Research Ethics

Pakistan Heart Journal (PHJ) follows the COPE Guidelines of Ethical Oversight and ICMJE’s Recommendations for Editorial & Publishing Issues.

Research Involving Human or Animal Subjects: Ethical standards provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are very much applicable to researchers planning to involve human and animal subjects. The policy on Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research suggests the corresponding authors should offer evidence for the execution of the research while abiding with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national level) and also with the Helsinki Declaration, including all revisions and amendments. The author is required to submit the ethical approval. The manuscript must include the institutional review board name and approval number on it. The manuscript must state the details of obtaining consent from the subjects. In cases where experiments on animals are being reported, authors are required to explain whether the institutional and national guidelines regarding the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

Clinical trial registration: Clinical trials are required to be registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov or another agency that follows ICMJE criteria before patients are formally recruited for the study.

Publishing images from human research participants: If images of human participants are part of the manuscript, the Pakistan Heart Journal must be provided with a valid statement (informed consent) validating their patient's consent prior to the inclusion of images in the manuscript. A patient's identity must be kept confidential, and the editors have the authority to demand authors to provide a consent form.