Indian Journal of Psychiatry: A thriving journal from Global South looking into the horizon

It has been 68 years since the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (IJP) has been in existence (previously the journal was called the Indian Journal of Neurology and Psychiatry).[1] The journal has gradually grown in status under the able leadership of illustrious past Editors who have been the stalwarts in the field. The journal is the flagship scientific publication of the Indian Psychiatric Society (IPS) and has become a comprehensive repository of research and scientific discourse. Each of the editors have contributed immensely to the growth of the journal and have played a crucial role in ensuring regular publication of issues, attracting articles of repute, facilitating a peer review system, securing indexation in PubMed and other repositories, digitalizing older issues of the journal, enhancing the number of issues per year, and effectively implementing and managing the article submission system. Establishing a scientific journal is no small feat, and the synchrony between the Editor and the leadership of the IPS has led to the journal becoming a reputable and vibrant scientific publication.

It is quite heartening to see that the current impact factor (the metric by which journals are compared) as per Journal Citation Reports (JCR) stands at 2.4 for the year 2025.[2] The number admittedly and evidently is lower than some of the leading global journals in psychiatry (like the American Journal of Psychiatry and the British Journal of Psychiatry). The IJP has been ranked 151^st out of 293 journals in the field of psychiatry and is placed in third quartile with a percentile of 48.6%. It is encouraging to note that the journal has been progressing in ranking among the psychiatry journals over the last 3 years, from 179 in 2023 to 168 in 2024, and 151 currently. While these metrics may not capture the true essence of a journal’s popularity or impact, reflecting on these metrics helps to understand where we stand and make course corrections when necessary (and pat ourselves on the back when things go right). The impact factor of the IJP is considered respectable among the flagship journals from different medical specialties from India, which again enhances the credibility of the standing of IPS among the medical fraternity. For example, the Indian Journal of Medical Research, which is a monthly journal that publishes articles in line with priorities of the Indian Council of Medical Research, has an impact factor of 2.1 as per Clarivate Analytics and quoted in JCR, 2025.

A journal is functional only when several elements are working well. The major credit to a journal being successful goes to the authors who repose faith in the journal and submit their manuscript. Annually, the IJP receives about 1500 articles, a fraction of which are published. At this juncture, we take this opportunity to thank the authors who have submitted their articles to the journal. The second group of individuals who deserve a resounding applause are the anonymous reviewers. The IJP follows a double-blind peer review policy whereby the authors and reviewers do not know each other’s identity during the peer review process, and the reviewers may sometimes know the identity of the authors only when they see the article published. The peer reviewers have willingly and graciously provided feedback to the manuscripts of different flavors and types and have served immensely for quality control (articles from the editorial team have been rejected if peer reviewer comments are adverse). The editorial team has dedicated their time and efforts to keep the momentum of the journal going and have brought relative predictability and responsiveness in processing articles and following timelines. The leadership of the IPS needs to be acknowledged for giving editorial independence, institutional encouragement and logistic support to an extent. The publisher (presently Wolters Kluwer Medknow) has done a wonderful job in managing the journal submission system and bringing out the online and print versions of the journal. The entities and companies who have advertised through the journal also deserve appreciatory mention for helping to sustain the journal.

The journal currently publishes 12 regular monthly issues throughout the year, with additional supplementary issues aligning to the Annual National Conference of the IPS (one supplement of the Abstracts of the conference being a regular feature, and one compilation of the IPS Guidelines being another regular issue/supplement). The increase from 4 issues per year at the time of digitization of the journal to 12 issues currently represents a considerable interest of the researchers in submitting to the journal. Increasing the frequency had cleared a considerable backlog of articles which had been accepted after thorough peer review. The increased number of articles does bring in challenge of allocating dedicated time for the journal activities, which thankfully we have been able to achieve to a great extent.

The journal does not charge any submission charges or article processing charges. The articles published in the journal are available free of cost to readers anywhere in the world. This makes the IJP an attractive proposition for publication by researchers from India since many of the research endeavors (including dissertations) do not have dedicated budgets or provisions for publication charges. Inability or unwillingness to pay publication charges sometimes deters relevant research to be disseminated through scientific journals, especially if the researchers are not full-time career researchers. Many clinicians can conduct systematic enquiries and document them, and fortunately IJP has been able to provide nil-cost outlet to them, hopefully directly or indirectly benefitting the evidence base and clinical population. While manuscripts from a few major institutions comprise the major chunk of published articles, it is heartening to see innovative and contextual research from several parts of India figure in the different issues of the IJP. This perhaps has a reverberating effect on the research enthusiasm and confidence of researchers from different parts of the country when they see their work published after thorough review process.

It has been remarked that the Global South finds scant space in the research deliberations at the international level.[3,4] The reasons for the same are not necessarily colonial domination. It is perhaps that systems and processes are very well developed in the Global North that research from certain other parts of the world finds difficult to match up to or compete. A good research framework and ecosystem is definitely conducive to maintaining high standards and integrity of research and is perhaps a necessary ingredient to push science forward. However, delayed maturation of the scientific discourse competence (and the usual hag of crunched resources) makes research from Global South relatively disadvantaged to compete.[5,6] At the same time, it has been duly proven that healthcare context, culture, economics, and ethnicity have a bearing on the applicability and generalizability of evidence (when we transpose findings from one evidence to another scenario).[7,8] Having a dedicated free national society backed journal from this Global South country does play, even if a minuscule part, in attempting to improve processes and presentation of research, and providing a platform to publish good research and advance scientific professional dialogue in the field of psychiatry.

The journal’s scope has been a wide array of sub-disciplines in the field of psychiatry. Hence, the IJP has been largely targeted at general psychiatrists, and extremely technical articles often do not find space in the journal. We particularly are interested in good quality articles that describe novel phenomenology or presentation, or present interventions in a particular context. The IJP looks forward to well conducted (even if simple) multi-center work which represents a variety of context settings. Multi-disciplinary work falling under the ambit of mental health and psychiatry are also welcome. The journal appreciates reviews (and particularly systematic and scoping reviews) on currently relevant topics, especially those which may have a bearing on clinical practice. The journal encourages unique views and observations as letters to editor. Articles on medical education and research methodology are occasionally incorporated.

The journal doing adequately on metrics should not signal a sense of complacency. In fact, it would be appropriate to consider at this point how can the journal grow further and continue to remain relevant. The journal seems to cater to a niche audience from India/Southeast Asia. Expanding the readership (or viewership) of the journal would perhaps entail reaching out to authors from different regions of the world. The submission system is little tedious as compared to other international journal platforms, and efforts are on to get it simplified. We hope to promptly address technical glitches or unwarranted delays in article processing. We hope to continue to receive the patronage and support of the leadership of the IPS in all aspects of running the journal and striving for its betterment. Also, we hope to drive engagement of the scientific community (and the general community) with the research work being published in the IJP using social media and other channels. Finally, we hope to maintain the legacy left by our past editors and take it to a stage which the subsequent editors in the future are proud of.