Readers of Indian Pediatrics are our biggest strength, and also the most astute critics. With more than 30000 subscribed readers and more than 2 million web hits per month, we have one of the largest readerships among pediatric journals. We will continue with our tradition of publishing quality-research and topical reviews on issues related to child health in low- and middle-income countries.Providing free full-text access to all readers without charging authors for publication, the journal does have some financial constraints, but we would gradually try to improve the quality, and increase the volume and diversity of the content for readers.

We plan to start two new sections this year viz, Pediatric Subspecialties, and Iconic Pediatric Institutions. The former section is to encourage our colleagues working in pediatric subspecialties to conduct research relevant to the pediatrician and to provide them an avenue to showcase their research to the general pediatric readership. This section would provide our readers an exposure to research in these related fields. At present, we have short-listed four subspecialties viz, Pediatric Ophthalmology, Pediatric Orthopedics, Pediatric Radiology, and Pediatric Dermatology; more may be added later. The other section on iconic pediatric institutions is aimed to expose the readers to our shared history of child health in India. This section, which shall contain invited articles, would provide information about the beginning and development of some of the oldest pediatric departments/institutions in the country. For the time-being, five institutions have been shortlisted, and you will be reading their history in forthcoming issues.

For our authors, we plan to expedite the review process and aim for early editorial decisions. We also hope that the addition of new sections will stimulate more pediatricians to take up the pen and share their clinical experience with the readers. To give a wider exposure to the work of budding pediatricians, we will explore the possibility of publishing the abstracts of papers presented at PEDICON (National Conference of Indian Academy of Pediatrics) as a supplement to the journal from the year 2021.

It has been the editorial board’s long-standing position that being the academy’s journal, in addition to publication of scientific papers, our mandate also includes training novice researchers in the art of scientific writing. Thus, we would continue to hold the hugely popular ‘Art and Science of Writing a Scientific Paper’ workshop, which trains young (and the ‘not so young’) doctors of all specialties on writing for biomedical publication. We will also support any efforts to replicate this workshop at any institution in India for their in-house faculty. Postgraduate students and practicing pediatricians find the published collections of seminal journal articles extremely useful, and we will continue to publish further volumes of Best of Indian Pediatrics (in its third edition presently) and the Art and Science of Writing a Scientific Paper. Another article collection titled Current Trends in Medical Education will be out this month itself.

It has been my observation that most improvements in systems take time to achieve and require efforts to sustain. A long list of illustrious editors have brought the journal to its current position, and I hope to at least sustain the momentum, if not add on to it. The academy has always been providing full support to the journal and ensuring editorial independence, and I look forward to the same during my tenure.

I assure all that ethical publishing and editorial policies, objectivity in manuscript evaluation, and fiscal discipline would continue to be the guiding principles of all journal activities.