The Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) is glad to announce the beginning of a New Section called “THE RESIDENT’S AGORA”, a section which would be dedicated for Junior Residents/Postgraduate Trainees of psychiatry alone. This section is aimed at encouraging and enlightening budding psychiatrists in the areas of research and creative writing and, hence, help them grow with our Journal in their academic and research journey. The details regarding the types of articles and other instructions for this section will be updated soon.”

The series of webinars, titled “Global Psychiatry: A LAMIC Perspective” begins this Friday, 4 September 2020 (6-7 pm IST) with the speech of Linda B. Cottler from the United States. It is an initiative of the Society for Mental Health in LAMIC (SoMHiL), as part of MONON Assam Cares (https://www.ojpas.com/ojpas-2020-07-27-fulltext.html), in collaboration with ECHO India. The link will be: https://tinyurl.com/yyprflj4

After successfully editing the COVID-19 section, Shijo John Joseph, MD resumes as the Assistant Editor of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®). Shijo is the Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry in Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences, Sikkim Manipal University, Gangtok, Sikkim.

Samrat Singh Bhandari, MD takes charge as the Associate Editor of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®). Samrat is the Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences, Sikkim Manipal University, Gangtok, Sikkim, India.

The editorial board members of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) met in a webinar along with the proprietor of Academy Publisher and discussed the inclusion of the journal in ResearchGate (RG) and assignment of RG Journal Impact (0.34) that is comparable to the Asian Journal of Psychiatry (0.64), the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (0.50), and the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (0.47). OJPAS® is under evaluation by Clarivate Analytics for inclusion in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) of Web of Science. Dr. Shijo John Joseph has joined as section editor for manuscripts related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). New section on continuing medical education (CME) has started and first article has already been published (A brief summary of human molecular genetic techniques for clinical psychiatrists). Next in the section will be on ‘Statistics for clinical research: basic to advance’. Peer-review platform is not working as needed and decided upon to develop one. All the editors need to understand the conflict of interest for editors. For advance online publication, digital object identifier (DOI) will be applied directly to Crossref. Instructions for authors and guidelines for reviewers are deliberated.

Shyamanta Das, the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) and Kamal Nath, the Advisory Board Member of OJPAS® spoke on ‘Stress related to COVID-19 in youth’ and ‘Self-harm behaviour’ respectively in the webinar organised by IQAC, SBMS College, Sualkuchi.

e-Filing of Annual Statement to the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India has been submitted for the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) in the current year (2019-2020) (number is E2020-ASS009930).

The new issue (July-December 2020, Volume 11 Issue 2) of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) is released.

Shyamanta Das, the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) moderated the panel discussion on utility and challenges of telepsychiatry in the Mid-Term CME of the Indian Psychiatric Society (Eastern Zonal Branch).

Arunima Dutta, the Editorial Assistant of the Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences (OJPAS®) received the Community Research Forum Faculty Investigator Research Award from Michigan State University.