Journal of the Association of Physicians of India
Overview
The Journal of the Association of Physicians of India, universally known by its abbreviation JAPI, is a monthly English-language scientific journal published from Mumbai. It is the official journal of the Association of Physicians of India (API) and carries original research and reviews on internal medicine for physicians across India. Started in 1952, it is among the longest-running medical journals in the country, and by its own account it reaches more than 23,000 members of the Association of Physicians of India every month, with millions more benefiting through its online version.
JAPI is a peer-reviewed journal indexed on PubMed Medline and Scopus, according to its website. Its pages mix the full apparatus of a scientific journal — original articles, reviews, case reports and correspondence — with distinctive educational features such as Pictorial CME and Medical Philately, making it both a research outlet and a continuing source of clinical learning for practising physicians.
The Association of Physicians of India
The journal's parent body, the Association of Physicians of India, was founded in 1944 at Madras. For its first eight years the association had no journal of its own; the presidential address delivered by Dr Jivraj Mehta, the first president of the association, was published instead in the Journal of Indian Medical Association. The absence of an official journal was felt for a long time, as the journal's first editor later recalled, and the decision to start one shaped JAPI's founding story.
API remains the journal's owner and constituency. The association's annual conference, APICON, is linked from the journal's website alongside the current issue and archive, and the journal's circulation is built on the association's membership: the monthly issue goes to the association's more than 23,000 members, a distribution that few Indian specialty journals can match.
Founding in 1952 and the First Editor
JAPI began in 1952 under a different name and in difficult circumstances. Its first editor was Prof. S. S. Misra of King George Medical College, Lucknow, and the journal was then called Medicine. Misra had no money to run the journal. On his request, Dr J. C. Patel, then the secretary of API, donated the whole amount the association had — Rs 1,000 — to get it started.
Misra's first editorial, which the journal reproduces for its historical importance, set out the philosophy and scope he envisaged. The association had been thinking for a long time about starting an official journal of its own; the plan was to begin with four issues a year and, if conditions permitted, convert it into a monthly journal. It would publish original articles on medical and allied subjects of a good standard, inviting contributions from all over the country and from abroad, and would later add detailed reports of clinico-pathological conferences, extracts from current literature and association notes. Misra stressed that the association was a non-profit organisation and that its aim was to help promote medical research of quality in India.
Interruption and Revival in 1955
The money dried up soon. For lack of financial support, publication was discontinued after three issues, and the journal remained suspended until 1955. In that year George Coehlo of erstwhile Bombay was appointed the next editor. Coehlo brought publishing experience to the task: he had been successfully publishing a Medical Bulletin since 1932.
Under Coehlo the journal took the name by which it is still known, the Journal of Association of Physicians of India. From that revival, in the journal's own words, it has not looked back, with consistent improvement in its publication schedule, the quality and variety of its contents and the quality of its printing. The quarterly ambition of 1952 was in time fulfilled and surpassed: JAPI became, and remains, a monthly journal.
Publisher, Editorial Home and Indexing
The journal is published from Mumbai, and its contact address is at Unit No. 3301, Tower D, Prestige Turf Estate, Shakti Mills Compound, Dr E. Moses Road, Mahalaxmi West, Mumbai 400011, in Maharashtra. Its print ISSN, as recorded in journal listings, is 0004-5772.
JAPI states on its website that it is indexed on PubMed Medline and Scopus, the two indexing services that matter most for a clinical journal's visibility: PubMed places its contents before the worldwide medical research community, and Scopus records its place in the international citation literature. Combined with the online version, which the journal says benefits millions, indexing explains how a membership journal from Mumbai reaches far beyond its print circulation.
Subject Area and Article Types
JAPI's subject area is internal medicine in the broad sense: the diagnosis and treatment of adult disease across the organ systems, together with the allied subjects its first editorial promised to include. A look across recent issues shows the territory in practice — hypertension and its comorbidities, diabetes and its complications, liver disease, tuberculosis, dengue and other infections, snake envenomation, poisoning, and diagnostic questions spanning cardiology, neurology, pulmonology and rheumatology.
The journal publishes a consistent range of article types. Recent issues include original articles and short reviews, consensus statements prepared by national groups of specialists, case reports, Pictorial CME features, a Point of View section for argued positions on professional and legal questions, Medical Philately, and correspondence in the form of letters to the editor responding to earlier articles. That mixture keeps the journal simultaneously a research record, a consensus forum and a teaching publication.
Notable Features
Two features give JAPI a character distinct from a standard research journal. Pictorial CME uses images — clinical photographs, scans and visual findings — as the basis for continuing medical education, presenting cases in which the picture itself carries the lesson. Medical Philately, a long-running curiosity of Indian medical journals, connects medicine with postage stamps, profiling scientists and discoveries through the stamps that commemorate them; recent instalments have covered subjects from cochlear implants and vitamin synthesis to Nobel Prize-winning antiparasitic agents and art under the microscope.
The journal also publishes national consensus statements, in which Indian specialists set out agreed positions on the management of conditions as they present in India. A recent example listed on its site is a national consensus statement on the promise of cilnidipine in hypertension with comorbidities, running to dozens of pages. Such statements give JAPI a guideline-setting role in Indian practice, beyond the publication of individual studies.
Frequency, Archive and Digital Presence
JAPI is a monthly journal, and its website at japi.org organises its output by volume and issue, with an archive reaching back through decades of publication; volume numbering in recent years — volume 71 in 2023 and volume 72 in 2024 — reflects its 1952 start. Articles are offered for download from the site, and the current issue and archive are presented alongside links to APICON and the association.
The journal maintains a social media presence through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, as linked from its website. The combination of a print edition sent to members, a downloadable online edition and indexing in PubMed and Scopus makes each issue available in three distinct ways: to the association's members as a membership benefit, to clinicians searching the medical literature, and to the general online reader the journal says benefits in the millions.
Audience and Circulation
The journal's core audience is the membership of the Association of Physicians of India — more than 23,000 physicians who receive it every month — together with the much larger body of internal medicine practitioners, postgraduate trainees and researchers who consult it online and through indexing services. Its content is written for clinicians rather than patients: case reports assume medical training, consensus statements address prescribers, and correspondence conducts professional debate.
Within Indian medicine, JAPI functions as the house journal of the country's physicians. Its founding purpose, stated in 1952, was to promote medical research of quality in India, and its contents still privilege Indian clinical experience: diseases as they present in Indian patients, Indian case series, and consensus positions adapted to Indian practice, contributed, as the first editorial invited, from all over the country and from abroad.
How to Read and Contribute
Readers can access JAPI through its website, japi.org, where the current issue and the archive of past issues are available with downloadable articles, and through PubMed and Scopus, where its indexed contents can be searched as part of the medical literature. Members of the Association of Physicians of India receive the monthly journal as part of their association membership.
For authors, JAPI remains what its founders intended: a peer-reviewed national platform for original research, reviews and case reports in internal medicine. A journal that began with Rs 1,000, survived a three-issue collapse, and was rebuilt in 1955 now stands as one of India's senior medical periodicals, carrying the work of Indian physicians to their colleagues at home and, through its indexing and online edition, to readers worldwide.
