Article Processing Charges (APC)

The Pakistan Journal of Clinical Research (PJCR) operates as a Gold Open Access journal to ensure that all published biomedical research is immediately and permanently accessible to the global scientific community without subscription barriers or digital paywalls. To sustain its internal editorial operations, cover technical metadata compilation costs, and maintain advanced digital infrastructure, the journal applies a transparent single-tier Article Processing Charge (APC) framework. The journal enforces a strict non-predatory financial model, meaning that no submission fees, editorial screening charges, or desk-rejection fees are ever levied against authors. Submitting a manuscript for formal editorial consideration carries absolutely zero financial obligation, and authors are never required to provide billing details or payment receipts during the initial submission phase within the Open Journal Systems (OJS) portal.

The one-time Article Processing Charge is applicable exclusively after a manuscript has successfully completed rigorous double-blind external peer review and has received a formal, written editorial acceptance from the Editorial Board. For manuscripts where the corresponding author maintains an active institutional affiliation within Pakistan, the required publication fee is fixed at thirty-five thousand Pakistani Rupees (PKR 35,000). For manuscripts originating from international institutions, the standard publication fee is set at one hundred and forty United States Dollars (USD 140). This flat fee covers the complete baseline publishing operational pipeline, which includes professional medical copyediting, typesetting, Crossref Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registration under the prefix 10.65761, structural XML and HTML metadata production for machine-readable indexing, and permanent digital hosting within secure archival servers.

Upon official acceptance of a manuscript, the editorial office issues a formal institutional invoice containing detailed remittance instructions. To ensure complete financial security and administrative transparency, all processing fees are collected and audited through the corporate banking channels of the journal's parent body, the Open Access Institute for Research, located in Islamabad, Pakistan. Settlement of the invoice must occur promptly during the final post-acceptance processing stage, as the formal allocation of page numbers, activation of the Crossref DOI, and final layout compilation into the Online First stream cannot execute until payment verification is complete. In absolute alignment with international ethical standards, the financial management of invoices is handled strictly by the administrative office, ensuring that handling editors and external reviewers remain entirely blinded to fee collections, guaranteeing a purely merit-based scientific evaluation process.