Commentary: Publication trend of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 articles in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology during COVID-19 pandemic.

Dear Editor,

We read with great interest the article titled “Publication trend of COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 articles in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology during COVID-19 pandemic” by Gurnani and Kaur[1] In this article, the authors have retrospectively looked at the trend of COVID-19(coronavirus disease 2019)-related and non-COVID-19-related articles published in the Indian Journal of Ophthalmology during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The year 2020 brought with it a lot of hardships and adversities, in terms of almost collapsed patient care due to suspension of both outpatient and inpatient activities. But as someone rightly said that there is a good side to every evil thing, this pandemic also taught us some lessons and forced us to focus on some of the “hidden” good practices. The good side of the pandemic is evident from the adoption of changes in routine outpatient as well as inpatient care, in terms of the massive surge in the number of teleconsultations and webinars and an increase in the number of articles published as shown by the current study as well as various other published reports.[23] The article is nicely drafted and interpreted and pertains well to the current times.

An important finding brought up by the article is the overall increase in the number of publications, in terms of quality as well as quantity, contributing to the improvement in the impact factor of the journal. Specifically, there was an increase in the number of “original research” articles published in the COVID-19 era. This is well evident because of the increased time available to the clinicians and surgeons during the lockdown period due to suspended clinical activities. Similar findings were also highlighted by Reitinger et al.,[3] who reported a 22.1% increase in ophthalmology publications from March to August 2020. Because the clinical activities are slowly getting increased, it will be nice to have a second such evaluation at the end of the year 2021 and to have a comparison of the trends in the years 2020 and 2021. Also, a comparison of trends in the year 2020 with the previous years will also be helpful. This will help further elaborate the preference patterns of clinicians between clinical and research work as the clinical activities resume. Clinicians must seek ways to maintain this upward trend of publication of original articles as the clinical activities resume.