It has been a topic of great confusion among the medical teachers community as to what is the exact criteria for publications which is valid for promotions in medical colleges as laid down by national medical council (which replaced medical council of India).

In many places while describing the rules for publication national medical council or erstwhile medical council of India mentions that the publication must be done in indexed medical journal. Now the term indexed medical journals needs some pondering.

Simply speaking every medical journal by default is an indexed medical journal because technically speaking every page of every website is “indexed” at least by google thorugh its web crawlers. And in most of the instances journals are at least indexed in indexing agencies such as googe scholar or index Copernicus etc.

The more appropriate description would be medical journals indexed in specific indexing services so to speak. Now national medical council have come up with a circular dates 22/02/2022 in which NMC has defined the meaning of indexed journal for the purpose of promotions In various medical colleges. According to NMC only those journals which are indexed in one of the following indexing services will be considered valid.

1.Pubmed

2.Medline

3. Central Citation Index

4. Science Citation Index

5.Expanded Embase

6. Scopus

7. Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ).

Now suppose a journal is indexed in index Copernicus can anybody call it indexed journal. The answer is YES. But will it be considered indexed journal for the purpose of promotions in medical colleges as per criteria laid down by NMC or erstwhile MCI the answer is NO.

And are these indexing services going to remain valid for future also the answer is NO because earlier index Copernicus indexed journals were considered valid for promotions in medical colleges as NMC rules but after 22/02/2022 they are no longer considered and a journal indexed in index Copernicus is of no use as per new criteria. This change was probably done because there were many journals indexed in index Copernicus which promised fast publications in medical journals.

Summary:-

1 – Every Journal is an indexed medical Journal if you take its literal meaning.

2- For the purpose of prommotions in medical colleges the criteria for indexed journal is decided by NMC and as of today the journals which are indexed in  Medline, Pubmed, Central Citation Index, Science citation Index, Expanded Embase, Scopus or  Directory Of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) are considered indexed medical journals.

Can the criteria for indexing change?

of course Yes . National medical council can change the criteria for publications anytime and it has power to do so. Though it will definitely give transitory period for switching from one indexing service to another.

How likely is that NMC will change indexing criteria in near future?

There are less chances of NMC changing the indexing criteria in near future because it has recently changed the criteria and the changes in criteria is not expected in near future. Though its prerogative of NMC and nobody can predict it with certainty.