“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing towards what will be” Khalil Gibran
It was indeed an honor and a matter of great pride to be the Editor of the Journal of the Indian Orthodontic Society, but now time has come to pass the baton to the upcoming Editor and I give my best wishes to the new team which takes over from the October issue to take the journal to new heights.
I had taken over as the Editor of the Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society (JIOS) in September 2018 (in the 50th Year of Publication) and ever since the journey has been a great learning experience, both as a clinician and as an academician. The Journal Editorial Team faced challenges and yet found immeasurable joy in facing those challenges repaying our debit to our society and orthodontic fraternity as a whole. The strategy we formulated included managing changes to journal metrics, growing content, and strengthening policies and workflows to further ensure the integrity of what we publish. Our overarching objectives for Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society were to increase usage and discoverability, drive high quality submissions, build profile and reputation globally and enhance author loyalty and engagement.
It has not been a straightforward success story but still a story worth the share. Let me list the major steps made:
The journal was shifted from Medknow to SAGE, an international publishing house, which is publishing more than 1200 journals and 800 books a year with a glorious history of more than 55 years partnering with over 400 societies across all disciplines. In September 2021, SAGE won the Independent Publishing Guild’s Alison Morrison Diversity Award. This transition was followed by an overhaul of the online website and the manuscript submission portal. The results for JIOS are now quite evident
The Covid-19 pandemic affected the working and functioning of several offices worldwide, but despite that all JIOS issues till date were uploaded on-time. I am also proud to say that we have maintained a 100% track- record of on-time journal release and publication with all the issues from 2018 till date.
University Grants Commission – Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics List (UGC CARE List): The journal was removed from the UGC-CARE list in 2018. As the Editor it was the first challenge to bring the Journal Back into UGC-Care. In January of 2019 the government set up CARE and the January issue of JIOS was submitted and we satisfied all 6 assessment points and were inducted back in UGC-CARE list in June 2019.
The Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society is now included/ accepted in different indexing databases like: EBSCO, Indian Citation Index (ICI), J-Gate, ProQuest Central. ProQuest: Health Research Premium Collection, Proquest: Health & Medical Collection, UGC-CARE (GROUP I).
Due to the efforts of the publisher; all articles pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic published in the JIOS are now available on PubMed Central (18 PubMed Central articles). The Journal was in PubMed from 1976-79. After a span of 40 years that JIOS publications were included in PubMed indexed article list. I feel proud of this achievement.
The Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society also became the member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in 2019.
On year-to-year basis there has been approximately 450-500 fresh manuscript submissions received by the journal. The acceptance rate of the journal has gone down from 37% in 2020 to 12% in 2022, which is a signal for the change in quality of the journal publication.
ORCID Mandate: By collecting ORCID IDs in SAGE Track, Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society is at the forefront of this innovation linking researchers seamlessly with their contributions across disciplines, borders and time.
JIOS is now part of SAGE’s new “transparent” peer review system. In this system, each author would be able to view and observe each step (barring reviewer name) in their respective review process.
Engaging and Thanking Reviewers: JIOS through SAGE employs several strategies to engage reviewers in the journal and help them promote their work. JIOS offers a 60-day free trial as a thank you to reviewers for their work and as an incentive to further engage with the journal. This benefits the journal by increasing usage among key readers and gives the journal exposure to reviewers of related journals.
Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society readers can share read-only access to the journal’s articles by sending article links which recipients can use to view the article in a browser environment without having to be a subscriber. The links can be shared via email, on social media sites, and within scholarly collaboration networks, encouraging greater discoverability of the content and enhancing its impact through legitimate sharing options.
e-Reader & EPUB: The e-Reader feature and the EPUB article format are available alongside the HTML and PDF options Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society Journal content has.
Google Scholar: Google’s h5-index is calculated by finding the h-index for articles in a publication over the last five complete calendar years, where h is equal to the number of articles over a five-year period that have at least h citations each. The h5-median is calculated by finding the median number of citations for the articles that comprise a publication’s h5-index. The score for the journal became 7 in 2020.
