When the Journal of Gastrointestinal Infections (JGI) first published in 2011, the aim of the Gastrointestinal Infection Society of India (GISI) was to provide an avenue to publish findings in the broad subspeciality of “gastrointestinal infections.” The editors, over the last decade, worked hard to ensure that the publication continued even in the absence of any financial support, advertisements, or publication fee despite being an open access journal. The journal was initially self-published by the editors but later shifted to the Jaypee Publisher. Until now the journal had been publishing one issue every year. With this frequency and small number of manuscripts, each of the manuscripts were peer reviewed in a double-blinded manner. A significant number were rejected after a rigorous review process to maintain the high standards of publication. We are grateful to Prof Varsha Gupta (2011–2012), Prof Deepinder Chhina (2013–2014), and Prof Chetana Vaishnavi (2015–2021) for steering the journal successfully through the initial decade.
With 2022, not only is there a change of guard at the journal but there are many other changes that we look forward to. The journal will now be published by Thieme India which will improve the global reach and visibility of the journal. The journal aims to publish substantive, important, and relevant findings to microbiologists, infectious disease specialists, and gastroenterologists across the globe. More importantly, the journal hopes to be a vehicle of education in the field through the Education in JGI section featuring reviews, images, evidence-based commentaries, and a journal scan. The scope of the journal includes not only gastrointestinal infections but also hepatobiliary infections, procedure-related infections, surgical infections, gut microbiome, and the interactions between infections and gastrointestinal disease. We shall also provide a voice to the most important stakeholder, our patients, through sections on patient education and patient journeys.
The journal will continue to be an open-access journal—the readers can access the papers without any fee from across the globe. We have switched to a standard single blind peer review as true blinding of the submitting authors and institutions is difficult to maintain, and the reviewer's identity shall remain unknown to the authors.
The journal's editorial board has been expanded to ensure that we have a mix of youth and experience and a symphony of the east and the west. The rejuvenated editorial board brings forth enthusiasm, commitment, and a new vision for the journal. With this diverse team of associate editors, we hope to provide quick and authoritative decisions for the manuscripts. The journal continues to have clear and transparent editorial policies and processes—the editors will not participate in review/processing/decisions of manuscripts on which they are coauthors. We are happy to have Prof Chetana Vaishnavi as an ombudsperson for the journal. The journal has a clearly outlined appeals process as mentioned in the instructions to authors. The appeals could be related to editorial processes and decisions, and will be adjudicated through an independent and transparent process. The accepted manuscripts will appear online first, and will be citable as they are published. The journal has increased the frequency to two issues per year from 2022.
We hope that the journal will be a delight for prospective authors, and the journal will not charge for the submission, processing, or publication of articles. The journal will provide free online production of color. As editors, we also commit ourselves to be an ally of the authors especially from the developing countries and for those whose first language may not be English. We do not request any formatting as per journal style at the time of initial submission. These technical checks will be done at the revision stage. If a manuscript is deemed editorially acceptable, the assistant editors will help in language check and improvement. The journal also provides free optimization of abstracts for accepted manuscripts to improve visibility. The journal also seeks to use the social media (including twitter) to improve the visibility of research and, therefore, requests the authors to provide graphical abstracts at the time of revisions. The editorial board will ensure timely review of submitted manuscripts and presently the time to first decision (review or desk reject) is less than 2 days. Every original article, review, or case report published would be externally peer reviewed.
As we embark on this journey, we thank the GISI for supporting the journal and providing complete editorial independence to us. While in the past few months we have been queried about indexing and impact factor, we are not there yet. We envision the JGI as a tool for education and new information in the field, without any barriers for publication due to geographic location or availability of funding to the researchers. Therefore, what we can promise today is an educational and informative journal which will be responsive to needs of the time.
