support made my dreams come true. I thank the Indian Society of Gastroenterology for giving me an opportunity to serve the journal. I thank the national and international editorial board members for their constant support to the journal. A special thank goes to all reviewers without whose support, the growth of the journal would not have been possible. The contributing authors are the major pillars of the journal as the contents of the journal, which are provided by the authors, are the major reason for its growth. Thanks are also due to the readers and the publisher of the journal. I wish to thank the editorial secretaries of the journal such as Ms Shikha Agnihotry, Ms Sushmita Rai and Ms Uzma Mustafa, who shouldered some of my work, which helped me in carrying out this huge responsibility despite my busy schedule. I do not have words to express my thanks to Mr Marian D’Souza, a friend of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology, whose diligent and expert support in all aspects of the journal-related works helped us in doing our work successfully. Finally, thanks to all the members of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology. I wish to remind all of us of a quote: “Give where you live, charity begins at home.” All of us, the members of the Indian Society of Gastroenterology, must always remember this quote so that we all support our journal, which is the face of our society for its continued growth so that in days to come, it becomes a frontline Journal of Gastroenterology in the World.

Declarations

Disclaimer

The author is solely responsible for the data and the contents of the paper. In no way, the Honorary Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, the Indian Society of Gastroenterology or the printer/publishers are responsible for the results/findings and content of this article.