Every journal we publish operates under a single, common policy framework, set at publisher level and applied in full by each journal. An author submitting to any of our titles encounters the same standards of peer review, the same ethical obligations, the same rights over their own work, and the same routes of recourse. Only the journal name, ISSN, editorial board, and publication fee vary. Each journal publishes the full text of every policy on its own website, which is where the operative version lives.
This framework is guided by the publication ethics guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the SAGER guidelines on sex and gender reporting, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (DOAJ, COPE, OASPA, WAME).
Two commitments govern everything else. Editorial decisions are made independently of payment: no fee is requested or accepted at submission, none influences whether a manuscript is reviewed or accepted, and a publication fee becomes payable only after acceptance has been decided on scholarly grounds. And authors keep what they wrote: copyright is not transferred as a condition of publication.
Access and author rights
Open Access
All articles are published immediately on acceptance of the final version, with no embargo, no subscription, and no charge to any reader or institution. Content may be read, downloaded, copied, distributed, printed, searched, and linked to for any lawful purpose, provided the original work is properly attributed.
Licensing
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits sharing and adaptation for any purpose, including commercial use, on condition that credit is given, the licence is linked, and changes are indicated.
Copyright
Authors retain full copyright. The licence granted to the journal is non-exclusive. Copyright transfer is never required.
Self-Archiving (Green Open Access)
Authors may deposit any version of their manuscript — preprint, accepted manuscript, or published version — in any institutional or subject repository, preprint server, or personal website, at any time. No embargo applies to any version. Deposited copies must carry a complete citation to the published article and a link to the licence.
Author Charges and Waivers
A uniform article processing charge applies: PKR 25,000 for authors based in Pakistan. International authors of JHRR, JHWCR, and JSLA pay USD 200; international authors of LMJHCR and JPMHR pay the equivalent of PKR 25,000. The fee is charged only after formal acceptance. There is no submission fee, no peer review fee, and no page or colour charge. Partial or full waivers are available to authors facing financial hardship, early-career researchers without funding, and authors in resource-constrained settings. A request is made after acceptance and before payment, and cannot affect an editorial decision already taken.
Peer review and the editorial process
Peer Review
Every journal operates double-blind peer review: reviewers are not told who the authors are, and authors are not told who the reviewers are. Every manuscript that passes editorial screening is assessed by a minimum of two independent reviewers with relevant subject and methodological expertise. Reviewers are asked for constructive, specific, actionable criticism, and must distinguish revisions that affect validity from suggestions that improve presentation. Personal criticism and discriminatory language are not acceptable in a review.
The process runs through administrative and similarity screening, editorial screening for scope and originality, reviewer selection, double-blind review, editorial decision, revision, and final decision. Indicative timelines are published, and where delay is anticipated the author is informed.
Similarity Screening
All submissions are screened using Turnitin before external review and may be re-screened after substantial revision. A similarity figure above 18% triggers enhanced editorial review, but no manuscript is rejected on a percentage alone. Similarity is interpreted in context: legitimate overlap occurs in methods, references, standard terminology, and ethical statements, and unattributed overlap concentrated in the Introduction, Results, or Discussion is treated far more seriously than a matching methods paragraph.
Editorial Independence and Endogeny
Editorial decisions rest on scientific merit, methodological quality, relevance, ethical acceptability, and clarity — not on the author’s seniority, institution, nationality, or fee. The publisher, owner, sponsors, and advertisers do not interfere with editorial decisions. Manuscripts authored or co-authored by an editor, an editorial board member, or anyone involved in the journal’s review operations are handled through an independent editorial pathway. Those individuals are excluded from every decision touching their own manuscript and are given no access to reviewer identities or editorial deliberations.
Prior Publication, Duplicate and Redundant Publication
A manuscript may not be under consideration at another journal at the same time. Prior dissemination as a preprint must be declared at submission. Redundant publication, and the fragmentation of a single study into multiple papers without scientific justification, may result in rejection or post-publication action.
