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Authors are the souls of any journal, and deserve much respect. To publish a journal manuscripts are needed from authors. Authors have a great responsibility for producing facts of their work in terms of number and results truthfully and an individual honesty is expected from authors in this regards. Both ways its true "No authors-No manuscripts-No journals" and "No journals–No manuscripts–No authors". Reviewing a manuscript is also a very responsible and important task of any peer-reviewed journal and to be taken seriously. It needs knowledge on the subject, sincerity, honesty and determination. Although the process of reviewing a manuscript is a time consuming task butit is expected to give one's best remarks within the time frame of the journal.
Salient features of the JCDR: It is a biomedical, multidisciplinary (including all medical and dental specialities), e-journal, with wide scope and extensive author support. At the same time, a free text of manuscript is available in HTML and PDF format. There is fast growing authorship and readership with JCDR as this can be judged by the number of articles published in it i e; in Feb 2007 of its first issue, it contained 5 articles only, and now in its recent volume published in April 2011, it contained 67 manuscripts. This e-journal is fulfilling the commitments and objectives sincerely, (as stated by Editor-in-chief in his preface to first edition) i e; to encourage physicians through the internet, especially from the developing countries who witness a spectrum of disease and acquire a wealth of knowledge to publish their experiences to benefit the medical community in patients care. I also feel that many of us have work of substance, newer ideas, adequate clinical materials but poor in medical writing and hesitation to submit the work and need help. JCDR provides authors help in this regards.
Timely publication of journal: Publication of manuscripts and bringing out the issue in time is one of the positive aspects of JCDR and is possible with strong support team in terms of peer reviewers, proof reading, language check, computer operators, etc. This is one of the great reasons for authors to submit their work with JCDR. Another best part of JCDR is "Online first Publications" facilities available for the authors. This facility not only provides the prompt publications of the manuscripts but at the same time also early availability of the manuscripts for the readers.
Indexation and online availability: Indexation transforms the journal in some sense from its local ownership to the worldwide professional community and to the public.JCDR is indexed with Embase & EMbiology, Google Scholar, Index Copernicus, Chemical Abstracts Service, Journal seek Database, Indian Science Abstracts, to name few of them. Manuscriptspublished in JCDR are available on major search engines ie; google, yahoo, msn.
In the era of fast growing newer technologies, and in computer and internet friendly environment the manuscripts preparation, submission, review, revision, etc and all can be done and checked with a click from all corer of the world, at any time. Of course there is always a scope for improvement in every field and none is perfect. To progress, one needs to identify the areas of one's weakness and to strengthen them.
It is well said that "happy beginning is half done" and it fits perfectly with JCDR. It has grown considerably and I feel it has already grown up from its infancy to adolescence, achieving the status of standard online e-journal form Indian continent since its inception in Feb 2007. This had been made possible due to the efforts and the hard work put in it. The way the JCDR is improving with every new volume, with good quality original manuscripts, makes it a quality journal for readers. I must thank and congratulate Dr Hemant Jain, Editor-in-Chief JCDR and his team for their sincere efforts, dedication, and determination for making JCDR a fast growing journal.
Every one of us: authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher are responsible for enhancing the stature of the journal. I wish for a great success for JCDR."
Thanking you
With sincere regards
Dr. Rajendra Kumar Ghritlaharey, M.S., M. Ch., FAIS
Associate Professor,
Department of Paediatric Surgery, Gandhi Medical College & Associated
Kamla Nehru & Hamidia Hospitals Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh 462 001 (India)
E-mail: drrajendrak1@rediffmail.com
On May 11,2011
Dr. Shankar P.R.
"On looking back through my Gmail archives after being requested by the journal to write a short editorial about my experiences of publishing with the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research (JCDR), I came across an e-mail from Dr. Hemant Jain, Editor, in March 2007, which introduced the new electronic journal. The main features of the journal which were outlined in the e-mail were extensive author support, cash rewards, the peer review process, and other salient features of the journal.
Over a span of over four years, we (I and my colleagues) have published around 25 articles in the journal. In this editorial, I plan to briefly discuss my experiences of publishing with JCDR and the strengths of the journal and to finally address the areas for improvement.
