IJMR: a flagship journal of ICMR enters into centenary year

Abstract

In the early part of the twentieth century, when India was reeling under the ravages of many life threatening diseases like malaria, filariasis, kala-azar, plague, tuberculosis, leprosy, etc, and medical research was gradually getting momentum with the opening of many research institutes of highest standard including Indian Research Fund Association (erstwhile ICMR) in 1911, there was no journal to disseminate the scientific knowledge. And most of the work carried out in India was being published in British journals or remain buried in the files of the Government offices. A new era in biomedical research was started in the year 1913 to fill this gap, when Indian Journal of Medical Research (IJMR) was started by the ICMR (then IRFA). The journal was mandated to publish research work conducted in India related to public health and hygiene, prevalent communicable and infectious diseases etc. The first issue of the IJMR was published in July 1913. Sir Pardey Lukis, the then Director General, Indian Medical Services (IMS) was the first Editor of the IJMR. IJMR was initially started as a quarterly publication with 4 issues in a year from 1913 to 1957 but with effect from 1958 it was made bimonthly and from 1964 became monthly and continuing with the same periodicity. During the period 18 supplements on the topics ranging from toxemias, hepatitis and kyasanur forest disease (KFD) to 100 years of malaria research and streptococcal research to HPV were brought out between 1954 and 2006 and 22 special issues on topics like cholera, dengue, chikungunya, malaria and ageing to tuberculosis research and from leishmaniasis to metal toxicity & HIV/AIDS were published between 1964 to 2011. Special sections on maternal and child nutrition, cardiovascular disease research and haemoglobinopathies were also brought out between 2009 and 2011.More extended contributions on special subjects were published as special number known as Indian Medical Research Memoirs, a supplementary series to the IJMR and a total of 38 volumes on topics like plague, kala-azar, medicinal plants, rabies, filariasis, malaria and anopheline mosquitoes were brought out between 1924 and 1954. All the articles published in IJMR since inception have now been made available in pdf format in searchable interface with online editorial processing and management system. With effect from July 2012, IJMR has entered into its centenary year, today even after 100 years of its history it still remains the top most biomedical journal not only in India but probably in Asia, and has maintained high quality of all global standards and indexed by all the global awareness and alerting services. The Impact Factor of IJMR is 1.837, which is highest among Indian biomedical Journals. It is expected that IJMR will continue to benefit vast global biomedical fraternity and attain new heights in the coming years.