Competing Interests

Authors submitting a manuscript to the Pakistan Heart Journal are requested to disclose all competing interests, either financial or non-financial, at the time of submission. These competing interests might alter the originality of the work submitted and might manipulate the authors’ contribution towards data presentation, analysis, and explanation. The corresponding author is required to submit a statement regarding conflicts of interest in the manuscript on behalf of all the co-authors.

Funding: The conflict of interest statement in the final manuscript must entail the funders or sponsor role in study design, data collection, analysis and manuscript preparation. 

Employment: Employees of any organization associated with a particular publication and may potentially be affected by the publication must be mentioned.

Personal financial interests: Any financial profit or loss must be included prior to publication. A competing interest statement must mention financial gains or losses in a company’s stocks or shares through a specific publication, consultation fees or other reimbursed fees from organizations that may gain or lose financially through a publication.

Patent applicant: A detailed account including inventor name, the patent applicant, number and status of the application, aspect of the manuscript covered by the patent application must be disclosed regarding the patent application filed by the author that can be affected by the specific publication.

Non-financial competing interests: Personal, religious, academic, political and professional associations with organizations or individuals are considered to be non-financial competing interests. Such relationships must be incorporated and clearly stated by concerned referees and authors as they may influence the publication process during submission.

The corresponding author is in charge of submitting a form of the declaration on behalf of all authors to highlight conflicts of interest. Authors are also advised to attach a competing interest statement at the end of the manuscript to clarify whether there is a competing interest or not.

We acknowledge agreements of confidentiality between authors and the funding firms. In such cases, the editors are required to request a statement of declaration from the author, which explains that they are bound to maintain the anonymity of the agreement and cannot share their competing interests in the submitted work.

Application to referees: We suggest that peer-reviewers provide details of all financial or non-financial competing interests before pursuing the manuscript review opportunity.

Application to editors: The policy is also applicable to the editorial staff, and editors are also supposed to give accounts of all current financial or any other competing interests concerning a manuscript that can potentially influence their editorial duties.