Plagiarism Policy

All articles submitted to Pakistan Heart Journal are subjected to plagiarism testing. Pakistan Heart Journal follows the standard definition and description of plagiarism (http://facpub.stjohns.edu/~roigm/plagiarism/Index.html) and endorses ICMJE and Higher Education Commission policies regarding plagiarism available on www.icmje.org and www.hec.gov.pk. All articles will be submitted to www.turnitin.com and final decision will be made by the editorial board.

Intellectual contribution and originality of every article is to be defined by the authors and this is the responsibility of authors to be aware of various forms of plagiarism like plagiarism of ideas, text, paraphrasing, self-plagiarism including redundant/duplicate publication, salami slicing (data fragmentation) and text recycling etc. Ignorance regarding plagiarism and its various forms will not be considered as excuse.

Any manuscript submitted for publication or a manuscript accepted for publication or even an article that has already been published in the journal is found to be plagiarized, the matter will be forwarded to disciplinary committee of Pakistan Heart Journal comprising of chief editor, managing editor and associate and assistant editor and it will be investigated as per the instructions from Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE).

Disciplinary committee will immediately stop the further processing/ publication of the article and will ask for an explanation from the authors. The corresponding author will be required to respond with an explanation within 30 days of receiving the letter from the editor.

In case an acceptable explanation is provided by the author(s), the disciplinary committee may recommend appropriate changes after which the review process for the submitted manuscript may commence.

In case of non-response in the stipulated time or unsatisfactory explanation, the disciplinary committee will decide regarding the fate of the article and authors including

  • Rejection of the manuscript,
  • Withdrawn of already published article (as the case may be)
  • Debarment of the authors(s) from further publication in the Pakistan Heart Journal for one year or permanent depending upon the nature of offence.
  • The author will be on watch.
  • HEC, PMDC and author’s institute will be notified for information and possible action
  • In case of multiple submissions, other editors will also be informed. The author(s) will have to provide documentary proof of retraction from publication, if such a defense is pleaded.
  • Those claiming intellectual/idea or data theft of an article must provide documentary proof in their claim.

In case of suspected plagiarism in a published article, the Journal might consider publishing retraction as per the COPE guidelines when provided with an unsatisfactory explanation from the author.

Duplicate Publication: Material under consideration in Pakistan Heart Journal must be original and not submitted elsewhere for publication unless the corresponding author is provided with a rejection letter for the respective manuscript. Although we greatly encourage publishing a part of the work from Ph.D. or thesis in Pakistan Heart Journal, submitting the same manuscript in the same or different languages in more than one journal is strictly prohibited. If the author wishes to submit part of the contribution in Pakistan Heart Journal that has already been published in another or is still under consideration, all such details must be specified within the cover letter. Such cases are discussed in light of COPE publishing practices.