Copyright and Publishing Rights

The Pakistan Journal of Clinical Research (PJCR) enforces an open-access licensing framework designed to protect author rights, maximize research dissemination, and maintain absolute structural transparency. Authors publishing with the journal retain unrestricted copyright and full, unconditional publishing rights over their manuscripts. Upon formal acceptance, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive license to format, index, digitally publish, and permanently archive the Version of Record within global biomedical repositories, ensuring that the original creators maintain legal ownership of their intellectual property.

All peer-reviewed articles are published strictly under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This machine-readable license permits the global scientific community and general public to freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link, crawl, adapt, and build upon the material for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided the original authors and metadata source receive proper attribution. Authors assume full responsibility for ensuring the absolute originality of their text and must secure verified permissions for any third-party content or figures included in their submissions.

To safeguard the scientific record, the journal reserves the operational right to enforce strict publication ethics and manage metadata corrections. In instances of documented plagiarism, data fabrication, or severe ethical violations, the journal will initiate formal investigations and apply necessary corrective actions, including the publication of linked errata or formal Retraction Notices in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. By completing the publication workflow, authors agree to these ethical terms, guaranteeing a fair, transparent, and legally sound dissemination environment for clinical healthcare research.