Indian Journal of Surgery

About Indian Journal of Surgery

Indian Journal of Surgery — Journal Profile

The Indian Journal of Surgery (IJoS) is the official peer-reviewed journal of the Association of Surgeons of India (ASI) and one of the oldest continuously published surgical journals in Asia. It is published by Springer Nature (Springer) as a hybrid journal, appearing bi-monthly — six issues a year — and it serves, in the publisher's words, as a platform for disseminating high-quality surgical research, education, innovation and clinical practice relevant to surgeons in India and worldwide. Copyright in the journal rests with the Association of Surgeons of India, and the journal is the association's official organ: the ASI's own site tells members that they will receive "our official organ — Indian Journal of Surgery" for updating their knowledge.

This profile is anchored to the JournalsWorld record for post 30993, whose stored identifiers are ISSN 0973-9793 and 0972-2068. Springer's journal page assigns that pair exactly: electronic ISSN 0973-9793 and print ISSN 0972-2068. OpenAlex resolves both numbers to a single source record (OpenAlex source S5027178), with 0972-2068 as the linking ISSN, and the journal's articles carry DOIs under Springer's 10.1007/s12262 pattern, as its published editorials show. Authors should identify the journal by that ISSN pair, because India's surgical publishing landscape also includes distinct titles such as the Indian Journal of Surgical Oncology and state-chapter titles such as the Kerala Surgical Journal, which are separate journals with their own ISSNs.

Quick Facts

• Full title: Indian Journal of Surgery
• Abbreviation: IJoS; cited as Indian J Surg
• Owner: Association of Surgeons of India (ASI)
• Publisher: Springer Nature (Springer), publishing bi-monthly as a hybrid journal
• Print ISSN: 0972-2068
• Electronic ISSN: 0973-9793
• Frequency: Six issues a year (bi-monthly)
• Editor-in-Chief (2025–2030 term): Prof. Vikram Kate, JIPMER, Puducherry, per the publisher's editorial board page
• Indexed in: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus, among the services listed by the publisher
• DOAJ: The DOAJ search API returned no record for either ISSN when checked for this profile; the journal is a hybrid title rather than a fully open access one

History — a Journal That Grew With Indian Surgery

The journal's own published history, written by a former chairman and editor in the journal itself, records that the I.J.S. journey started in the early 1940s, as a journal to highlight the Indian surgical scenario and to bring surgeons together to exchange knowledge and improve surgical care and teaching. OpenAlex gives 1941 as the journal's first publication year, which fits that account. The same history describes a 1950s period in which the journal was indexed and was one of the few recognised Indian journals in medical science, followed by a harder period in which irregular publication cost it that recognition, and then the modern development of surgical technique in metropolitan cities in the 1970s and 1980s, the spread of surgical procedures to two-tier cities, and a growing, more participatory ASI membership that made the journal more vibrant academically.

The JournalsWorld directory's coverage string for this record — with spans running from the 1940s, gaps in the mid-century decades, and continuous coverage from 2004 onward — preserves the fingerprint of that uneven early publication history. The modern journal is a different operation: published by Springer, submitted to and reviewed online, indexed in the major citation databases, and reporting, in an ASI presidential address published in the journal, more than 2,000 manuscripts submitted in a single recent year under a previous editor-in-chief. Its February 2025 volume was volume 87, a numbering sequence that itself testifies to the title's longevity. A new editor-in-chief, Prof. Vikram Kate of JIPMER, Puducherry, took office for the 2025–2030 term with a published editorial committing the journal to streamlining the path from submission to acceptance so that findings reach readers promptly.

Aims and Scope

Springer's aims and scope page states that IJoS publishes original contributions that advance the science and practice of surgery and promote evidence-based patient care, and that it welcomes clinically relevant, methodologically robust and educationally valuable manuscripts from all surgical disciplines. The scope it enumerates encompasses general surgery; gastrointestinal and hepatopancreatobiliary surgery; colorectal surgery; minimal access and robotic surgery; surgical oncology; thoracic surgery; vascular and endovascular surgery; trauma and emergency surgery; endocrine surgery; breast surgery; rural and global surgery; surgical education and academic surgery; experimental and translational surgical research; and low-cost surgical innovations and appropriate technology. It also considers interdisciplinary manuscripts of relevance to surgical practice, including contributions from plastic surgery, urology, pediatric surgery, gastrointestinal surgery, surgical oncology, orthopedics, anesthesiology and critical care, and other allied specialties.

Two strands in that list are distinctive. The explicit welcome for rural and global surgery, and for low-cost innovations and appropriate technology, reflects the journal's Indian base: a large share of its readership practises outside tertiary metropolitan centres, and techniques that depend on equipment unavailable in a district hospital are of limited use to them, while a well-described low-cost adaptation can change practice across hundreds of theatres. The surgical education strand is equally deliberate — the journal has devoted special issues to surgical education and academic surgery, treating how surgeons are trained as a research subject in its own right.

