2017; Volume 18, No 1, January

Featured Article

Throughout the year, IAHPC board members contribute a range of opinion pieces and other thought-provoking articles to the IAHPC Newsletter. This month, it is the turn of our board member Professor Sushma Bhatnagar, Head of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Care, at the Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.

Recognized nationally and internationally for her work in cancer pain management and palliative care, Professor Sushma Bhatnagar has contributed widely to publications both as an author and reviewer. She is also Chief Editor of the Indian Journal of Palliative Care, an open access journal that is widely regarded as a source of high quality articles from Asia and across the world.

Indian Journal of Palliative Care: Disseminating palliative care research and evidence from low- and middle-income countries

The Indian Journal of Palliative Care (IJPC) is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed palliative care journal. It is published quarterly under the aegis of the Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC). IJPC is the only indexed journal for the whole of Asia that provides a portal for publishing high quality manuscripts from the Asian continent and rest of the world.

IJPC is the official publication of IAPC and it came into existence two years after the formation of IAPC. It was published in print format from 1995 onwards and has been online since 2007. The journal’s frequency of publication has increased from twice a year to three times a year, to the present frequency of four times a year. The latest issue (January 2017) will be the 22nd volume of the IJPC.

The journal is registered with abstracting partners such as CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure), EBSCO Publishing's Electronic Databases, Exlibris – Primo Central, Google Scholar, Hinari, Infotrieve, Journal Guide, National Science Library, OpenJGate, ProQuest, TdNet, and AMED. It is indexed with DOAJ, Emerging Sources Citation Index, Index Copernicus, Indian Science Abstracts, PubMed Central, Scimago Journal Ranking, and SCOPUS. According to recent Google Scholar Metrics, IJPC ranks well among all the indexed palliative care journals in the world with an h5-index score of 16 and h5-median score of 22.

To maintain the scientific rigor of the journal, no fee is charged to the authors for either manuscript submission or manuscript publishing. It is an open access journal, i.e. access to the scientific content of the journal is open and free to all readers across the world. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer India Private Limited, a multinational company that publishes more than 350 journals of 300 plus associations and societies.

Author institutional mapping (AIM) of the past year showed that the manuscripts to the IJPC are submitted from authors from India, Middle East, South East Asia, Northern and Central Africa, North America and Australia. Currently, there are more than 850 registered authors and 150 registered reviewers. On average, the journal receives 150 to 175 manuscripts annually with an acceptance rate of around 30 percent.

Contributing to the journal

On average, each issue of IJPC has 20 to 25 articles and at least 80 percent of these are original articles. All manuscripts are submitted to IJPC through the journal portal and readers can access the scientific content through the website. All manuscripts are submitted and processed electronically according to ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) standards. The turnaround time for the manuscript process and acceptance is around four weeks. Publishing may be slightly delayed due to the quarterly nature of the journal. In addition to the table of contents, the print version of each issue provides the readers with author index, title index, quick response code and DOI for easy access to the scientific content.

The IJPC is administered under the leadership of myself as chief editor, and Dr. Naveen Salins, editor. An editorial board, comprising eminent palliative care professionals from India and overseas, supports the work of the journal and provides mentoring. In the past few years, IJPC has been gaining rapid popularity. We hope that in the future it will achieve greater heights and will be an effective portal for disseminating palliative care research and evidence from low- and middle-income countries.

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