Journal of Postgraduate Medicine Medknow Publications and Staff Society of Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Mumbai, India ISSN: 0022-3859 EISSN: 0972-2823 Vol. 52, Num. 1, 2006, pp. 3-4

Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, Vol. 52, No. 1, January-March, 2006, pp. 3-4

Editorial

Yet another year and a new report from the editors

Bavdekar SB, Sahu DR

Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, Seth G. S. Medical College and K. E. M. Hospital, Parel, Mumbai-400012

Correspondence Address: Bavdekar SB, E-mail: drsbavdekar@vsnl.com

Code Number: jp06001

Beginning of the New Year is the time to take stock and inform readers, contributors and reviewers about the status of the journal and where it is headed. During the calendar year 2005, 770 manuscripts were received, which is 22% more than the manuscripts received in 2004 and there has been a whooping three-fold increase in the number of manuscripts received in the year 2000 [Table - 1]. With the increasing number of articles being submitted, the journal has to disappoint a number of authors due to the constraint on the number of articles that could be published with each issue. Less than 20% of articles submitted in the year 2005 were accepted by the editorial board with the aim to avoid delays in publication after acceptance (Acceptance to publication time has been 109 days in the year). The growth of the Journal has been phenomenal in all aspects: from 21 submissions in 1999 to 770 in 2005, from 50 referees on its roll in 1999 to over 2600 reviewers in 2005 and from 6-7 articles published per issue in 1999 to over 25 now. Another noteworthy trend is that the journal is now donning a true international character attracting increasing number of contributors from other countries. Last year overseas contributors accounted for 38% of submissions made to the Journal office [Table - 2]. Even 60% reviewers of the Journal are drawn from outside the country and visitors from the US, UK and Canada account for 80% of the journal website hits.

The deluge of manuscripts received has not been allowed to compromise the timelines such as mean turn around time and acceptance-to-publication period. The mean submission to first decision period was 38 days and submission-acceptance period including time taken by the authors for revision was just 69 days. Cooperation extended by reviewers and contributors, use of appropriate technology and constant striving to maintain high standards of journal management have allowed the journal to achieve this commendable level of efficiency. It is heartening to note that over 98% of the manuscripts submitted to the journal are submitted online in electronic format and entire review process is accomplished without utilizing a single piece of paper in correspondence. The Editors of the journal would like to thank each of the reviewers for the cooperation extended by using the electronic peer-review system which, in fact, puts extra burden on them of reading the manuscript on the screen and keeping track of login details.

The reach, visibility and popularity of the journal are increasing with each passing year. While we were happy to report 65,000 article downloads per month in the year 2004[1],it gives us even more pleasure to inform our readers the website of the journal (www.jpgmonline.com) now attracts over 1 million visitors every year. In the month of November 2005, over hundred thousand visitors downloaded 0.12 million articles. These downloads are from the journal's primary website (i.e. www.jpgmonline.com). Apart from this website, the full text of the journal is also available from the Bioline International (http://www.bioline.org.br/jp), OAI-complaint repository at the University of Toronto (http://bioline.utsc.utoronto.ca/) and from a number of secondary aggregating agencies such as Thomson Gale, EBSCO Publishing and ProQuest. Thus, the actual downloads per month could be much higher. Open access sources, DOAJ, PubMed and Wikipedia were amongst the top five referrers (except search engines) for the journal's website. Over 270 institutions utilize the LinkOut facilities from PubMed to access the journal. The direct impact of this visibility was seen on the citations received by the journal. The articles published in the journal are being cited more often than ever before [Table - 3] and hopefully the day is not far when the journal would make a considerable impact. In addition to the new articles, articles published during early 1990s are also being cited more frequently than ever before.[2]

In the previous years, the journal had committed itself to certain initiatives and actions.[1],[3],[4] We are happy to report that the journal has been able to fulfill the commitments and sustain most of the initiatives implemented earlier. The journal continues to be an open access journal despite financial constraints. It intends to take this initiative further and take steps to establish an e-archive for the institution that would act as a repository of research publications emanating from the magnificent institutions of Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College and King Edward Memorial Hospital. As a part of its commitment to training individuals in medical writing, the journal organized a workshop in statistical methods for editors in October 2005. It plans to conduct a workshop in February 2007 for training authors. Last year student editors were appointed.[5] This step has proved successful with these editors providing comments on issues concerning academic matter, research and medical writing. It has also stimulated graduate students from other institutions to submit manuscripts for the journal and take up research studies, which hopefully would be published in the journal one day. The journal wishes to take this initiative further and stimulate postgraduate students to be associated with the journal[Figure - 1].

References

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