Article Types and Author Requirements

Springer lists the article types IJoS accepts as original articles, review articles and meta-analyses, surgical techniques and innovations, case reports, Images in Surgery, consensus statements and clinical practice guidelines, perspectives, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries and book reviews. The submission guidelines give unusually concrete limits for the main types, and authors should build to them from the first draft:

• Original Article: randomised trials, case-control studies, cohort studies, case series and clinical or laboratory or experimental surgical investigations; IMRAD format should generally be followed; about 3,500 words, 60 references, 7 tables and illustrations; a structured abstract of not more than 250 words (Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion) and up to 10 keywords; an original work attestation is required.
• Surgical Techniques and Innovations: description and illustration of a surgical or investigative technique, a modification of an existing technique, or innovation in instrumentation and diagnostics; up to 6 authors; about 2,000 words, 20 references, 5 tables and illustrations; unstructured abstract of up to 200 words with 5 keywords.
• Review Articles and Meta-analyses: on surgical diseases, techniques, diagnostics and instrumentation; meta-analyses should generally follow PRISMA guidelines; up to 6 authors; about 5,500 words, 75 references, 7 tables and illustrations; structured abstract of not more than 250 words and up to 10 keywords.
• Case Reports: single or multiple cases that are rare in occurrence or presentation, show unique management or an unusual outcome, carry a warning sign for surgeons, or have teaching, archiving or discussion value; up to 4 authors; about 1,500 words, 8 references, 4 tables and illustrations; unstructured abstract of up to 200 words with 5 keywords; patient identity must be masked.

The guidelines also address authorship conduct directly: the journal generally discourages gift authorship, and those simply contributing a patient do not become authors. That is a real editorial stance rather than boilerplate, and author lists should be settled against it before submission.

Metrics and Standing

Figures from OpenAlex, resolved directly from the journal's ISSN record (source S5027178) at the time this profile was prepared, give the scale of the journal's indexed record: 4,895 works, cited in total 23,582 times, with a summary h-index of 47, an i10-index of 703 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.32. The earlier JournalsWorld directory record carried lower values — an h-index of 35 and an impact factor figure of 0.3 — and that gap is instructive rather than alarming: the databases count different citing universes, and the OpenAlex h-index in particular is computed over its own full graph, so the two numbers describe different measurements that happen to share a name. Authors quoting a metric for this journal should quote it with its source and the date it was checked.

The standing indicators that matter most for a clinical journal are its indexation and its society base, and both are strong. Springer lists the journal as abstracted and indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus — the two services that drive most institutional evaluation in medicine — alongside SCImago, CAB Abstracts, Dimensions, EBSCO, Google Scholar, ProQuest, the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals and Series, and archiving services including CLOCKSS and Portico, among others on the publisher's list. Behind the journal stands the Association of Surgeons of India, whose annual conference and specialty sections feed it manuscripts and readers; a society journal with a national membership behind it has a floor of readership and submissions that independent titles must buy with marketing. Springer also reports high author satisfaction for the journal, stating that 92 percent of its authors are likely to publish again — a figure from the publisher, quoted here as such.

Editorial Leadership

The publisher's editorial board page names the Editor-in-Chief for the 2025–2030 term as Prof. Vikram Kate — Dean (Academic) and Professor of General and Gastrointestinal Surgery at JIPMER, Puducherry, and a past president of the Indian Association of Surgical Gastroenterology — with Prof. Sandeep Kumar, founder director of AIIMS Bhopal, listed as immediate past editor-in-chief. Named editors on the same page include specialists such as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon in Lucknow and the professor and head of surgery at a Mumbai teaching hospital, reflecting the board's construction: section expertise across the surgical specialties, drawn from India's major teaching institutions. Editorial terms at society journals rotate, so authors should confirm the current board on the publisher's page rather than rely on any secondary listing, including this one.

Fees and Publishing Model

IJoS is a hybrid journal: the standard route is subscription publication through Springer, and an open access route is offered for individual articles. OpenAlex records article processing charges for the journal's open access publication rising over recent years to USD 3,890 in 2025 (with corresponding prices in euros and pounds in its data). That figure is OpenAlex's record of the charge, quoted here with its source; authors who need open access — typically because a funder mandates it — should confirm the current charge on Springer's own pages before submitting, and authors on the standard route should confirm at submission whether any other charges apply to their article type. The journal does not appear in the DOAJ search results for its ISSNs as checked for this profile, which is expected for a hybrid title.

