Submission to Publication Demystified: A Guide for Authors

Sir,

I read with interest the editorial¹ and wish to congratulate the editors of Indian Journal of Orthopaedics (IJO) for taking the brilliant initiative of educating and help improving the writing skills of the existing and potential authors.

The editorial has given a detailed account of the editorial process of IJO and has rightly emphasized that the process of publication is rather a prolonged and tedious one. Hence, it is logical that the anxious authors must wait patiently to learn about the decision of the editor. This process from submission to publication of a manuscript may take too long to meet the expectations of authors. Some journals take longer time than the others for completing this job. Hence, it is important that the journals should declare in the instructions to the authors about the likely time taken for review and publication of their articles, based on the available data of the total review and decision-making process, in that particular journal. It is an irony that often the journals give a deadline to the authors to answer their query, but the authors have to wait endlessly! I feel that the time has now come when all the journals, including IJO, must adhere to a reasonable time frame policy of their review and publication processes. Otherwise, the good authors and useful research work would go to their competing journals, which are more professionally run and expeditiously fast. However, how long is too long?² From my experience in research and publication of three decades, I feel that a reasonable frame of time for completion of review, decision-making, and actual publication (could be online) should be between 3 and 6 months, and not more. It is reported that the median time from submission to acceptance of a manuscript was 70 days in the 1980s and rose to 100 days in 2015, in PubMed-indexed articles.³ It was also noted that the longer delays happen either in very high- or low-impact-factor journals.

The editorial board of journals must be innovative in finding ways and means not only to improve the quality of their publications but also to enhance their review process. Being on the editorial board of several journals, I am aware that there are challenges involved in getting the manuscripts reviewed, both in terms of quality and time. To improve the quality of reviews, a standardize format should be provided to the reviewers to fill in their report while submitting it to the journal. Since the reviewers are required to spend adequate amount of time to review a manuscript, there is often a feeling of dejection in most, and only some do it for their love. It is therefore important for IJO revisit their reviewer database, on a regular basis, and must exchange the noninterested, nonperforming reviewers and editorial board members with the new ones, based on their academic interest and commitment. There must be due recognition of the reviewers by the journal. It could be done in many ways such as giving free access to several journals (which are published by their publisher), free access to software to check on their English grammar and plagiarism, providing them a certificate, and publishing their names in the journal annually for their contributions, as IJO does it!

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.