Water in Flow and Monk on Move - Stay Clean

This proverb from Rajasthan says it all. Time flows fast, but only in one direction. Three years ago, when I took over as editor from Dr. Venkatram Mysore, JCAS was a well-established journal and now it is time for me and the journal to move on. The journal needs new vision and fresh thinking and there could not have been a better choice for this job than Dr. Niti Khunger.

The outgoing editorial board's job was to take it forward from where the previous editorial board left. I am not the best judge for assessing whether we succeeded in that or not.

Cutaneous and aesthetic surgery is a fast-changing branch with rapid technological developments. However, I must caution here that every new technology may not necessarily lead to a better therapeutic or diagnostic outcome. We had to reject a significant number of papers on newer technologies in cutaneous and aesthetic surgery due to poor quality of evidence provided by those studies. On the other hand, on some occasions, we published new ideas which looked promising even though the study planning was not very good. This was to promote new ideas and encourage others to do more studies, testing them more vigorously. We also ensured a balance in newer aesthetic procedures, which require newer, and often expensive technologies and conventional cutaneous surgery, which requires surgeon's skills more than expensive technologies.

WHAT READERS WANT?

The most accessed papers are generally those dealing with minimally invasive aesthetic procedures such as microneedling, botulinum toxins, fillers, acne scar surgery, nail surgery, procedures or therapeutics for lymphatic or vascular tumours such as hemangiomas, lymphangiomas, cystic higroma, etc. orbenighn and malignant tumours of the skin, lasers, therapeutics for pigmentary disorders and hair restoration surgery. Our readers are most interested in minimal invasive procedures. The popularity of the journal is ever increasing with, in January 2014, nearly 25000 readers across the world accessed papers published in JCAS.

WHO HELPED US MOST?

JCAS has 342 reviewers from several countries registered with it and we are grateful to all of them. However, I would like to mention few names specifically who have helped us the most. They are Niti Khunger (34), Uwe Wollina (32), Sanjeev Aurangabadkar (30), Sharad Mutalik (25), Venkatram Mysore (20), Vivek Kumar (20), Raghunath Reddy (18), Maya Vedamurthy (18), Greg Goodman (15), Rajeev Joshi (14), Rajesh Rajput (14), Arijit Coondoo (13), V. Ramesh (12), Sushruta Dash (12), Reuben De Sousa (12), Mohan Kudur (12), Rashmi Sarkar (11), C. L. Goh (11), Jaishree Sharad (11), Sanjeev Handa (10), Shrirang Pandit (10).

JCAS is an international journal now. We have 463 authors registered with us and nearly one-third of them are from other countries including Germany, Iran, Italy, USA, Brazil and Australia.

IMPACT OF THE JOURNAL

The journal has still to receive its first impact factor. However, on calculating it based on the citations received in indexed journals in 2013 for papers published in JCAS during 2011-2012, the first impact factor should be around 0.65. Among the papers published during past 3 years, the most cited ones are:

1. Samarasinghe V, Madan V. Nonmelanoma skin cancer. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2012;5:3-10.

2. Singh O, Gupta SS, Soni M, Moses S, Shukla S, Mathur RK. Collagen dressing versus conventional dressings in burn and chronic wounds: A retrospective study. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2011;4:12-6.

3. Sachdeva S, Sachdeva S, Kapoor P. Laugier-hunziker syndrome: A rare cause of oral and acral pigmentation. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2011;4:58-60.

4. Goldman A, Wollina U, de Mundstock EC. Evaluation of tissue tightening by the subdermal ND: YAG laser-assisted liposuction versus liposuction alone. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2011;4:122-8.

5. Levy LL, Emer JJ. Complications of minimally invasive cosmetic procedures: Prevention and management. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2012;5:121-32.

On the other hand, most accessed ones among articles published during past 3 years include:

1. Dhawan J, Singh S, Gupta S. Insects are crawling in my genital warts. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2011;4:129-31.

2. Haneke E. Advanced nail surgery. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2011;4:167-75.

3. Labardi L, Gentile P, Gigliotti S, Marianetti M, Colicchia GM, Pascali M, et al. Medial thighplasty: Horizontal and vertical procedures after massive weight loss. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2012;5:20-5.

4. Levy LL, Emer JJ. Complications of minimally invasive cosmetic procedures: Prevention and management. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2012;5:121-32.

5. Arora P, Sarkar R, Garg VK, Arya L. Lasers for treatment of melasma and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation. J Cutan Aesthet Surg 2012;5:93-103.

I am pleased that inspite of financial pressure, we continued online free access for readers and, at the same time, no submission fee for authors. In this respect, JCAS is the only journal in the field of cutaneous and aesthetic surgery in the world which generously provides free service to both authors and the readers. The editorial board and Association of Cutaneous Surgeons of India believe in free dissemination of knowledge. This was possible only because of the support of colleagues in ACSI, editorial board, and reviewers who provided selfless services and Wolters KluwerǀMedknow which published the journal economically.

In this last editorial, I once again thank ACSI, Editorial Board and co-editors, authors, reviewers, readers and advertisers for their support for the cause of science. I also wish every success to the new editorial board.