Editorial

The publication’s first year of completion and the challenges ahead

R Misra

Author Affiliations

Editor-in-Chief, IJRCI,

Professor and Head of Clinical immunology, Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow-226 014, India

rnmisra2000@gmail.com

IJRCI. 2014;2(1):E1

Published: 28 January 2014

Realizing the fact that the number of open access journal in the field of autoimmune disease is very limited, Internet Journal of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology (IJRCI) have commenced its journey as a peer-reviewed, open access journal in 2013. The journal’s key policy is to enhance intensive intellectual interactions among scholars and researchers working in the field of rheumatology and clinical immunology. Hence the publication does not impose any kind of restrictions either on authors or readers.

During the first year of its operation, we were able to publish diverse clinically relevant articles under all journal categories. It would have been impossible to achieve this great success without the vital support and contributions of the editorial board, the authors, the reviewers, and the readers. The first year also witnessed the entry of renowned international researchers to the journal’s editorial board. Publishing a special issue on the topic ‘Observational studies dealing with various aspects of rheumatic diseases’ has struck a chord among several global readers. Considering the huge response received for this issue, we have already started the editorial processing for the 2014 special issue focusing on ‘Quantification of inflammation in autoimmune diseases’.

In contrast to the traditional way of publishing, IJRCI adopts a fully online, knowledge dissemination system to facilitate the interaction of a wide range of audience. Additionally, following a thorough double-blinded, peer-review process allows the publication to completely avoid possible interferences and biases associated with the editorial processing of the manuscripts. Out of the 21 articles submitted throughout the year, 19 were accepted for publication. Constructive suggestions from the peer reviewers have helped the authors to incorporate the necessary changes as well as to enhance the content quality. We are glad to note that the journal’s articles are also fetching a good readership and most of them have been accessed over 500 times, including the special issue articles published over the last few months. We are trying to broaden our reach of first-time authors and also to get more collaborative submissions from international researchers in the upcoming issues.

Within this short time frame, the journal has been able to get indexed in Index Medicus SEAR, DOAJ, Cite Factor, Academic Journals Database, Journal ITOCs, Journal Index, Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research, Genamics Journal Seek, Open J-gate, and Google Scholar. We are also processing the applications for indexing in other international databases.

Another distinct advantage of the journal is the quicker editorial processing that effectively reduces the time from submission to online publication. Many journals, which have both print as well as electronic versions, are deciding to do away with the paper version considering the increasing printing cost and wider internet accessibility. There is going to be a paradigm shift with the era of e-resources, as retrieving articles are going to be easier. The caveat, though, is the need for computers that are fast enough to download articles with illustration.

Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to the authors who have submitted their manuscripts and also to the reviewers who have participated in the review process. We look forward to many more fruitful years of cooperation to reach greater heights, thereby to achieve the key goal ‘dissemination of the knowledge without any restrictions’.