Publication in Indian biomedical journals – Perspective of an editor

I am happy to write this editorial in my last issue as the Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (IJP), the official publication of the Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS). The journal started its journey in 1949 as the Indian Journal of Psychiatry and Neurology with four issues under the editorship of Dr. NN De. In 1958, it became IJP; currently, the journal publishes 12 issues per year, has an impact factor of 3.1, a cite score of 4.4, has moved to Q2, and is ranked fourth among the biomedical journals in India. I was elected as the honorary editor of IPS in 2018 at Ranchi Annual National Conference of Indian Psychiatric Society (ANCIPS) and took charge in May 2018. I will be handing over to my successor to be elected at ANCIPS, Kochi in January 2024. I want to share my insight about Indian research being published in India and the journals published in India, particularly in the field of psychiatry, in this journey of 6 years.

When I took over, around 700 hundred articles were lying unattended, and the common refrain among authors was that there was no use sending papers to IJP as there was no response from the journal. Our team took the challenge, and to resolve that issue, we started communications and sent old papers to authors, telling them that if they were still interested, they should revise and update their papers. We reviewed all the papers, and by January 2019, we managed to clear the backlog, became current, and started to publish at the beginning of the current quarter; from 2019, the journal was made bimonthly, and all the issues were published in time. From 2023, the journal was made monthly, and though there was anxiety and apprehension, we could publish all the issues in time. Gradually, we started making progress, and our impact factor crept up and increased to 3.1.

In due course, many promising occurrences have happened. One such forward step was the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) calling a meeting of the top 10 journals of India in August 2023, with IJP being one of them. The main agenda and concern were the low-impact factors of Indian journals, and the target was to double the impact factor in the next 3 years. Various issues, challenges, and proposals were discussed in detail. The decision highlight of the meeting was to award the 500 best theses to promote research interest and make a collection bank of thesis topics to help select suitable topics. The ICMR further extended its support for journals by agreeing to help sustain them financially.

IJP has taken the lead in collaborating with other psychiatric journals in India and arranged a Psychiatry Editors Conference on 22 April 2023 in Ahmedabad.[1] The main emphasis and thrust were given to the cooperation of journals, to move to a common platform developed by IPS/IJP, which will further reduce the cost and allow the transfer of articles from one journal to another. Also, it was stressed that workshops for authors and reviewers should be held at every conference at the national and state levels. The editors participating in the meeting reached a consensus published in IJP May 2023-Volume 65-Issue 5 (Indian Journal of Psychiatry 65(5):p 493-497, May 2023).

Multicentric studies under the aegis of the IPS research and training subcommittee added value to the journal due to their uniqueness and quality, with a particular reference to coronavirus disease (COVID) studies. To improve the quality, we arranged workshops for authors and reviewers and proposed forming a mentor group to help the postgraduates (PGs) choose their topics and supervise the methodology. Ethical clearance and trial registries, which are a must, are often missing. To increase transparency and reduce biases, the technical assistant randomly allotted the articles to associate editors.

INSIGHT ABOUT THE PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES FACED

• Finances: The editor of IJP is responsible for raising the expenses. IPS provides Rs. 6 lakhs per year in January for the journal, and the rest of the costs are to be generated by the editor, which comes to around 80–100 lakhs annually. There are some journals like the pediatric journal, where the organization handles total funding. The financial problems can be easily overcome if all the medical colleges subscribe to the journal, but most colleges do not subscribe and put their free copies for display.

• When I took charge of the journal, I found tremendous pressure to publish the reviews, which were seminars conducted in the departments and submitted as reviews and viewpoints, which did not add much value to the knowledge base. I used to get calls from eminent people to publish guest editorials and viewpoints. To overcome this problem, we stopped publishing narrative reviews and published only systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which National Medical Council also mandates. We decreased guest editorials and only accepted those from international experts on the subject. By the time I got elected for the second term unopposed, the pressure had ceased, and the requests stopped, improving the journal’s quality.

• Quality of research: Most of the articles submitted are derived from PG thesis, and there is wide variation in the standards. The papers get rejected because of poor and faulty methodology, the reason being unsupervised protocols, due to which they cannot be published despite work being done. Premier institutes often send their best work to international journals and most of the unpublishable work to IJP, hoping to get it published by virtue of reputation only. I requested and personally collaborated with institutes to get quality work.

CONCLUSION

India is progressing rapidly in every field, and IJP is now a journal well recognized by international academic faculty. There is still a lot to be done, and we can go even higher; we need the support of our institutions and researchers. Premiere institutions should feel proud to publish in Indian journals and submit their articles. Also, reviewing articles is a thankless job, but we need a dedicated workforce to review the articles. I wish every institution subscribes to our journal to make it more self-reliant.

Long Live IPS!

Dr. OP Singh

Editor in Chief, IJP