Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, Annual Report, 2022-23

Indian Journal of Ophthalmology (IJO) is the official journal of the All India Ophthalmological Society and is one of the oldest medical journals from India. Launched in 1953 as a quarterly journal, it became a bimonthly journal in 2007 and monthly from 2013. It is published by Wolters Kluwer - Medknow since April 2005. The journal is available in both print (ISSN: 0301-4738) and online (ISSN: 1998-3689) versions. IJO is indexed with DOAJ, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Index Copernicus, Indian Science Abstracts, IndMed, MEDLINE/Index Medicus, Pubmed Central, SCOPUS, Science Citation Index Expanded and Web of Science. Current volume number is 71 and the current circulation is about 24000 e-copies, 6000 print copies and 500,000 online access per month.

Key Performance Indices

• Manuscript submission in 2022 increased to 3420, an increase of 230% over the baseline 1013 in 2016.
• Average days under review reduced from the baseline 58 days in 2016 to 41 days in 2022, well within the 6 weeks limit as promised.
• Days to decision (including revision and re-review) reduced significantly from the baseline 202 days in 2016 to 81 days in 2022.
• Submission by Indian authors increased to 2780 in 2022 – an increase by 400% over the baseline 524 in 2016.
• Articles published in 2022 increased to 1202 – a 300% increase over the baseline.
• Citations (as per CiteScore data) increased from 1440 in 2016 to 7392 in March 2023, a 400% jump.
• Publications in IJO have helped add 2480 new unique authors to the pool of Indian researchers in the last six years, over 70% of these are young ophthalmologists and over 70% are women ophthalmologists
• New sister journal dedicated to case reports, introduced in 2021 is a big success. Authors of Indian Journal of Ophthalmology Case Reports represented 28 countries (apart from India) and all the continents.
• IJO Videos, a new initiative, is the first to be indexed video component of a journal in ophthalmology.
• Special issues of the Journal in 2022-23 dedicated to Rare Eye Diseases and Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery were very comprehensive and included review articles, original research, preferred practice, and case reports covering the entire diverse spectrum. These were very well-received.
• Impact Factor for 2021 (released in 2022) increased to 2.969, a 250% rise as compared to 0.835 at the 2016 baseline. Elsevier CiteScore improved from 1.8 to 3.1 in the same period. The current CiteScore (March 2023) is 3.3 [Fig. 1]
• IJO Global Ranking is currently 12 on GoogleScholar [Fig. 2]
• With increased citable publications from 795 in 2016 to 2256 in 2021 (most of the increase attributable to IJO), India’s country ranking improved from 6 to 3 – just after USA and China [Fig. 3]
• Based on the desire of AIOS members, an opt-in drive was conducted in February and March 2023, and about 2800 new members opted in for hard copies of the Journal, thus bringing the total print order to 5810.
• The financial position of the Journal is very secure with fixed deposits of about 22 million INR and current account balance of about 16 million INR at the end of March 2023.

Figure 1: IJO Impact factor has scaled up from 0.835 in 2016 to 2.969 in 2022, a very robust growth. CiteScore has also shown a healthy growth from 1.8 to 3.3

Figure 2: Google Scholar Metrices 2022 rank IJO at 12, much ahead of some of the established international journals

Figure 3: Country rank of India in publications in ophthalmology has jumped up from 6 to 3, now just below USA and China. Most of the publications accounting for the rise in the number were in IJO

Conclusion

IJO has shown tremendous growth over the last six years, which is attributable to the vision of the editorial board, sustained hard work by the reviewers and the trust that the authors have reposed in choosing IJO for the best of their scientific works. IJO is clearly work in progress. A lot more can be done to make it the voice of Indian Ophthalmology and have it optimally support the rising aspirations of young Indian ophthalmologists and the magical growth of Indian ophthalmology.