My experiences of publishing with JCDR: Overall, my experiences of publishing withJCDR have been positive. The best point about the journal is that it responds to queries from the author. This may seem to be simple and not too much to ask for, but unfortunately, many journals in the subcontinent and from many developing countries do not respond or they respond with a long delay to the queries from the authors 1. The reasons could be many, including lack of optimal secretarial and other support. Another problem with many journals is the slowness of the review process. Editorial processing and peer review can take anywhere between a year to two years with some journals. Also, some journals do not keep the contributors informed about the progress of the review process. Due to the long review process, the articles can lose their relevance and topicality. A major benefit with JCDR is the timeliness and promptness of its response. In Dr Jain's e-mail which was sent to me in 2007, before the introduction of the Pre-publishing system, he had stated that he had received my submission and that he would get back to me within seven days and he did!
Most of the manuscripts are published within 3 to 4 months of their submission if they are found to be suitable after the review process. JCDR is published bimonthly and the accepted articles were usually published in the next issue. Recently, due to the increased volume of the submissions, the review process has become slower and it ?? Section can take from 4 to 6 months for the articles to be reviewed. The journal has an extensive author support system and it has recently introduced a paid expedited review process. The journal also mentions the average time for processing the manuscript under different submission systems - regular submission and expedited review.
Strengths of the journal: The journal has an online first facility in which the accepted manuscripts may be published on the website before being included in a regular issue of the journal. This cuts down the time between their acceptance and the publication. The journal is indexed in many databases, though not in PubMed. The editorial board should now take steps to index the journal in PubMed. The journal has a system of notifying readers through e-mail when a new issue is released. Also, the articles are available in both the HTML and the PDF formats. I especially like the new and colorful page format of the journal. Also, the access statistics of the articles are available. The prepublication and the manuscript tracking system are also helpful for the authors.
Areas for improvement: In certain cases, I felt that the peer review process of the manuscripts was not up to international standards and that it should be strengthened. Also, the number of manuscripts in an issue is high and it may be difficult for readers to go through all of them. The journal can consider tightening of the peer review process and increasing the quality standards for the acceptance of the manuscripts. I faced occasional problems with the online manuscript submission (Pre-publishing) system, which have to be addressed.
Overall, the publishing process with JCDR has been smooth, quick and relatively hassle free and I can recommend other authors to consider the journal as an outlet for their work."
Dr. P. Ravi Shankar
KIST Medical College, P.O. Box 14142, Kathmandu, Nepal.
E-mail: ravi.dr.shankar@gmail.com
On April 2011 Anuradha
Dear team JCDR, I would like to thank you for the very professional and polite service provided by everyone at JCDR. While i have been in the field of writing and editing for sometime, this has been my first attempt in publishing a scientific paper.Thank you for hand-holding me through the process.
Dr. Anuradha
E-mail: anuradha2nittur@gmail.com
On Jan 2020
Editorial
Full Version
An Overview of Malaria Burden in India and Road-Blocks in Its Control
Correspondence Address :
Sarika Jain
Department of Microbiology,
BLK Superspeciality Hospital, Pusa Road,
New Delhi-110005
Phone: 9891604515
E-mail: drsarika6@gmail.com
Malaria continues to be a major public health problem with India alone contributing about 70% of the 2.5 million reported cases in South East Asia. P. vivax is a predominant parasite species in the country; however, malaria control programs have been neglecting the species and have garnered all efforts against P. falciparum. The parasite resistance to insecticide and antimalarial drugs is growing and the alarming reports of emergence of multi-drug resistance poses a real threat to the impact of most of the malaria control programmes. Intensive monitoring of drug resistance along with the strategies to reduce its future emergence and spread is imperative, especially as there appears to be no near-future promise of antimalarial vaccines being available for clinical use.
