Road map of journal for coming years.

Journal is considered the face of any representing body or its organization. Indian Journal of Orthopaedics (IJO) represents the face of our esteemed parent body Indian Orthopaedic Association (IOA). We want to see the face of our body shining like a star in the sky. For this we have to stand and work together.

IJO after getting its new face in 2007, is rising by leaps and bounds. However, there are no limits to the sky. We have to audit ourselves and set goals to achieve the highest levels. We should outline the future lines of action for taking our journals to the highest levels.

Let us think what we have achieved and what we are planning.

Since last 9 years after achieving its new face, journal has reached to its respectable stage. We are now indexed in major databases such as PubMed, Science Citation Index Expanded, and archiving agencies such as Portico and PubMed Central.1 The number of issues have increased from 4 to 6 per year. The journal has its own website www.journalonweb.com/ortho and one can electronically submit the manuscript. The transparency of manuscript is maintained and one can trace the course of review process. The journal is visible online more globally and the maximum hits after India are coming from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and China. The number of total visitors on our website has also increased.

The submission and decision time is decreasing. The editorial processing time is comparable to any other indexed journal. The impact factor is increasing. Impact factor from 0.285 in 2010 increased to 0.64 in the year 2014 (2.5 times increase). We should aim to bring the impact factor upto 2.0, which is possible only with the support of all the authors by submitting their original work/review articles to IJO.

Our citation has also increased [Figure 1].

Figure 1

Citation overview

The number of submissions have also increased proportionately from 276 (2007) to 899 (2014). The number of overseas submission is rising [Figure 2]. It has reached up to 52%.

Figure 2

Comparison of Indian and overseas submission

However, we feel that this is our own journal. More and more publications should be from our own learned members. The trend and mindset of our authors is to submit original research papers first in other journals; if rejected, then submit to IJO or submit a case report to IJO. Here I would like to appeal all our members to kindly submit to our own journal. We are sincerely indebted to our authors, reviewers, members of IOA and readers who helped us to achieve this height in a short span. We seek their continuous support in future as well.

Looking at future of the journal, our mission is to work for new opportunities for global exposure and improve impact factor of the journal. The transparency in the review process will be continued as before. Medline indexing is our future aim. The measures we aim to take are invite symposia; publish review articles from persons who have life time work on it. We would like to publish more research original articles, systemic/meta-analysis, and withhold case reports for time being. We would like that more and more contributions should be from our own country. We would like to have state-of-art peer review of our journal's articles. We would like to include regional problems of our country in the journal, in the form of original research work of our journal. We also aim to work on sub-specialty groups’ contribution so that their work should be documented and visible globally. We also plan to bring few issues on sub-specialty every year in collaboration with sub-specialties such as arthroplasty, arthroscopy, hand, foot and ankle, and spine. The ahead of print is only on journals’ website right now. We aim to bring full articles online, ahead of print in PubMed, which will be visible globally. To increase the visibility and accessibility of our journal globally, we wish to introduce the iPad and Android system too in near future.

Publishing is a team work. We cordially invite you all to submit your manuscript in IJO, which guarantees the highest level of peer review and quick publication after acceptance. We are looking forward an exciting future and hope you will join us. This is our own journal. We all must work together and contribute toward its growth.