INDEXING & ABSTRACTING

1. Indexing & Digital Interoperability

The Pakistan Journal of Clinical Research (PJCR) distributes its metadata to international discovery networks and scholarly repositories. Every article is assigned a permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) at the point of online publication.

  • National Recognition: HEC Y Category (2026-2027) (Recognized by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan)
  • National Abstracting & Indexing: PASTIC – Pakistan Science Abstracts (PSA) (Pakistan Scientific and Technological Information Center)
  • Persistent Identifiers: Crossref (PJCR Prefix: 10.65761)
  • Scholarly Discovery Engines: BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine)
  • Open Metadata Registries: OpenAlex , Scilit
  • Open Access Directories: ROAD (Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources – UNESCO)
    (Registered in the ISSN International Portal; currently undergoing standard indexing synchronization for formal inclusion in ROAD.)
  • Metadata Harvesting: Operating on the Open Journal Systems (OJS) architecture, the journal natively supports the standardized OAI-PMH protocol, enabling automated metadata crawling by international library catalogs and global abstracting services.

    Third-Party Scholarly Discovery Engines: PJCR does not own, operate, manage, or control third-party scholarly discovery engines, and is not responsible for their indexing, discoverability, or availability of PJCR content.

    For any issue concerning discovery or indexing on a third-party platform, users should contact that platform directly; PJCR’s responsibility is limited to the availability, and maintenance of content within its own official database and website.

Indexed, Abstracted & Registered InHEC Recognised — Category YPASTIC – Pakistan Science AbstractsCrossrefPJCR Prefix: 10.65761BASE – Bielefeld Academic Search EngineOpenAlexScilit

2. Access, Licensing, & Copyright Retention

PJCR operates under a Gold Open Access model, strictly aligning with the DOAJ definition of open access. All content is immediately and permanently free to the public upon online publication.

  • Open Access Statement: There are no subscription paywalls, digital barriers, embargo periods, or mandatory registration requirements to read, download, print, distribute, or link to published articles.
  • Licensing Policy: All published works are issued under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) .
  • User Rights: Third parties are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to full texts, crawl for indexing, use as data for software, or remix and build upon the material for any lawful purpose (including commercial use), provided the original authors receive clear attribution.
  • Copyright Ownership: Authors retain full, unrestricted, and unconditional copyright and publishing rights to their work without any transfer clauses, processing delays, or exclusivity restrictions.
Published UnderCreative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

3. Publishing Ethics & Scientific Integrity

PJCR strictly adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing jointly published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA).

Editorial Standards & Publication EthicsCommittee on Publication EthicsInternational Committee of Medical Journal Editors

A. Core Authorship & ICMJE Compliance

All submissions must comply with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ( ICMJE Guidelines ). Authorship must meet all four core ICMJE criteria. All authors must explicitly disclose all potential financial, institutional, or personal conflicts of interest during the initial submission process using the standardized ICMJE Disclosure Form.

B. Research Misconduct & COPE Governance

The journal operates in strict accordance with the core practices and systematic flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics ( COPE Guidelines ). Pre-review screening is systematically conducted via Turnitin. The journal enforces a zero-tolerance policy for:

  • Plagiarism, text-recycling, self-plagiarism, and duplicate/redundant submissions.
  • Data fabrication, falsification, and digital image manipulation.
  • Citation manipulation, as well as guest, ghost, or gift authorship.