Malaria, India, Antimalarial drug resistance
Introduction
Malaria continues to be a major public health problem, afflicting 36% of the world population in 107 tropical and sub-tropical countries. India alone contributes about 70% of the 2.5 million reported cases in the South East Asia (1). More than two-third of Indian population lives in malaria zones (2), with largest proportion of cases contributed from the states of Orissa, Jharkhand, West Bengal, North Eastern States, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh and most of the malaria attributable mortality is reported from Orissa and other forested areas occupied by ethnic tribes in the country (3). Overall, out of 4.2 million disability adjusted life years lost due to vector borne diseases, malaria alone accounts for estimated 1.85 million years loss per annum in India (3), (4). The vulnerable groups that have greatest risk of deaths due to malaria are children under five years of age, pregnant women and nonimmunes. Although malaria control programmes have been in place for decades, the scale of the true effect of malaria burden in India have been frequently underestimated to be able to establish reliable baselines against which to evaluate the success of control measures. A recent analysis indicates there is a 68% to 98% gap between India’s reported malaria cases and the actual incidence of malaria (3) which is primarily due to reporting factors according to WHO report (5). Gupta et al have also recently reported that many malaria cases treated at private facilities are not included in the official statistics and thereby underestimate the malaria patterns (6).
Malaria transmission dynamics is highly affected by socio-economic and environmental factors. Of the six primary malaria vectors, An. stephensi is responsible for malaria in urban and industrial areas while An. culicifacies is the vector of rural and peri-urban malaria in peninsular India. An. culicifacies complex is responsible for 60-70% malaria cases occurring annually in India (7). Insecticide Vector control in India is primarily based on indoor residual spraying (IRS) of insecticides in rural areas and anti larval operations in urban areas. The emergence of vector resistance to widely used insecticides and parasite resistance to first-line drugs have resulted in a rise in malaria incidence in many endemic areas, resulting inthe need to resort to more costly chemotherapeutic agents with greater toxicity (8).
Unlike Sub-Sahara Africa, Plasmodium vivax malaria accounts for 50% of total malaria cases. Although vivax malaria is perceived as a benign disease but recent reports indicate increasing incidence of severe disease (9) and chloroquine therapy failures associated with P. vivax (10) and economic loss due to the disease is enormous. More people worldwide live at risk from P. vivax than P. falciparum (11). P. vivax control may become even more difficult in coming years as there is increasing prevalence of clinically defined chloroquine-resistant P. vivax (12). Malaria control programs are majorly focused on elimination of P. falciparum, most likely due to greater mortality rates associated with it, and vivax malaria has been neglected even though P. vivax is a predominant parasite species in the country (13).
The recent analysis of patterns in falciparum and vivax malaria among patients in a private comprehensive-care, multi-specialty hospital in New Delhi showed that P. falciparum was the dominant cause of cases requiring treatment in the facility on an overall basis and a seasonal variation exists between the Plasmodium species causing malaria. The proportion of P. falciparum malaria cases tends to be greatest during the post-monsoon season, while P. vivax malaria cases are largest in the monsoon season (6).
Emergence of multi-drug resistance in the vector is a major cause for concern. Increasing drug resistance in P. falciparum is a possible cause for the continued rise in proportion of P. falciparum to nearly 50% in recent years in India (14). Chloroquine is mainstay of treatment of vivax malaria and for P. falciparum in low risk and chloroquine sensitive areas. However, the drug is not gametocytocidal for P. falciparum and thus cannot block transmission and cannot prevent relapses in P. vivax. Quinine is reserved for complicated malaria as well as during pregnancy and only sporadic reports of its resistance are available from Southeast Asia (15). Resistance to all classes of antimalarials has emerged and there is at present no alternative therapy available. In the present scenario, Artemesininderivatives provide the most rapid therapeutic response among all anti-malarials. ACT, combination of artesunate-sulphadoxine pyrimethamine, has been therefore introduced in high burden states for treatment of P. falciparum to allow both rapid parasite clearance and reduce selection pressure. However, alarming clinical observations of failure of ACT for falciparum malaria have been reported from Thai-Cambodian border (16).
In conclusion, anti-malarial drug resistance poses a real threat to the impact of most of the malaria control programmes. Intensive monitoring of drug resistance along with the strategies to reduce its future emergence and spread is imperative especially as there appears to be no near-future promise of anti-malarial vaccines being available for clinical use.
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