December 2001. Though I had been associated with the journal for a long
time, the enormity of the responsibility suddenly struck me. While we
work within the larger medical context, the core of the journal is to
make quality information and research readily available. This focus on
high quality articles and easy accessibility is the foundation for our
innovations and our achievements.
One of our biggest challenges was to attract quality
articles. Most Indian researchers preferred to send their best work to
western journals, which had good impact factors. Though Indian
Pediatrics was indexed in PubMed for a long time, it was not, when I
took over, included in reputed indexing services. Journals without an
impact factor are not considered their worth and a listing in the JCR
(Journal Citation Reports®) is considered a status symbol for journals
from developing countries. We took this up as a challenge and to our
delight the journal got indexed in science citation index and current
contents in its very first attempt! In February 2006 Indian Pediatrics
reported "We are happy to inform our readers that Indian Pediatrics has
been selected for coverage in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine and the
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), starting from the January issue
of Vol. 42 (2005)" [1].
Maintaining quality in a scientific journal requires
constant and stringent quality control. One of these is a strict peer
review process. As a scientific journal that belongs to a society, we
would get many articles from Academy members. In fact, the Academy even
had a rule that award-winning papers would have to be submitted to the
journal for publication as the first choice. However, most of these
papers did not clear the peer review process. Moreover, getting quality
reviewers was not an easy task and sometimes some reviewers got burdened
with too many articles, which delayed the review process. The Editorial
board took up the challenge and educated the society members on the
importance of peer review process and the norms of a high quality
scientific journal. Continued focus and optimizing of this process has
been significantly important towards the journal achieving its high
standards and building its reputation as a source of quality articles
and research.
One of the more controversial initiatives was the
limit on number of authors permissible in certain sections. This was
introduced from 2003 and followed earnestly. The policy resulted in much
criticism, long drawn correspondence between the Editor-in-chief and
authors, and a lot of heartburn. We conducted a short study to evaluate
the outcome of this policy on authorship credits. Interestingly, the
policy resulted in fewer authorship credits for senior authors,
presumably due to a decline in gift authorship. The journal thus decided
to continue with this policy [2,3].
For a journal like Indian Pediatrics, it is an
extremely difficult task to meet the requirements of readers from
diverse backgrounds ranging from tertiary research centers to
practitioners in remote areas. It has been a constant endeavor of the
Editorial Board to make the journal more accessible and readable to
mainstream readers while at the same time maintaining the high standard
of scientific content and adhering to a stringent peer review process.
With the participation and feedback from the readers, the editorial
board constantly focused on making Indian Pediatrics a reference
model of how a scientific professional societal journal in this part of
the world should be.
Though the focus of the journal is on publishing
original research articles since inception, over the years it introduced
many innovative sections to be more interactive with its readers.
Another area of focus was on public health issues. In my years as
Editor-in-Chief, Indian Pediatrics has been a key partner in the
propagation of the messages of under-5 child survival program to
practitioners, physicians and pediatricians, in line with the vision of
IAP. In these issues, the journal published many consensus
statements/guidelines/ recommendations of the task forces/chapters of
the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, pertaining to management of diseases
directly concerning under-5 child survivals relevant to achievement of
Millennium development goal [4]. Indian Pediatrics has also
collaborated with Urban Health Resource Center (UHRC) to bring out a
series of well-researched papers highlighting important issues on urban
child health.
In 2007, the journal was revitalized with new
aesthetics, with the focus on bringing in fresh energy and making it
more reader friendly. The new cover artwork was chosen from a design
contest conducted amongst the members. The journal format was changed in
accordance with the international standards but at the same time keeping
it at decent page numbers. The Board also formulated "author
information’ in an elaborate way giving new directions [2].
I have been fortunate in my tenure as Editor-in-Chief
to witness amazing advancement in information technology. Harnessing the
power of this revolution has greatly helped the journal in becoming more
accessible to its readers. In my early years, we had an incredible
opportunity with the internet revolution taking place worldwide. The
journal also kept pace with the rise of global technology platforms and
increasing content digitization. Indian Pediatrics was one of the
first few journals in the world to become full text free online. Our
website had extraordinary page hits, running at almost three quarter of
a million per month. In fact, Alexa Internet Inc., a California-based
subsidiary company of Amazon.com dealing with web-traffic reporting,
frequently rated the journal number one in its class. Maintaining a
dynamic website was not an easy task those early days with need to hire
server space and have dependable consultants. The team solved this to
both administrative and financial gain, by training one of its staffs in
technology and web maintenance.
One of the indicators of the Journal’s success has
been the constant request from readers about articles from past issues.
While such requests were very encouraging, they were also
administratively impossible to fulfill. Here too we found a solution in
technology. Indian Pediatrics entered into an agreement with
National Informatics Center (NIC), Govt. of India to put the journal in
the Indian Medlars Center, which provided another portal for online
access to full-text of Indian biomedical periodicals. An arrangement
with NIC was also negotiated, to get past issues of the journal
digitized. The progress was slow but with in-house efforts it was
finally possible to digitize past issues up to 1991. These were uploaded
on the website of the journal and received much appreciation from many
developing countries.
Managing the journal has been an incredible
experience, but it does come with its fair share of administrative
challenges. The journal is issued monthly with a fixed date posting
every month. In the beginning, that itself was an arduous task with the
need to maintain several deadlines like folio preparations, press
deadlines and manually handling packaging of 16000 copies and so on.
Moreover, we had major limitations in the areas of infrastructure,
manpower resource and finances. Our initial ‘journal office’ was just 2
rooms (each 12 by 6 feet), on different floors and without a proper
approach road. The building was dilapidated and the rooms were
windowless, which made working conditions very difficult, especially in
the hot summers. Most members would do their work from their place of
work and the files would be transported manually. The lack of adequate
space meant, only the Editor-in-Chief would go to the office in the
evening and clear large number of files that would pile up every day.
The journal staff consisted of only 3 clerical level people and 2 office
assistants. Finances were a major worry, as the journal was sent free of
cost to all the members and the Academy already had a budget deficit.
Additional income through advertise-ments was not an easy task,
especially with academy’s decision not to accept any support from
industries dealing infant milk substitutes and ethical issues concerning
product to be advertised.
Some relief came in an unexpected way. The journal
was in litigation for a flat it had booked under Delhi Development
Authority but had decided to sell to a third party as it was unable to
pay its installments. In a windfall at this time, years of litigation
process were sorted out, and the journal got some financial compensation
as a part of the settlement. This was then utilized to procure a modest
office premise in an urban village but located in central area of Delhi,
just behind All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The journal also
maintained financial discipline by keeping its operative cost low with
direct sourcing of paper and a meager staff that worked overtime.
Several other measures to improve finances included vigorous efforts to
procure appropriate advertisements, selling reprint of articles,
bringing out books with tie ups with publishers and many other
innovative measures. The Editorial team worked very hard with a very
clear job distribution between the members. The members met every 2
months and brainstormed on the problems of the journal and possible
solutions. We faced some very difficult times, but they gave a chance
for our extremely dedicated people to shine, and produce our most
treasured achievements.
References