PhD · MS Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapy · Post-Professional DPT · PGD Professional Ethics and Teaching Methodology · HCPC registered (PH143142)
ORCID: 0000-0002-1658-2602
Chief Executive, Link Medical Interface
Bilal Umar is a physiotherapist who has been treating patients since 2009, and who built a publishing house because his colleagues’ research had nowhere to go. He founded the practice that became Link Medical Interface in 2010. The journals came eleven years later, and for a specific reason: a Pakistani physiotherapist with a competent study faced two options — a predatory journal that would take her fee and publish anything, or an international journal that would reject her without explanation. Neither was a route into the literature. The organisation that now runs five journals, a research office, and an ethics board grew out of trying to build a third option.
Research. His doctoral work examined dry needling combined with electrical stimulation for post-stroke spasticity. His interests run across musculoskeletal and neurological rehabilitation, research methodology, evidence synthesis, and publication ethics. He supervises doctoral candidates in physiotherapy and rehabilitation sciences.
Publishing. He oversees LMI Publishers and the policy framework governing its journals. He has consistently argued that the difference between a legitimate journal and a predatory one is not the fee — it is whether the editorial decision comes before the invoice.
Teaching. He teaches research methodology, scientific writing, and publication ethics to clinicians and early-career researchers, largely because these are skills nobody in the region is taught and everybody is expected to have.
On the Institutional Review Board. As an active investigator and a director of this company, he may not sit on the Board, vote on it, or see its deliberations on his own protocols. His research is reviewed by a board he cannot influence, chaired by someone he does not employ.