Minutes of Annual General Body Meeting (GBM) - 2022

Venue :: Lecture Theatre-5, Govt. Doon Medical College, Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
Date :: 27/05/2022 ( Friday )
Time :: 11:00 am to 12:30 pm

The General Body Meeting was held during the Tenth National Conference of Society of Clinical Anatomists (SOCA)

MEMBERS PRESENT ::

The members present for the General Body Meeting were as per the Register. Apology of absence was received from Dr.M.Kavimani, Treasurer - SOCA, Dr.V.Gladwin, Associate Secretary - SOCA. Since the required quorum was available, the President, Dr.M.Sivakumar welcomed all the members who were present and declared order to convene the General Body Meeting of the Society of Clinical Anatomists.

Annual Report by the General Secretary : The annual report of the Society of Clinical Anatomists was presented by the General Secretary, Dr. N. Muthukumaravel. He briefed about the growth of the society since 2011 and also last year activities of the society. He informed that the SOCA had facilitated in organizing Webinars by National Journal of Clinical Anatomy (NJCA) during Covid pandemic. General Secretary appreciated the efforts of Editor-in-Chief, Dr.Kumar Satish Ravi in indexing the Society’s Journal NJCA in DOAJ and SCOPUS. He appreciated Dr.M.K.Pant, the organizing secretary of the 10th annual conference of the Society and the team for accepting and organizing the same in short notice. He also reported that till then 1984 clinical anatomists have become members of the society. The General Body unanimously approved the General Secretary’s report.

Annual Report by the Treasurer : The interim report of the finance for the year 2021-22 was presented by Dr.N.Muthukumaravel, General Secretary on behalf of the Treasurer. The statement of accounts of the Society was displayed for the members’ perusal. The Balance in Society’s account in IOB branch, Valasaravakkam, Chennai as on 31-03-2022 was Rs.16,09,959/- The General Body unanimously approved the Treasurer’s report.

Report by Editor-in-Chief of National Journal of Clinical Anatomy : The Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Kumar Satish Ravi presented the achievements of National journal of Clinical Anatomy after he took over the charge as Editor in chief since 13th April 2020. He discussed about all the steps taken in order to index and empower the journal and also to make it financially stable.

Publication charges reduced as requested by various members of the society.

Revised subscription charges wef 12/05/2020 to make NJCA financially stable and independent and then subsequently from 17/08/2021 with the idea to reduce printing hard copies of journal as it is open access and PDFs are freely available to read the published articles @njca.info

Issuing of e-receipts so that members may claim for reimbursement in the institute if applicable and also to be accountable to agencies.

For smooth operations- Closing of Chennai bank account of NJCA and maintaining the bank account of NJCA at Rishikesh as editorial office is located at Rishikesh.

Change of publisher from Thieme to Wolter’s Kluwer Medknow for timely publication.

Editor-in-Chief informed the members of GB about following ::
1. In the year 2021 the journal’s Acceptance rate - 29%.
2. To improve Social media visibility, social media pages of NJCA has been created on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
3. For financial stability of NJCA, a Subscription drive was launched and as a result, we have more than 160 individual and more than 60 institutional subscribers.
4. NJCA has been indexed – under DOAJ on 26/05/2020 & under SCOPUS & SJR on 25/03/21.
5. Academic activities organised by NJCA ::
  
  1. Webinars were organised on following topics by various eminent speakers ::
  a. Preparing & Publishing a scientific manuscript - by Dr.K.S.Ravi
               b. Use of Reference Manager - Dr. S. Viveka
               c. Reviewing a scientific manuscript - Dr.Vandana Mehta
               d. Plagiarism - Dr.Gitanjali Batmanabane
               e. Authorship - Dr. R. Raveendran
               f. Misconduct & Fraud - Dr. Rakesh Aggarwal
               g. Reverse translational research in anatomy - Dr. R. Shane Tubbs
               h. Yoga impact on genome and epigenome - Dr.Rima Dada

