EDITORIAL
“For the times they are a-changin’”
Shyamanta Das1, Uddip Talukdar2
1Editor-in-Chief, Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences, Formerly DYSPHRENIA™
2Executive Editor, Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences, Formerly DYSPHRENIA™
Correspondence: dr.shyamantadas@gmail.com, uddiptalukdar@rediffmail.com
Das S, Talukdar U. “For the times they are a-changin’”. Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences. 2015;6:3. Epub 2014 Nov 11.
If we consider “phrenia” or “phrenology” as the study of brain or mind, then adding “dys”-a common lexicon in medical science to mean difficulty or disorder, leads us to the term “dysphrenia” with a somewhat loose meaning of difficulty or disorder of the brain or the mind. That was our idea when we started the journal with the name Dysphrenia, to mean a journal working on disorder of brain.
In parallel, there was a worldwide movement going on to rename schizophrenia. Among the different names proposed like Bleuler’s syndrome, Kraepelin’s syndrome, one was dysphrenia. Moreover, in some circles, the term dysphrenia is also used to denote movement disorders. Thus, we arrive at a stage where this word has several meanings, say mental disorder, schizophrenia, or movement disorder.
Therefore, we had been thinking for some time now of renaming the journal, considering the confusions about the meaning attached to the word dysphrenia. The journal is at present not specific to any particular subspecialty of psychiatry, e.g. neither schizophrenia nor movement disorder, rather it is on general psychiatry. In addition, there are contributions from the fields of clinical psychology, psychiatric social work, psychiatric nursing, and other allied behavioural sciences, as well as other specialties of medical sciences like biochemistry, pulmonary medicine, dentistry, etc. Moreover, the journal has been an open access till date and continues to remain so. Hence, we have proposed the name, “Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences”.
“For the times they are a-changin’...” Keeping in tune with those immortal lines of Bob Dylan, our journey has been full of experiences and in this five-year journey from start through ISSN to indexing, our list continues to grow...
The first issue of Dysphrenia came in 2010.[1] In 2011, the journal got ISSN.[2] Over the subsequent years, Dysphrenia is abstracted/indexed/listed in ISSN India, IndexCopernicus, OpenJ-Gate, NewJour, Hinari, ULRICHSWEB, WorldCat, ElektronischeZeitschriftenbibliothek, Indian Citation Index, ResearchBib, InfoBase Index, CiteFactor, the United States National Library of Medicine (which runs MEDLINE and PubMed) catalogue, Google Scholar Citations, Zeitschriftendatenbank, Directory of Research Journals Indexing, IndianScience, Jour Informatics, Directory of Science, SAARLANDISCHE UNIVERSITATS-UND LANDESBIBLIOTHEK, International Impact Factor Services, Open Academic Journals Index, Journal Index, and Advanced Sciences Index.[3]
The name Dysphrenia is very close and emotional. As we allow our children to launch out for their growth, in the same way we are now ready to do away with the name for the greater benefit and for the growth of the journal to higher platform. Though we have decided on the change, there is a long way to go because it is now like starting a new journal altogether from reapplying for separate ISSN to communication to the respective indexing services. But, the only solace is that it would be a continuous journal not a fresh one, i.e. the next issue will not be volume 1 number 1; instead, it will be volume 6 number 1.
Hope the new change helps in its further growth... “for the times they are a-changin’!”
Source of support: Nil. Declaration of interest: None.
References
1. Dysphrenia. Volume 1 Issue 1 [serial online]. 2010 Jan-Mar [cited 2014 Nov 11]. Available from: http://dysphrenia.hpage.co.in/contents_44273954.html
2. Dysphrenia. Volume 2 Issue 2 [serial online]. 2011 Jul-Dec [cited 2014 Nov 11]. Available from:http://dysphrenia.hpage.co.in/contents_91752904.html
3. Dysphrenia. Archives [internet]. [cited 2014 Nov 11]. Available from:http://dysphrenia.hpage.co.in/archives_11233049.html
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