The lead author, or principal investigator, should have made the most significant contribution. Subject to the agreement of all contributing authors, the principal author may designate themselves as the corresponding author, or they may assign another author for this role.
Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry
Publication Ethics
Acknowledgements
PJMD is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
PJMD journal considers only original content that is not published or submitted elsewhere and must be withdrawn before being submitted to the journal. Manuscripts found fabricated or falsified after submission or publication, may experience retraction of published article.
The journal follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. All the authors, reviewers, and editors of the journal follow the best-practice ICMJE guidelines on ethical behavior contained therein.
In the author’s contribution, all listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript, approved its claims, and agreed to be an author. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution. We refer to the ICMJE Guidelines. Changes in authorship must be declared to the journal and agreed upon by all authors.
Authorship Numbers and Sequence
The number of authors should be commensurate with the depth of their contributions, though there is no hard cap on the number. Each author’s contribution to the work should be reflected in the authorship order. Mutual agreement among all contributors should be used to reach a consensus on the number and order of authors.
Principal and Corresponding Author
Informed Consent Policy for Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry
Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry recognizes the importance of securing informed consent from research study participants. The informed consent process must encompass the following elements:
Authors are required to specify The relevant organization’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethical Review Committee (ERC) must grant ethical approval for any manuscript submitted to PJMD. The committee chairperson should stamp and sign the approval statement on official letterhead. Studies that do not involve direct human contact must obtain an exemption letter from the ERC/IRB and prospective approval.
Without an institutional ERC, approval should be sought from another institution committed to ethical standards. Case reports necessitate department head approval on institutional letterhead, including a statement confirming informed consent from participants before study inclusion or case report publication.
Conflicts of interest
Conflicts of interest or competing interests must be clearly defined. Undeclared interests may experience sanctions. Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected. If conflicts of interest are found after publication, this may be embarrassing for the authors, the Editor and the Journal and must be rectified in a corrigendum
Research on Human Subjects
When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were by the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation and with the rules of Helsinki Declaration.
According to this declaration, approval from an ethics committee should have been obtained before starting the research. A statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be mentioned in the article. Data of the individual participant (case reports) must be described in detail, but private information identifying participants need not be included unless the identifiable materials are of relevance to the research (for example, photographs of participants’ faces that show a particular symptom).
The use of patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, in text and illustrative material is not permitted. Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
Before sample collection a written or verbal informed consent for publication must be obtained from participating patients. For case reports, case details, personal information, and/or images of patients, authors must obtain informed consent from patients (or their relatives/guardians) before submitting to the journal.
Alternatively, if informed consent was not taken, the author may provide a detailed justification of why informed consent is not necessary. To respect patients’ and any other individual’s privacy, please do not send signed forms but the journal reserves the right to ask authors to provide signed forms if necessary.
Conflicts of interest or competing interests must be clearly defined. Undeclared interests may experience sanctions. Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected. If conflicts of interest are found after publication, this may be embarrassing for the authors, the Editor and the Journal and must be rectified in a corrigendum.
If publication ethics policies of PJMD, are found breached authors will be debarred from submission for 3 years. Any errors identified later in published articles, it will be rectified in corrigendum, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
Research on Animals
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare. alternatives. For more details, refer to the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.
Publication Misconduct
This section addresses publication ethics, excluding plagiarism, which is discussed separately. Cases of publication misconduct will be handled following the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. The corresponding author will be contacted for an explanation, and corrective actions, including correction or retraction, will be determined based on the severity of the misconduct. If authors provide no or unsatisfactory response, unpublished manuscripts may be dropped from consideration and published ones retracted. Retraction notices will be issued in print and online. Authors may face a potential lifetime ban from submitting to the journal, and their institutional head could be informed. Strict measures apply to plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate submissions, redundant publication, selective and misleading reporting, and referencing.
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) GUIDELINES ON GOOD PUBLICATION PRACTICE
Plagiarism Policy
The editorial team of the Pakistan Journal of Medicine and Dentistry (PJMD) is committed to maintaining high standards and integrity of published scientific content. PJMD follows/perceives the ICMJE, PMDC, and HEC plagiarism policy for all types of plagiarism. For this purpose, the Plagiarism policy of PJMD will be applied while handling the manuscripts to determine the originality of the manuscripts.
Turnitin software is used for screening of submitted manuscripts and similarity index (SI) <16% according to HEC and Ziauddin University plagiarism policy. The journal does not entertain plagiarism like unacknowledged/unappreciated copying or an attempt to misleading perception of original work, whether of ideas, text, results, images or figures. Text recycling, the reuse of parts of text from an author’s previous research publication (self-plagiarism) or of others work without appropriate attribution and no citation to the other research work will also considered plagiarized. PJMD does not consider such manuscripts for publication.
The disciplinary committee of PJMD comprise of the editorial board and the Editor in Chief will deals with cases of plagiarism or publication misconduct . the journal will contact the authors’ institutions, funders, appropriate bodies for necessary actions. On confirmation of misconduct correction or retraction of the publication will be done.
Instances of plagiarism often manifest in these ways
- Directly appropriating someone else’s work and presenting it as one’s own.
- Self-plagiarism, where authors recycle their previously published material.
- Exclusions during plagiarism checks should be limited to:
- Quotations
- Bibliographic references
- Phrases
- Mathematical / Statistical formulas
- Institutional names or departments
Guidelines for Authors Regarding Plagiarism
- Plagiarism Identification and Correction: If plagiarism is identified during manuscript submission or any processing phase, authors receive alerts and are requested to rework the content or cite references properly. Manuscripts found with 16% or above plagiarism risk rejection and necessitate revision and resubmission.
- Reporting Plagiarism Instances: Scholars can contribute to the scientific community by reporting instances of plagiarism in any journal, providing comprehensive details for appropriate action by the involved editorial offices.
- Post-Publication Plagiarism Investigation: In cases of post-publication plagiarism detection, PJMD conducts a comprehensive investigation. Authors are contacted, and the plagiarised content is marked in the PDF. Depending on the severity, a formal retraction of the paper may occur.
- Handling Publications in Other Languages: Authors must disclose original publication details and secure copyright permissions for publications in another language. Translations may be accepted with proper citation or if the content is entirely rephrased.
- Self-Plagiarism Guidelines: Self-plagiarism, reproducing significant sections of copyrighted work without citation, is not permissible. However, referencing prior copyrighted work is an exception.
- Impact on Research Ethics: Plagiarism significantly undermines research ethics and devalues scholarly work.
PJMD’s Appeal to Authors
PJMD earnestly calls upon scholars to prioritise integrity and accountability in producing plagiarism-free manuscripts.