Scientific Misconduct policy

The scientific misconduct policy of JAMC is based on a number of national and international guidelines such as the guidelines laid down by the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan (HEC), ICMJE, WAME and COPE. The forms and examples of misconduct covered by the scientific misconduct policy of JAMC include falsification / fabrication of scientific data, plagiarism (as discussed above) involving misrepresentation of facts / ideas and language used by others in prior work, taking credit of authorship when there has been none, not giving other actual authors their due recognition, re-publishing the same research work as different research work in another journal, inclusion of individuals who have not participated in the research, fraudulently using other researcher’s ideas as own without informed consent.

The scientific policy of JAMC also prohibits contradiction of general principles of research in the form of manipulation of data to obtained desired preconceived results or for using dubious statistical analyses. The scientific policy of JAMC also rejects research during the process of which failure to comply with the local / national / international regulations occurred. Similarly, all forms of personal / professional misconduct including leveling false accusation of misconduct, not reporting a case of misconduct or not sharing information about such cases is also considered a scientific misconduct. Additionally, not complying with the prerequisites of publishing a manuscript in JAMC such as not declaring competing interests of source of funding for the research and not assuring transparency are also construed as misconduct by the JAMC.

Responses to possible misconduct 

The JAMC will halt the processing of manuscripts and will launch investigation into allegations of misconduct if and when received. The JAMC has zero tolerance policy for professional / scientific misconduct.