Brief History of IJU

As USI was born out of ASI, IJU also had a slow beginning from ASI journal. Previously there was no post of “Editor” of the journal. USI constitution had a provision of a council position by the name of Editorial Secretary. They would be elected by the society like any other council member with a function to represent urology in the Indian Journal of surgery run by the Association of the surgeons of India. Initial editorial Secretaries were Dr Y Sachdev, Dr O.P Taneja and Dr M.S Rao. In addition to the Editorial secretary, there used to be an Editorial Board. Editorial Chairmen in those days were : Dr B. N Colabawalla and Dr P Venugopal. It was under Dr M S Rao’s tenure the USI newsletter was started, which was later continued by Dr Mahendara Bhandari.

Indian Journal of Urology in its current form was started in 1984. Dr Mahendra Bhandari was the founder editor and continued to work in this capacity till 1994. After Dr Bhandari, Dr K Sashidharan was the editor during 1994- 2002. After Dr Sasidharan, Dr Santosh Kumar (Professor and Head Urology JIPMER Pondicherry) for a brief period from 2002-2004.

After that Dr Nitin Kekre became the editor from 2005-2013. Dr Kekre started the process of getting the journal an online presence and online manuscript submissions. The IJU started using the 'Journal on Web' manuscript handling system of Medknow and became listed on PubMed through its full text repository, PubMed Central, in 2007. With this PubMed listing, the visibility of IJU increased and it started attracting better quality manuscripts. The journal also started publishing four issues a year regularly and expanded its editorial committee. It made efforts to create awareness and educate the membership on scientific writing.

Dr Rajeev Kumar was the Editor from 2013-1023. In these 10 years, the IJU focused on improving timeliness, quality of production, and international visibility. Each issue of the journal was published within the first 3 days of its publication cycle and the waiting time from acceptance to publication decreased to one issue cycle. The journal was accepted as the official journal by the Nepal Association of Urological Surgeons and Affiliated journal by the Urological Association of Asia, each providing visibility and respect as well as international members on the editorial board. The journal was represented in multi-journal editorials as well as editorial symposia across the world. The journal was listed on the Emerging Sources Citation Index of Clarivate Analytics in 2016 and received its first JCR Impact factor in 2023.