               2. World Anatomy day was observed with the following National                Medical Commission members as the Chief Guests ::
               a. On 15/10/20 - Prof.Surekha Kishore, Executive Director, AIIMS                Gorakhpur.
               b. On 15/10/21 - Prof. Sudha Seshayyan, Vice-Chancellor, The                Tamil Nadu Dr.M.G.R. Medical University
Financial report of the Journal ::
1. Chennai Bank Balance of NJCA as on 11/03/2020- Rs. 12,19,669/- (Presentedin the last GBM at Ahmedabad)
2. In the month of May 2020 - Rs. 14,59,153/- (When decided to open bank account at editorial office,Rishikesh for smooth operation)
3. We opened new bank account in Punjab National Bank, Rishikesh on 04/06/2020
4. We received amount from Chennai bank account to pay – Rs.6,20,827/- (2020) and Rs.5,42,230/- (2021 & 22)
5. After paying to the publishers etc., balance as on 17/03/2021 in the new bank account – Rs.14.37 Lakhs (Punjab National Bank)
6. Total income - Rs.36,15,015/- and Present Balance – Rs.28,81,835/- as on 24/05/2022
The Editor-in-Chief put forward his future vision to make NJCA as one of the top Journals in the CLINICAL ANATOMY ::
1. Increasing the frequency to bimonthly from the following year and then, monthly form 2024
2. Increasing the number & variety of articles in each issue
3. Streamlining, strengthening & decentralizing the review process- Section editors and article editors
4. To bring out special issues under guest editors
5. Publishing Series of articles and sorting out online courses on research methodology, grant writing, manuscript writing, thesis writing, research ethics and educational research with special emphasis on CBME/OBE, medical education features
6. Reviewing and applying for PubMed/SCI to get Impact Factor 2 years later
7. Increment Perceivability /citation-Cite score and Quartile ranking altimetric, Social Media Presencev
An award to the best Paper Published in the NJCA – based on number of Citations, Originality, Innovation., etc. on recommendation of a committee consisting of ::
1. President or his/ her nominee
2. General Secretary or his / her nominee
3. Two editorial board member nominated by Editor-in-Chief
Incentive as waiver of publications charges for reviewers on successful completion of four reviews.

Office Assistant for editorial office on part time basis – by paying Rs.5000/month.

The Executive Committee members including General Secretary of SOCA, Prof.Dr.N.Muthukumaravel, President of SOCA, Prof Dr.M.Sivakumar applauded the great efforts put forward by the Editor-in-Chief and agreed with all the future plans/agenda for the betterment of the journals.

All the above agenda were duly approved by General Body unanimously and the Report of Editor-in-chief was passed.

Other Issues related to National Journal of Clinical Anatomy : The General Secretary, Dr.N.Muthukumaravel once again appreciated the unparalleled initiatives and efforts of Dr. Kumar Satish Ravi with regard to National Journal of Clinical Anatomy. To continue the great works of the Editor-in-Chief, Dr.Kumar Satish Ravi to make our Journal a world renowned Anatomy Journal, the General Secretary proposed ten years continuous tenure for the present Editor-in-Chief till the year 2030. This proposal was unanimously accepted by the General Body and passed.

Venue of the next SOCA conference : As decided in the Executive Committee meeting, The Department of Anatomy, Dayanand Medical College, Ludhiana, Punjab headed by Dr.Hitant will organize the 11th Annual Conference of SOCA in the year, 2023. This decision was approved by the General Body unanimously. The following three institutes were wait-listed: 1. D.Y.Patil Medical College, Pimpri, Pune (Dr.Vatsalasamy) 2. Shri Balaji Institute of Medical Sciences, Raipur (Dr.Manik Chatterjee) and 3. AIIMS, Raebareli (Dr.Rajat Subhra Das).The faculty members of Department of Anatomy of Dayanand Medical College came to the dais and welcomed the members to the next SOCA Conference to be organized by them.

Office Bearers, Society Account and New EC Member : As per the decision of the Executive Committee, the present set of Office bearers to continue for a fresh term after changing the Society’s bank account in the name of the present President, Dr.M.Sivakumar. This was approved by the General Body and Dr.M.Sivakumar will be a joint account holder for the Society’s bank account at IOB branch, Valasaravakkam, Chennai along with the Treasurer, Dr.M.Kavimani. The decision of Executive Committee to induct Dr.Rajat Subhra Das of AIIMS, Raebareli as Executive Committee member was approved by the General Body.

New Life Members of the Society : The General Secretary put forth a resolution to approve the Clinical Anatomists who had been admitted as new life members after due verification during the last year. The members unanimously approved the resolution and welcomed the new life members to the Society.

Other Matters : The Proposal of Dr.Vinay Sharma, Executive Committee Member of SOCA from Muzaffarnagar to represent to the appropriate authorities regarding the inappropriate inclusion of Science Postgradutes (M.Sc) in appointment of teaching faculty members in Medical Institutions in Uttar Pradesh(UP) by the UP State Public Service Commission was accepted by the GB.

Then, the General Body was pronounced over by the President.

Dr. N. Muthukumaravel Dr. M. Sivakumar
General Secretary President