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| EDITORIAL |
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| Year : 2012 | Volume
: 58
| Issue : 3 | Page : 169-170 |
From the desk of a new editor
NJ Gogtay
Editor, Journal of Postgraduate Medicine, India
| Date of Web Publication | 26-Sep-2012 |
Correspondence Address:
N J Gogtay
'Nostalgia', Ground Floor, College Building, Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital, Parel, Mumbai 400012
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0022-3859.101372
How to cite this article:
Gogtay N J. From the desk of a new editor. J Postgrad Med 2012;58:169-70 |
The first of July 2012 marked a change of guard at the Journal of Postgraduate Medicine (JPGM) with the old team giving way to the new. To serve as Editor of the JPGM, a 57-old-year journal, is indeed a proud moment for me. It is also humbling to have been elected to serve as Editor and I write this editorial with some trepidation. The JPGM was the brainchild of Dr. RG Dhayagude, the then Dean of the twin institutions of the Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital. He not only gave the journal its name, but also raised funds in 1951 to form a research society that would support a quarterly journal that would disseminate research findings. The first issue was released in 1955, but Dr. Dhayagude had unfortunately passed away a year earlier and did not live to see his dream realized. [1]
Over the years, the journal has seen a distinguished line of Editors. Each one of them has raised the bar that much more. I am fortunate to have worked with two of them, Atul Goel and Sandeep Bavdekar, each with his own unique style, and I have learnt and grown with both of them. The journal faced difficult times in the 1990s and was resurrected into a robust periodical by Dev Kumar Sahu or DK, a pediatrician and alumnus of the institutes. DK served as Managing Editor for several years, set up the Medknow publications, and was instrumental in gently but firmly teaching me the ropes of editing and publishing for the nine long years that I served on the journal, initially as consulting editor and subsequently as Associate Editor. Both the journal and I owe him a debt of gratitude.
Where does the journal stand today? The JPGM is a leading, open access, quarterly, multi-speciality peer-reviewed journal, has an impact factor of 1.263 (2011), an acceptance rate of 1%, and is among the top ranked journals in the country. It has a 7000 strong team of peer reviewers, and receives contributions from the world over. [2] The journal does, however, face significant challenges. It is inundated with fresh submissions each day, several of them good. Since taking over, I have seen that the number of submissions ranges from as low as 3 to as high as 20 a day. The diverse readership and the space crunch often make acceptance a tough proposition. Challenges from within include that fact that only four issues are published yearly and the oft-leveled criticism that the journal is "internal medicine centric" and tends to neglect other specialties. From the outside, it is a competitive world with several new journals jostling for space, a worldwide trend of decline in subscription, and new requirements for open access.
Where do we go from here? Any journal is finally the product of cohesive functioning of its team. In this endeavor, nothing will be possible without the help of the new team of editors. The journal now has Sunil Karande and Milind Tullu as Associate Editors and Praveen Iyer, Shirish Joshi, and Shilpa Sankhe as Assistant Editors. Each one of them brings with him or her, a different expertise and skill making the journal truly multi-disciplinary. As a team, we pledge that we will continue to remain a journal that is responsive to the needs of its authors, reviewers, and readers alike. We will ensure that the rigorous process of peer-review and methodological quality that the journal has implemented all these years will continue. We shall cherish and remain grateful to our beleaguered peer reviewers, many of whom have been with us for several years and some for more than a decade. For those who have recently come on board, a big Thank You. To authors who submit manuscripts, we shall maintain the trust, faith, and confidence that you have shown in us and honor it. Turnaround time is paramount and we will attempt to keep it as reasonable as we can. As editors, we will strive to continue learning and getting better. We will undergo updation and keep abreast with the changing face of medical writing and academic publishing. We will train in several key areas - peer-review, critical appraisal, medical editing, and practical biostatistics, among others. From the content point of view, medical student editors and a separate section for them is something that we have been toying with for a while and we hope to realize this dream. We will look to publishing more symposia, viewpoints, and counter views, and encourage dialog, discussion, and debate within the medical community on topics of national and international importance. Apart from this, we also hope to organize workshops, conferences, and training programs that will help raise the bar of medical writing and academic publishing in this part of the world. When we sign off 4 years later, we do hope to have increased the frequency of publication and making the journal bimonthly.
The staff society of the institute which publishes the journal has always been a source of support and encouragement, and Dr Sanjay Oak, its President, has been a pillar of strength. The Research Society, Diamond Jubilee Society Trust, and the Department Development Fund have also provided help whenever needed and we look forward to their continued patronage. The editorial managers at Medknow publications (now Wolters Kluwer) have always rallied around us and have brought significant improvements over the years to the manuscript management system and we hope to do good work with them over the next 4 years as well.
As a team, we welcome feedback and criticism. Do write to us.
| :: References | |  |
| 1. | Gogtay NJ, Rajgopal L, Bavdekar SB, Mehta S, Salvi VS, Goel A. Fifty years of Journal of Postgraduate Medicine- a journey in time. J Postgrad Med 2004;50:164-6. 
[PUBMED]  |
| 2. | Bavdekar SB. JPGM 2007-12. The editor's report. J Postgrad Med 2012;58:99-102.
[PUBMED] |
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