COVID-19 and the Asian Journal of Psychiatry: Keeping 2020 in the rear-view mirror

As promised in the last editorial (Tandon, 2021), this is the 2020 annual report to our Journal readership with a summary of plans for the year 2021. In the prior communication, we considered the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at a global level with a focus on Asia and sought to distil some key lessons for the future. The pandemic rages on – over the past month, the total number of confirmed cases in the world has increased from 82 million to 98 million and COVID-19 related deaths have increased from 1.8 million to 2.1 million with over 700, 000 COVID-19 daily confirmed new cases (up from 500,000) and 17,000 deaths (up from 10,000) recorded yesterday! Europe and North America combined, with 16 percent of the world’s population account for 64 percent of the global daily new cases and 75 percent of the daily COVID-19 related deaths. In comparison, Asia with 58 percent of the world’s population accounts for 11 percent of the confirmed daily new cases and 7 percent of the global daily death toll related to COVID-19. There continues to be a real urgency to learning from our experience last year as we strive to make better healthcare and policy decisions and improve much-needed global coordination.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted mental health and the practice of our profession in a multitude of ways. Since the onset of the pandemic, our Journal has sought to be a useful resource to our readership by actively promoting the submission of manuscripts related to COVID-19 and mental health and expeditiously publishing accepted manuscripts following a rigorous and expeditious review process (Tandon, 2020a). We endeavored to disseminate valid information in a timely manner (Tandon, 2020b). In confronting the many challenges in meeting this goal, we made several choices with mixed results. Allow me to share our Journal’s experience in 2020, successes and opportunities to do better, lessons learned, and plans for 2021.

1. The Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2020

Our Journal experienced a year of rapid growth. There was a four-fold increase in the number of submissions from 1,000 in the year 2019 to 3,926 in the year 2020. Of these, we accepted 535 for publication while 125 were at various stages of the editorial process (revision process) at the end of the year- an acceptance rate of 15 percent. While the number of issues (8 in the year 2020) remained the same, the number of published articles and pages grew substantially. I am happy to report that our Clarivate impact factor increased from 2.03 to 2.53 and our Citescore increased from 1.29 to 2.7.

Our stated interest in rapid processing of articles pertaining to COVID-19 and mental health substantially fueled the increase in submissions as also the higher rejection rate−COVID-mental health related articles comprised 55 percent of submissions and 42 percent of articles accepted for publication with an acceptance rate of 11 percent. Of the 583 published articles in the year 2020, 227 (39 percent) were related to COVID-19 and mental health.

1.1. COVID-19 and editorial processing in the Asian Journal of Psychiatry

The onset of an unanticipated once-in-a-century global pandemic with enormous mental health consequences required urgent generation of valid relevant information to guide mental health care and policy. The recognized need to rapidly process article submissions on the topic and disseminate information related to COVID-19 and mental health in a timely manner severely strained the resources of our Journal We were not well-equipped to handle the high volume of submissions. This necessitated short-term changes in the editorial process. The more than 2,000 submissions on the topic over a 9-month period tested our processing capacity. Furthermore, a large number of the manuscripts were found to be of variable quality and relevance. A two-step editorial process was developed and a major proportion of rejected articles were first assessed by members of the editorial board who determined that that these submissions were not of sufficient quality to warrant further consideration; consequently, they were not sent for peer review. Of the 2,150 submissions related to COVID-19 and mental health, over 80 percent received such an editorial desk rejection. Authors of potentially useful but preliminary or opinion-laden submissions were asked to condense their manuscripts into a more concise format such as Correspondence; the objective was to inform the readership of the somewhat tentative nature of the contribution and need for cautious application. Reasons for outright editorial desk rejection included absence of relevance, poor writing quality, lack of novelty, and weak rationale or methodology. Just as the world needs to carefully evaluate and learn from the overall experience in dealing with COVID-19 (Tandon, 2021), so must we examine what worked and what did not from the Journal choices in the year 2020.

1.2. What worked?

We published 227 articles on COVID-19 and mental health, significantly focused on contributions from and implications for countries in Asia. Published articles addressed a range of relevant topics- epidemiology, changes in clinical practice, data and experiences from different countries, national differences in strategy and policy, impact on suicide, innovative clinical programs, impact on psychiatry research and practices, etc. Publications included contributions from authors across 30 different Asian countries. Nine of the most highly cited articles on COVID-19 and mental health were published in our Journal (Ahmed et al., 2020; Banerjee, 2020; Goyal et al., 2020; Mamun and Griffiths, 2020; Rajkumar, 2020; Roy et al., 2020; Tandon, 2020a and 2020b, Zandifar and Badrfam, 2020) and each of these has been cited over 100 times in the scientific literature. Recognizing that the mental health implications of COVID-19 would be ongoing and generation of relevant information about their nature and optimal management would occur over time, we decided not to publish a single issue exclusively devoted to the topic and instead cover it as part of our broader Journal content across issues- we believe that our assumptions have been validated and that we made the correct choice.

