Abstract
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Chandigarh!
I welcome all of you to the March 2024 issue of Indian Journal of Rheumatology(IJR). One important change that you would have noticed is the change of journal publisher. The new publisher is SAGE. Our team at IJR hopes that this change is in line with changing aspirations of the IJR readers. The transition process was started during the time of my predecessor Prof Vikas Aggarwal, who had brought in some significant and widely appreciated changes in the IJR. The number and quality of submissions has also gone up significantly, with submissions not only from India but from all across the globe. This speaks of increasing popularity of the journal.
The journal got its first impact factor. The Web of Science Impact Factor→ for IJR as reported in the 2022 Journal Citation Reports→ (Clarivate Analytics, 2023) was 0.7. The impact score (IS) 2021 of IJR was 0.58 in 2021,0.38 in 2020 and 0.2 in 2018.
There was a felt need to have a hassle-free article submission system. With the new publisher, there is a change to ScholarOne (Manuscript central) submission system. This would further streamline the article submission process and also help the editorial board in handling the submissions more efficiently. Our efforts are to reduce the turnaround times of all submissions.
As we make this change, I thank the Indian Rheumatology association leadership for approving this change. The editorial board has been expanded as per the mandate of the IJR Editorial board meeting held during IRACON at Indore, IRACON. The inclusion of the new members keeping in mind the regional and gender representation with academicians from both teaching hospitals and corporate sector the journal has become more inclusive and vibrant.
The supplement on ‘Optimal Health in Rheumatology’ commissioned by Prof Vikas Aggarwal and Guest edited by Drs Ankur Jindla and Syahrul Sazliyana Shaharir has been received very well.
I would like to emphasise that our journal follows a strict peer review process and firmly adheres to the principles prescribed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors and the Committee on Publication Ethics. The social medial team is also active in highlighting key messages from journal publications on twitter (@ijrheum), Instagram (ijrheum), and Facebook (Indian Journal of Rheumatology) accounts.
Since we have a Platinum open access model, neither the authors nor the readers need to pay either to publish or read the articles. Online access is also free for everyone from across the globe. The journal is indexed in the prestigious Emerging Sources Citation Index, a new edition of “Web of Science” besides the “Scopus” which it already is indexed in.
I am very aware of everyone’s aspirations, and our next target, of getting the journal indexed in “Medline’. Here I seek cooperation and help from each one of you to submit your valuable original work to IJR. I am very hopeful of making it happen.
God bless us all.