How to Submit — and How to Improve Your Chances

Manuscripts are submitted through Springer's online submission system for the journal, following the submission guidelines on the journal's Springer page. The practical points that follow from those guidelines and from the journal's scope are worth stating plainly. Write to the category limits from the start — an original article drafted to 3,500 words with a structured abstract is a different document from a 7,000-word thesis chapter, and editors can see the difference immediately. Choose the article type honestly: a single instructive case belongs in case reports, with identity masked, and inflating it into an original article invites rejection. Follow PRISMA for meta-analyses, as the guidelines direct. Frame the work for the journal's actual readership — surgeons in Indian teaching hospitals and district practice as well as international readers — by stating what changes in the operating theatre if the findings hold, and what the technique costs in equipment and learning curve. Work on low-cost innovation, rural surgery and surgical training is explicitly in scope and comparatively distinctive to this journal, so authors holding such manuscripts should not assume a general journal is a better home.

Is the Indian Journal of Surgery the Right Journal for Your Paper?

For a surgeon with a clinically grounded manuscript — an outcomes series, a technique with honest results, a trial or cohort from an Indian or comparable setting, a training study — IJoS offers a combination few venues match: a national society's official journal, Springer production and distribution, SCIE and Scopus indexation, and a readership that will actually use the work at the operating table. The trade-offs are the discipline of its category limits, the scrutiny its authorship rules imply, and the reality that a very large submission volume — the journal has reported more than 2,000 manuscripts in a year — means triage is brisk and fit matters. Manuscripts that are primarily laboratory science with no surgical application, or subspecialty work aimed at a narrow international specialty audience, may travel better at a specialty title; manuscripts that speak to surgical practice as it is actually delivered in India and similar health systems have their natural home here.

The Journal and Its Association

IJoS cannot be understood apart from the Association of Surgeons of India. The association represents surgeons across the arc of a career, from training to consultant practice, and its membership benefits are built around academic life: participation in scientific deliberations and conferences, eligibility for awards, best paper and best chapter honours, travelling fellowships and professorships, orations and continuing medical education lectures, and mentorship from senior surgeons. The journal sits inside that ecology as its official organ, distributed to members as part of their professional life rather than sold to them as a product. That arrangement shapes the content in a healthy way: the journal's readers are also its reviewers, its conference presenters and its future authors, and an editor who publishes work the membership finds useless hears about it at the annual conference. It also explains the journal's emphases — surgical education, appropriate technology, the realities of practice beyond the metropolitan teaching hospitals — because those are the membership's own working concerns, written up by the people who live them. For an author outside India, the same ecology is an opportunity: a paper published here reaches a large, organised national readership of practising surgeons in a single step, through a channel they already trust and already receive.

Similar Journals to Compare

Authors in this space commonly compare IJoS with the Indian Journal of Surgical Oncology for oncology-focused work (a separate Springer society title with its own ISSN), with state and specialty association journals such as the Kerala Surgical Journal (the ASI Kerala chapter's journal, print ISSN 0973-3051) for regional or chapter-level work, with other national general-surgery journals in Asia, and with international general surgery titles for work aimed beyond the region. The comparison should turn on audience: IJoS's distinction is the breadth of general surgery plus the weight of the ASI behind it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Whose journal is the Indian Journal of Surgery? It is the official peer-reviewed journal of the Association of Surgeons of India, which holds the copyright; Springer Nature publishes it.

What are its ISSNs? Print ISSN 0972-2068 and electronic ISSN 0973-9793, as stated on Springer's journal page and recorded in the JournalsWorld directory.

How often does it appear? Bi-monthly — six issues a year.

Is it indexed in SCIE and Scopus? Yes. Springer's journal page lists both the Science Citation Index Expanded and Scopus among the services in which the journal is abstracted and indexed, along with SCImago, CAB Abstracts, Dimensions, EBSCO, Google Scholar and ProQuest, among others.

Who is the current editor-in-chief? The publisher's board page names Prof. Vikram Kate of JIPMER, Puducherry, for the 2025–2030 term.

What does it cost to publish? The journal is hybrid. OpenAlex records an open access article processing charge reaching USD 3,890 in 2025; confirm the current figure, and any charges applying to your route, on Springer's pages before submitting.

How long can an original article be? The submission guidelines give about 3,500 words with 60 references and 7 tables and illustrations, a structured abstract of up to 250 words and up to 10 keywords. Case reports are limited to about 1,500 words and 4 authors.

Does it publish case reports? Yes, for rare, instructive or warning cases meeting its stated criteria, with patient identity masked.

Sources used for this profile: Springer's journal, aims and scope, submission guidelines and editorial board pages for the Indian Journal of Surgery (journal 12262); the journal's own published history (Shukla, 2011, via PubMed Central) and ASI presidential address material published in the journal; the OpenAlex source record resolved from ISSN 0972-2068 / 0973-9793 (source S5027178); and the DOAJ search API responses for both ISSNs. Figures are attributed to their source and checking date in the text; anything that could not be verified from a fetched source has been left out rather than estimated.