Lahore Journal of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (LJPHS)

Best Practices in Research Reporting

LJPHS requires that authors adhere to internationally recognized reporting guidelines to guarantee the clarity, completeness, and transparency of research reporting. Authors must consult the EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the Quality and Transparency Of Health Research) guidelines when writing their manuscripts:

Clinical Trials (RCTs): Must follow the CONSORT statement and include a flow diagram.
Observational Studies: Must follow the STROBE guidelines (Cohort, Case-Control, Cross-Sectional).
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses: Must follow the PRISMA guidelines.

Case Reports: Must follow the CARE guidelines.
Pre-clinical / Animal Experiments: Must follow the ARRIVE guidelines.

Human Subjects Research

All research involving human participants, human biological material, or human clinical data must be conducted in strict accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Ethics Approval: Manuscripts describing such research must explicitly state in the "Methods" section that ethical approval was obtained from an independent, recognized Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee. The name of the committee and the official approval reference number must be provided.
Informed Consent: Authors must confirm that informed, written consent was obtained from all study participants (or their legally authorized representatives) prior to their inclusion in the study.
Privacy & Confidentiality: Patient privacy must be protected. No identifying information (such as patients' names, initials, hospital numbers, or photographs showing facial details) may be published unless essential for scientific purposes and accompanied by explicit written consent from the patient.

Animal Research

For experiments involving animals, authors must adhere to high standards of animal welfare and ethical handling.

Ethical Oversight: All animal studies must have been approved by the appropriate Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or local ethical review board. The approval reference number and the name of the authorizing committee must be clearly stated in the manuscript.
Welfare Standards: Authors must confirm that animal experiments were conducted in compliance with relevant institutional, national, or international animal welfare guidelines (such as the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals).
Justification: The manuscript must describe the efforts made to minimize animal suffering, use the minimum number of animals necessary, and describe anaesthetic and analgesic protocols where applicable.

Competing Interests

Authors must declare any potential financial or non-financial conflicts of interest that could be perceived to influence the objectivity or integrity of the research.

Declaration Requirement: A formal "Conflict of Interest Statement" must be included in all manuscripts prior to the reference list.

Examples include financial funding, grants, honoraria, employment with pharmaceutical firms, stock/patent ownership, or personal relationships.

No Conflict Statement Template: "The authors declare that they have no competing financial or personal interests that could influence the work reported in this paper."

Disclosure of Funding Sources

Transparency in funding is essential to maintain public and scientific trust in research outcomes. Authors must list all sources of financial support in the "Funding" section.

Specify funding agencies (such as HEC Pakistan, local university grants, or pharmaceutical research funds) along with grant numbers.

Unfunded Research Statement Template: "This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors."

Licenses and Copyright

Open Access License: All articles published in LJPHS are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Anyone is free to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided original credit is given.
Copyright Retention: Authors retain full copyright of their work and grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish, archive, and distribute the article.

Data Availability Policy

LJPHS encourages the sharing of raw research data to promote scientific collaboration, validation, and transparency. Authors must provide a "Data Availability Statement":

Option A (Repository): "Datasets are available in [Repository Name] under DOI: [URL/DOI]."
Option B (Request): "Data available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request."
Option C (Included): "All data supporting findings are integrated within the manuscript and/or supplementary files."

Complementary Research & Code Sharing

Simultaneous Submissions

Under no circumstances will LJPHS accept manuscripts currently under review, accepted, or published in another journal. Overlapping studies stemming from large projects must be disclosed in the cover letter to prevent "salami slicing."

Materials, Software & Code Sharing

Authors must describe sources and specifications for specialized reagents. Custom computer algorithms or scripts (in R, Python, MATLAB) are highly encouraged to be uploaded to public repositories (e.g., GitHub, Zenodo) and linked within the paper.

Ethical Publishing Practice & Plagiarism Policy

LJPHS strictly follows the core codes of conduct and guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan.

Zero Tolerance for Plagiarism

All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin software prior to peer review.

An overall similarity index of less than 19% is mandatory.
Similarity index from any single source must be less than 5%.
Direct copy-pasting, paraphrasing without attribution, or self-plagiarism will result in immediate rejection.

View HEC Plagiarism Policy

Scientific Misconduct

Any evidence of data fabrication, image manipulation, falsification, or redundant publishing will be thoroughly investigated according to COPE flowcharts and may lead to institutional notification and formal action.

ICMJE Authorship Criteria

LJPHS follows authorship guidelines defined by ICMJE. Authors must meet all 4 criteria:

Substantial contributions to conception, design, or acquisition/analysis of data.
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Final approval of the version to be published.
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Contributors who do not meet all criteria should be listed in "Acknowledgments". Any post-acceptance authorship changes require written consent from all authors and Editor-in-Chief approval.

Corrections & Retractions

LJPHS is committed to preserving the integrity of the permanent academic record:

Corrections (Errata/Corrigenda): Published for minor, honest errors (e.g., typesetting, figure typos) that do not alter scientific validity.
Expressions of Concern: Issued by the Editor-in-Chief during unresolved, ongoing misconduct investigations.
Retractions: Executed if findings are proven highly unreliable due to misconduct, data fabrication, or plagiarism. Retracted papers remain online marked "RETRACTED".

Editorial & Publishing Policies