J Conserv Dent: 2008 - 2016: An appraisal.

“We all have our time machines. Some take us back, they are called memories, some take us forward, and they are called dreams”

It has indeed been a memorable and momentous journey for both J Conserv Dent and for our editorial team; having been elected and entrusted to handle Journal of Conservative Dentistry for three consecutive 3-year terms (2008–2010, 2011–2013, and 2014–2016). We have been resolutely working toward achieving excellence, and it is time for an appraisal of the work done in these past 9 years.

With a vision to evolve “Journal of Conservative Dentistry from an Indian national specialty journal to an internationally renowned peer-reviewed journal in the field of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics,”[1] we took over the editorial office in the year 2008. The immediate objective was to create an official journal website, an online submission website of international standards, and to make J Conserv Dent indexed in reputed international indexing agencies such as PubMed Central. As an initial step, the journal was made online with a separate website for viewing the current and past issues (www.jcd.org.in) and a separate platform for research submission and peer reviewing (www.journalonweb.com/jcd). The editorial panel was gradually expanded with eminent national and international researchers, academicians, and clinicians, who played a key role in the evolution of our journal.

J Conserv Dent became PubMed Indexed in the year 2010 with immense support from reviewers, authors, and publishers.[2] The growth of the journal from 2008 to 2010 was tremendous with a 6-fold increase in article submission. Due to a gradual increase in quality and content, the journal started receiving articles from various parts of the world including USA, Turkey, Brazil, Malaysia, Iran, Pakistan, Japan, Senegal, and Poland, to name a few.

By the year 2012, all the back issues of our journal were archived online for easy access for students, researchers, and academicians.[3] Then, we strived to work towards the goal of making J Conserv Dent a premier conservative dentistry and endodontics resource journal in Asia by the year 2015. The first step was to increase the number of quality articles getting published, and from 2013 onward, our quarterly journal became a bimonthly journal with six issues being published per year.[4] J Conserv Dent from then on has progressed in leaps and bounds evident by a 10-time increase in article submission by the year 2014, wherein we started receiving more than 400 article submissions per year from more than 25 countries[4] [Figure 1 and Table 1].

Figure 1

Graph showing the progress of J Conserv Dent over 8 years

Table 1

The progress of J Conserv Dent over 8 years

Scientific journals are very important platforms through which research and knowledge is shared among researchers. With the increase in the number of open access journals available nowadays, it becomes a herculean job for the author to weigh the importance a particular journal holds in any field. The progress of a journal can be evaluated by tracking the pattern of its performance over a period of time. The inception of journal bibliometrics (impact factor) in early 1960s by Eugene Garfield has created a new epoch in assessing journal prestige. In the past few decades, the journal metrics has grown to accommodate some of the new needs of the scientific community.[5] Journal impact factor has grown to be the most common bibliometric tool sorted after for analyzing a journal's performance.

Scopus is the largest database of abstract and citations of peer-reviewed scientific journals and books from more than over 5000 publishers. “The Centre for Science and Technology Studies and SCImago use Scopus data to calculate the raw Impact per Publication (IPP), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) values.”[6] No single metric can evaluate the journal completely. Though each metric has its own features, the rankings of a journal are provided based on citation analysis.[7] These journal metrics are best used for journals without impact factor and for getting a more precise citation impact of a journal.

The SNIP analyzes a source's contextual citation impact, i.e., the average citation impact of the publications of a journal. The “IPP measures the ratio of citations in a year to scholarly papers published in the 3 previous years divided by the number of scholarly papers published in those same years.”[8] IPP is fairly similar to the journal impact factor metric.[8] J Conserv Dent has published 324 articles between 2012 and 2014 and has an IPP of 1.13 and SNIP of 1.01 [Figure 2]. It is commendable to note that based on the SNIP and IPP, J Conserv Dent ranks 40th among all dental journals and 3rd among the various endodontic journals globally.

Figure 2

(a) Articles published in J Endod, Int Endod J, and J Conserv Dent for the past 4 years. (b) SNIP scores of J Endod, Int Endod J, and J Conserv Dent for the past 4 years. (c) Impact per Publication scores of J Endod, Int Endod J, and J conserv Dent for the past 4 years

SCImago journal rank[9] is an online portal available for assessing journal metrics using data available from Scopus. This platform is developed by SCImago from the algorithm Google page rank. Based on SJR ranking, J Conserv Dent is ranked the best dental journal in India and the second best dental journal in Asia. Globally, J Conserv Dent ranks 34th among various dental disciplines [Figures 3–5].[9]

Figure 3

SCImago ranking of J Conserv Dent as the number one dental journal among Indian journals

Figure 5

Global ranking of J Conserv Dent in SCImago

SCImago ranking of J Conserv Dent as the second best dental journal in Asian region

With enormous effort and perseverance from the editorial team, authors, reviewers, and the readers, we were able to succeed in this endeavor so far. We are also glad to share the news that J Conserv Dent has become financially self-reliant and is able to carry out its mission without any support from the head office for the past 2 years. The future goal for the journal is to get registered with science citation index and to receive an impact factor. This process should be completed within the first half of 2017.

The journey so far has been indeed wonderful and better than in reaching any singular milestone or destination. However, as a team, we think that in the best principles of democracy, a fresh and deserving team takes over the responsibility of our journal. In this regard, on the recommendation of the Indian Association of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, an expert panel comprising the current and past editors of J Conserv Dent has already submitted a white paper on “Guidelines for Selection of Editor in Chief of J Conserv Dent” to the head office. We hope that our society accepts these guidelines and selects a new team wisely.

We sincerely wish the new editorial team (2017) the very best. Progress is a never-ending and continuously evolving process and the journey to seek and reach higher goals will continue…