The global readership to the journal has increased considerably over the years and is now over 260,000 downloads annually. The readership increased from 16,499 in 2019, to 2,68,465 in 2021.
The month-by-month break-up of the total number of downloads for the year 2020 and 2021 clearly depicts the upward trend of the readership of the journal. (Figure 1)
The JIOS in the last 3 years had international authors submitting their work for publications. The accepted international articles authorship spanned 17 countries.
The maximum review time also saw an improvement and now stands at 56 days (including any need for 3rd reviewer scores). Average time taken from submission to 1st decision: 23 days mean with earliest turnover of 1 day.
In order to increase the transparency of articles submitted to the JIOS, the journal has implemented an open data policy to support open research practices.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI): SAGE is a member of the cross-publisher Joint Commitment for Action on Inclusion and Diversity in Publishing and are committed to supporting DEI through our publishing. DEI in the JIOS Editorial Board has helped the Journal grow.
The Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society is pleased to benefit from two initiatives of SAGE library partnerships which are: 1) The UN’s Research4Life initiative, which encompasses the AGORA, HINARI, OARE, ARDI & GOALI programs. All STM, social science, and humanities disciplines are represented. 2) EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) is a not-for-profit organization that works with libraries to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Latin America.
Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI): The Office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India, more popularly known as RNI came into being on 1st July, 1956, on the recommendation of the First Press Commission in 1953 and by amending the Press and Registration of Books Act 1867. The Press and Registration of Books Act contains the duties and functions of the RNI. Some of the statutory functions of RNI are:
Compilation and maintenance of a Register of Newspapers/publications/journals containing particulars about all the newspapers/publications/journals published.
Issue of Certificate of Registration to the publications/newspapers/journals published under valid declaration
Scrutiny and analysis of annual statements sent by the publishers of newspapers/journals every year under Section 19-D of the Press and Registration of Books Act containing information on circulation, ownership etc.
In context to the above, the RNI Return of JIOS was not filed since 1998 and Cessation to subsequent Editors and submission of annual reports had not been done. The application was followed up and the balances were cleared. However, the returns were incomplete ever since it was registered in 1968 with the RNI Office. The process has been corrected after numerous visits to the RNI office and is near culmination.
SAGE India social media Handles Dedicated Facebook page for Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society, and this page continues to grow, with 600 ‘likes’ to date and can be accessed via the following link: https://www.facebook.com/SAGEJIO/
New Content Alert Registrants & eTOCs Delivered: Journal users can sign up to receive email alerts for new content (new issues and/or OnlineFirst articles) from Journal of Indian Orthodontic Society. Register for a personal account on SAGE Journals, then add JIO to your profile: https://journals.sagepub.com/connected/JIO#email-alert.
A promotional video highlighting the value and importance of continued support to the JIOS was also made for dissemination amongst Indian Orthodontic Society (IOS) and international orthodontists for better reach and visibility of the journals as approved by the IOS Executive Committee. The JIOS Symposium was held and the reviewers were honoured for their support.
Full text downloads for the year 2020-2021
Like always, the journey has been with its own share of ups and downs. At times we faced disappointments, but we had learned from our mistakes and come back stronger. Furthermore, I would also like to thank the Indian Orthodontic Society and our advertisers with whose help we have been able to maintain the journal as Diamond Open access.
I would like to thank the entire TEAM JIOS comprising of the IOS Head Office, my JIOS team, my dear reviewers both national and international (who worked so hard to uplift the profession of Orthodontics) as well as the contributors / authors for sharing their scientific research. All relevant indexing applications (PubMed, SCOPUS, Web of Science) were filed last year and after various stages of assessment were found to be deficient on minor counts. We have already started work on the shortcomings in our applications. I wish the future editor best wishes and that the journal scales new heights. Jai Hind! Jai IOS!
