Aim

Pakistan Journal of Multidisciplinary Research is an international, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed and open access journal that provides a platform to produce high-quality original research in the discipline of natural, social, applied, formal sciences and closely related fields.  Our aim is to ameliorate speedy distribution of new research ideas and results and allow the researchers to create new knowledge, studies and innovations which will aid as a reference tool for the years to come.

Scope

This journal accepts the submission of research works in the discipline of natural, social, applied, formal sciences. The research works include but not limited to:

• Business and Economics
• Biology and Life Sciences
• Mathematics and Statistics
• Computer Sciences
• Chemistry and Materials Sciences
• Engineering
• Environmental Sciences
• Medicine and Pharmacology
• Physical Sciences
• Public Health and Healthcare
• Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities
• Agricultural Sciences
• Biotechnology
• Food Sciences
• Nutrition
• Microbiology
• Biochemistry
• Physics
• Animal Sciences
• Fisheries and Aquaculture
• Biology & Life Sciences
• Business & Economics
• Chemistry & Materials Science
• Computer Science & Mathematics
• Engineering
• Environmental & Earth Sciences
• Medicine & Pharmacology
• Physical Sciences
• Public Health & Healthcare
• Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities

Publication and Peer Review Process

Pakistan Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (PJMR) is a double-blind peer-review journal. All articles submitted to the Journal need to pass the review process before publishing. Peer review is important to maintain the quality and integrity of scientific and scholarly research and it is aimed to evaluate the quality, validity, and originality of the research articles.

The corresponding author will submit the manuscript through our online submission system. At first stage the articles will be scrutinized and evaluated by the editorial team, if it is according to the scope of the Journal, meet basic standards as outlined Authors Guidelines and Ethical Statement. In case the editor concludes that article does not meet basic standards of research quality, language and research ethics and the author should improve them before the manuscript is forwarded for peer review, an email with required modifications will be sent to the corresponding author. However, if the editor concludes that there is little room for improvement, he/she may desk reject the article, stating the specific reasons and suggesting author to submit another article for publication. This process would take 2 to 4 weeks approximately.

After the manuscript has gone through editorial review, the section editor will send request for reviews to multiple reviewers. The section editor will also ensure that the reviewer is specialist of the subject matter of the manuscript. In case a specific reviewer is not available, he/she will search for a reviewer based on the expertise in the specific field relevant to the wider subject domain of topic in the manuscript.  It is also duty of the section editor to ensure that there is no conflict of interest of the reviewers with the research in focus. The section editor will also regularly follow-up with reviewers to ensure timely completion of review process.

The review process is Double Blind Peer-Review. This indicates that authors will be unknown to the reviewers. It is also the responsibility of the authors to ensure blind submission such that that title page is separate from the main body of the manuscript and there is no information in the main body which reveals authors identity. The reviewers will return their recommendations and decision to the editor who will forward them to the author(s) as general and specific comments. The editor will assess the reviewer’s comments and recommendation and make a decision about acceptance of manuscript for publication. The section editor will forward the recommendations and peer-review analysis to the Editor in chief. The final decision on first evaluation of manuscript lies with the Editor-in-Chief, who would make decision and communicate to the author via section editor. The decision can be one of the three possibilities 1) “Rejected” 2) “accepted as it is without changes”, 3) “conditionally accepted with modifications”.  The extent of changes varies manuscript to manuscript and authors are allocated enough time to make the recommended amendments. However, if changes are extensive, the manuscript may go through peer-review process after re-submission, preferably with original reviewers (depending upon availability). In case there are minor changes which author(s) successfully implemented; the editorial board may accept resubmission “accepted as it is without changes”. For modifications which are extensive, the manuscript is subjected to the peer-review process in an iterative manner. Even in the case of rejection, reviewers and editors’ comments that are constructive and may be useful to authors to improve their work are passed on anonymously.

Publication Frequency

Pakistan Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (PJMR) publish two issues per year. Each issue may contain 10-15 articles. Occasionally, PJMR can publish special issue which can have specific editors. Announcements for special issues will be announced 6 to 12 months prior.

Open Access Policy

Pakistan Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (PJMR) provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports for a greater global exchange of knowledge. 