1.3. Challenges and opportunities for improvement

The increased volume of submissions requires an augmentation of Journal processing and publishing capacity. Steps towards a more expeditious and predictable manuscript review process and enhanced ability to publish quality manuscripts are necessary. The two-step process of manuscript processing with the initial phase of editorial board perusal resulting in a high proportion of editorial desk rejections without formal peer review is not fully satisfactory. In addition to readers and the broader scientific community, the Journal has a fiduciary responsibility to its authors. For authors, not receiving detailed comments from peer reviewers about shortcomings in their manuscript and specific reasons as to why it was not accepted for publication causes justifiable consternation. Furthermore, one mission of our Journal is helping build mental health scientific capacity in Asia and provision of meaningful peer reviews and editorial commentary to authors is a central component of accomplishing that objective. Greater editorial and peer review transparency along with better communication with authors is required. Publishing a large number of Letters to the Editor may have a downstream negative effect of lowering our Impact Factor. Finally, our focus on COVID-19 relevant mental health topics impeded our implementation of many of our growth plans for 2020. In response to these learnings, the Journal is planning a series of enhancements for 2021.

2. Journal innovations and looking ahead to 2021

The mental health community can look forward to several changes in our Journal in 2021- while our central mission remains unchanged, several enhancements are planned for the new year. Putting 2020 in our rearview mirror, we try to apply learnings from our experience to make the Asian Journal of Psychiatry a better Journal that more effectively fulfils its purpose and provides higher quality services to its authors and readers.

2.1. Greater journal capacity

The Journal has expanded its editorial team as we welcome a new Associate Editor Shuping Tan, M.D., Ph.D, based in Beijing. We plan to add a third Associate Editor in the near future. We are expanding our editorial board, significantly broadening its geographical diversity. The new editorial board will have representation from 35 of the 50+ countries in Asia in addition to several distinguished scientists from other parts of the world. We are pleased to announce that starting this year, the Asian Journal of Psychiatry will be published monthly. These changes should facilitate more expeditious manuscript processing and publication.

2.2. Greater transparency

Through the year, there will be a series of articles about different aspects of scientific publication with particular reference to our Journal- these will include articles on author guidance, resources for authors, the editorial process and rationale for decisions, and the review process. The first of these will be published in the next issue and is entitled “Why was my paper not accepted for publication”. A structured article review instrument is being developed and will be utilized for peer review and feedback to authors. New templates for editorial decision letters are being developed. Collectively, these changes should enable better communication with authors and enhance operational transparency.

2.3. New journal sections and resources

• Several new sections are planned for the new year. These include:(i)

  Medical Education: We will reinstitute our medical education section with a revised format. We will provide a slide set with each topic on the Journal website and this could be utilized for the purpose of medical student or resident training.

• (ii)Thematic Collections: Collections of articles on specific topics will be organized and be available on the Journal website. An article providing an introduction to such collections along with an overview will be published. These collections will be organized around a range of topics of relevance to our readership.
• (iii)Asian Psychiatry and World Psychiatry: While the Journal is not affiliated with any organization of Psychiatry, it does have an informal relationship with national psychiatry organizations across Asia and with the World Psychiatry Association. Periodically, we will publish reports of various mental health initiatives undertaken by these organizations.
• (iv)COVID-19 and Mental Health: We will publish reviews and perspective pieces on a range of mental health topics relevant to COVID-19 including psychiatric sequelae, research implications, neurobiology, opportunities and challenges of telepsychiatry and use of digital mental health tools, experience of residency training during this time and risks of moral injury and resilience, bioethical considerations in addressing mental health challenges in the context of COVID-19, mental health problems and appropriate interventions for the general population and specific vulnerable groups, models of healthcare delivery, mental healthcare disparities and policy.

3. Putting 2020 in the rearview mirror as we look ahead

2020 has been a catastrophic year in which the COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted the lives of people around the world. Mental health and the practice of psychiatry were significantly impacted. The pandemic exposed glaring health disparities across and within nations. We learned many painful lessons, including the importance of gathering and disseminating accurate information. The Asian Journal of Psychiatry will strive to better play its small role in this endeavor.