Peer Review Manipulation
Attempts to manipulate peer review — including fabricated reviewer identities, suggested reviewers with undisclosed conflicts, or coordinated citation or review rings — are treated as research misconduct and may result in rejection, retraction, and notification of the authors’ institutions.
Post-Publication Discussion, Commentaries and Author Responses
Scholarly commentary on published work is accepted, and authors are given the opportunity to respond. Substantive post-publication concerns are handled through the corrections, expression of concern, and retraction procedures below.
Authorship and contribution
Authorship and Contributorship
All listed authors should meet the ICMJE criteria: substantial contribution to conception or design, or acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; drafting or critically revising the manuscript; approval of the final version; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Contributors who do not meet these criteria are named in the acknowledgements with their contribution described. Honorary, guest, gift, ghost, and forced authorship are not acceptable. Authors and reviewers are encouraged to provide an ORCID iD for unambiguous identification.
Author Order and Changes in Authorship
Author order is agreed by all authors before submission. Any request to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be explained in writing and approved by all authors, including any author being added or removed. The journal may request documentation of each author’s contribution and may pause editorial processing until an authorship matter is resolved. The journal does not adjudicate institutional or personal authorship disputes.
Integrity and ethics
Publication Ethics and Malpractice
The framework defines the ethical obligations of authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher across the full editorial lifecycle, and sets out how suspected misconduct is investigated before and after publication. The full publisher-level Publication Ethics and Editorial Policy governs these obligations in detail.
Originality and Plagiarism
Submitted manuscripts must be original. Plagiarism — copying text, ideas, images, data, tables, or figures without appropriate citation — and inappropriate text recycling are not acceptable. The journal follows COPE’s guidance on text recycling in distinguishing acceptable reuse (such as standard methods with citation) from unacceptable recycling of results, discussion, or substantial original prose.
Research Misconduct and Handling of Allegations
Allegations of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, and other misconduct are investigated confidentially, evidence-based, and fairly to all parties. The journal may request explanations, documentation, and data, may consult independent experts, and where warranted refers the matter to the institution concerned. A whistleblower who raises a good-faith concern is protected from retaliation.
Conflicts of Interest and Funding Disclosure
Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any financial or non-financial interest that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work. Funders must be named and their role stated. Recusal follows disclosure where a conflict exists.
Ethical Oversight — Human and Animal Research
Studies involving human participants, human data, or human material must confirm compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki, name the approving ethics committee, and state the approval reference. Studies involving animals must confirm compliance with applicable welfare standards and follow the ARRIVE guidelines. Where individuals may be identifiable — in case reports or images — explicit consent for publication is required. Research involving vulnerable participants — including children, people unable to consent, and other groups at heightened risk — requires the additional safeguards described in the full policy.
Clinical Trial Registration
Clinical trials must be prospectively registered in a recognised public registry before enrolment of the first participant, consistent with the ICMJE requirement. The registration number is stated in the manuscript.
Reporting Guidelines
Authors are expected to follow the reporting guideline appropriate to their study design — CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, SQUIRE, COREQ, STARD, or ARRIVE, among others — and to submit the relevant checklist where required.
Data Availability and Reproducibility
Responsible data sharing is encouraged, consistent with ethical approvals and participant consent. Editors may request raw data, analysis outputs, or de-identified datasets for verification. A data availability statement is expected. Clinical-trial data sharing follows the stricter, trial-specific expectations set out in the full policy.
Image Integrity
Manipulation of images that misrepresents the data — including selective enhancement, obscuring, moving, or introducing features — is not acceptable. The journal may request original, unprocessed images.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
AI tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot take responsibility for a work. Authors remain fully accountable for every element of a manuscript, including any text, analysis, or reference an AI tool touched, and must disclose material use of generative AI. Reviewers and editorial board members must not upload any part of a manuscript into a generative AI tool or third-party system that could store, learn from, or redistribute it — confidential, unpublished work is not theirs to feed into someone else’s system. Breach may result in removal from the reviewer pool.