Authors Guidelines

Data Fabrication/Falsification/Theft

It is highly unethical to fabricate, falsify and report selective data in order to manipulate the results with the intent to mislead and deceive the readers. We recommend the authors of original research to maintain a record of any data analysis conducted on data collected from experimentation, survey, interview or other primary and secondary before submission. At any point during publication process, reviewers or editors can ask authors for the research data and/or analysis results. After the publication the authors should keep research data saved for a reasonable amount of time and made available on request. It is duty of authors to report results such that they should reflect an accurate account of analysis performed on data and there should be an objective discussion of the significance.

Theft of someone else’s data or fabrication of data is unacceptable and the submitted manuscript will be rejected if any such case is proven and author is not able to provide justification.  Journal management reserves all the rights not to accept any further submission from the author(s) and send a formal complaint to the parent institute if there are undeniable evidences of data fabrication/falsification/theft.

Plagiarism and Acknowledgement of Sources

Plagiarism is a subjective term which takes many forms such as presenting someone else’s research paper, research idea or research results as one’s own or copying/paraphrasing substantial portion of another manuscript without reference. Submitted manuscripts may be checked for similarity using Turnitin software. Turnitin checks submission against millions of published articles, institutional repositories and internet sources for overlapping and similarity in text. A similarity index of greater than 15% from multiple sources and greater than 5% from a single source is unacceptable. The editor reserves the right to either reject a submitted manuscript or request a revision if plagiarism is detected.

An integral part of scholarly research is to acknowledge and credit the work of others. While drafting the manuscript, enough details and references should be included so that original sources of information are given true credited and others are able to track them. It is unacceptable and highly unethical to present someone else’s idea and information from a source making it appear as one’s own. Any information that has been obtained privately (conversation, discussion or correspondence) or obtained from confidential sources (e.g. financial grant sources, refereeing manuscripts) must never be reported without the written consent of third party. Similarly, it is unethical and prohibited to reproduce tables and graphics from another source without written permission of copyrights holder.

Authorship

Authorship is an important aspect of publication as it is directly related to the credit of research work as well as responsibility and accountability of the published paper. Authorship for a manuscript should be based upon substantial intellectual contribution to the research work. We only recognize individuals as authors, not any agency or institute as author. All those made significant contribution to the paper should be enlisted as co-authors. PJMR suggests authorship on the basis of one or more of the following contributions:

Conceived the research idea and planned the research

Conducted literature survey and developed framework

Data collection

Data entry

Data analysis

Interpretation of analysis results

Drafting manuscript

Critically analyzing and revising the draft

Overall supervision of the research project (must be involved in multiple stages mentioned above, need to justify if more than one co-author identify as supervisors)

Any other significant contribution

Every article should have corresponding author who is responsible for the submission and all the correspondence during the review and publication process. All names of corresponding author and contributing authors and their order of appearance should ideally be decided before submission of manuscript. Any addition, deletion or change in order of authorship after submission will be entertained case to case basis with corresponding author providing sufficient proof to why this is important (for instance need to include an author for the sake of revisions after peer review or a contributing author decides to withdraw from the research project).

All the contributing authors(s) should

Agree to be responsible and accountable for accuracy and integrity of all aspects of published research

Be able to identify which co-author is responsible for which part of the research work.

Should have faith on integrity of co-authors

Have reviewed the final version of paper before submission and before publications.

Make sure that there is no ghost author, which means that a potential contributor is left out in the list of authorship

Make sure that there is no guest author, which means that a non-contributing individual is added as a co-author.

 

Ready to submit your paper? Your ethics checklist

 

Before you submit, make sure you’ve:

Read the journal’s instructions for authors, and checked and followed any instructions regarding data sets, ethics approval, or statements.

Named all authors on the paper, and the online submission form.

Referenced all material in the text clearly and thoroughly.

Carefully checked data and included any supplemental data required by the journal.

Declared any relevant interests to the journal.

Obtained (written) permission to reuse any figures, tables, and data sets.

Only submitted the paper to one journal at a time.

Finally, notify all the co-authors once you have submitted the paper.