Sex and Gender Equity in Research Reporting (SAGER)
Authors are expected to consider whether sex and/or gender are relevant to their study, and to report them accurately where they are. Sex refers to biological attributes; gender to socially constructed roles, and the terms are not interchangeable. Where relevant, data should be reported disaggregated by sex and/or gender, single-sex or single-gender studies should say so in the title or abstract, and where such analysis is not performed the authors should explain why and discuss the implications for interpretation. The full SAGER policy sets out the requirements for each section of a manuscript and for evidence syntheses.
Citation Ethics
Citations must be relevant and honest. Coercive citation, self-citation padding, and citation manipulation are not acceptable.
Corrections and the scholarly record
Corrections, Retraction, and Expression of Concern
Corrections are issued where an error is confirmed but the core findings hold. Retraction follows where findings are unreliable through serious error, misconduct, unethical conduct, or duplicate publication. Where serious concerns exist but an investigation is incomplete, an expression of concern alerts readers while due process runs. All such notices are published openly, linked to the affected article, and remain a permanent part of the record.
Article Withdrawal or Removal
Published articles are not removed except in rare circumstances — for example, a legal requirement or a serious risk arising from the content — and any removal is documented transparently. The journal does not quietly delete articles.
Complaints and appeals
Appeals
An author may appeal a decision within 30 days by addressing specific points in the decision letter. Appeals are assessed by a senior or independent editor who took no part in the original decision. No one decides an appeal against their own decision. We aim to resolve appeals within two to four weeks.
Complaints
Complaints about editorial conduct, process, or the publisher are made to complaints@lmi.education, which is read by the Chair of the Complaints and Research Integrity Committee, external to Link Medical Interface. Complaints are acknowledged within five working days and resolved within thirty days, or the complainant is told why more time is needed. See Complaints and Appeals.
Governance and transparency
Ownership and Management
Each journal discloses its owner, its publisher, and its management structure. Where a journal is published by BMU Ventures (Private) Limited rather than Link Medical Interface, that is stated plainly. See the ownership disclosure.
Advertising, Direct Marketing, and Revenue Sources
Advertising and sponsorship, where accepted, are separated from editorial content, clearly identified, and confer no influence over editorial decisions. Revenue derives from article processing charges, editorial and publishing services, and related activity. We do not sell data, do not accept payment to publish, and do not accept payment to review faster.
Editorial Board
Each journal maintains an editorial board of named members with stated affiliations, listed in full on the journal’s website. Board members are appointed for their expertise and are expected to uphold the standards of this framework.
Website Transparency
Each journal states, on its own website, its ISSN, scope, editorial board, peer review policy, fees, licensing, ownership, and contact information, consistent with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
Misleading Metrics and Indexing Claims
We do not display fabricated or misleading impact metrics, and we do not claim indexing, listing, or recognition that a journal does not hold. A journal’s status with any service is stated only where that service has confirmed it.
Archiving and Preservation
Published content is preserved through the PKP Preservation Network, a distributed preservation system that keeps articles available independently of any single website or server.
Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Permissions
Authors retain copyright under CC BY 4.0. Reuse of third-party material requires appropriate permission, which is the author’s responsibility to obtain and document.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Non-Discrimination
We are committed to fair treatment of authors, reviewers, and editorial participants regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender, disability, or career stage, and to editorial boards and review that reflect that commitment. Harassment and discrimination in any part of the editorial process are not tolerated.
The full policy
This page summarises the framework. The complete publisher-level Publication Ethics and Editorial Policy, and the full Sex and Gender Equity in Research Reporting policy, are maintained in full and applied by every journal on its own site. For any question about a policy, write to publisher@lmi.education. To raise a complaint or appeal a decision, see Complaints and Appeals.