Publication Policies

Open Access Policy

All research articles published in ‘Proceedings’ of SZMC are fully open access so they are immediately available to read, download and share for free. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license 4.0 which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Proceedings follow the Platinum Open Access way in publishing, providing immediate open access for researchers and readers to all articles on our website. The readers, therefore, are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to the full texts or use for any other lawful purpose. The operations of the journals are financed by Federal Postgraduate Medical Institute of Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex so we charge NO article processing charges (APC).

To publish in Proceedings an open access journal  licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License  , signed  undertaking of Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex, the owner of rights of the scientific journal ‘Proceedings’, is mandated to keep the copyright.

An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:

  1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
  2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).

Publication Charges/Refund Policy

Proceedings SZMC publishes articles without any charges, therefore refund policy is not applicable.

Submission policy

When a manuscript is submitted to Proceedings, it will imply that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere.

If similar or related work has been published or submitted elsewhere by the same author or one of the co-authors, then a copy/copies must be provided with the submitted manuscript.

A manuscript cannot be submitted to other entity any while it is under consideration at Proceedings.

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done.

If an author has subsequently moved, the current address must be stated (with the date at which the author left the institution where the majority of their work was done).

If the manuscript includes personal communications, please provide written statement of permission from quoted persons/sources (Permission by email is acceptable).

We reserve the right to reject a paper even after it has been accepted in case it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with its scientific content, or our publishing policies have been violated. Moreover, in certain cases a letter of “disownment” may also be issued by the editorial board retrospectively for a previously published article if the aforementioned conditions arise. In such case, the online version will be removed and replaced with the justification letter issued by the Editorial Board.

Copyright Policy

Copyrights for articles are retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal/publisher. Authors have rights to reuse, republish, archive, and distribute their own articles after publication. The journal/publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. Authors shall permit the publisher to apply a DOI to their articles and to archive them in databases and indexes such as EBSCO, DOAJ, and ProQuest.

Complaint Policy

Complaints regarding the policies, procedures, or actions of Proceedings’ editorial staff are welcome as they provide an opportunity for improvement. Our response is quick, courteous, and constructive. Please write your complaint with journal title, vol. no., issue no., paper ID, paper title, page no.

Criteria of a Complaint

  • Complaint is the expression of unhappiness expressed by the complainant in writing.
  • Complaint means that the complainant assumes a failure of process, like a long delay or a rude response or maybe a severe misjudgment.
  • Complaint means something about the responsibility of editorial board, content or related to process but not simply disagreeing with any decision we have made or anything we have published.

Categories of usual complaints:

  • Authorship complaints
  • Multiple, duplicate, concurrent publication/Simultaneous submission.
  • Plagiarism complaints
  • Reviewer bias or competitive harmful acts by reviewers.
  • Undisclosed conflicts of interest

Editorial Complaints Policy

The Editor and staff of Proceedings will make every effort to put matters right as soon as possible in an appropriate way. We will investigate complaints in a blame-free manner, evaluating how systems and processes can be improved to prevent mistakes in future.

How to Make a Complaint

Complaints about editorial content should be made as soon as possible after publication (maximally within 3 months, before the publication of next issue, preferably in writing by email to: chiefeditor@proceedings-szmc.org.pk

Manuscript withdrawal policy

Cancellation/withdrawal of manuscripts will be considered only if the request is made before publication of the manuscript. The details of the corresponding authors and other authors will not be changed or cancelled after publication other than some typing errors. The cancellation policy will not be relevant once the manuscript is uploaded online.

Copyright Policy

The Copyright policy demonstrates the rights related to the publication and distribution of a submitted article. It governs how authors, funders, publishers and the wider general public can use, publish and distribute the articles. Copyright aims to protect the specific way the article has been written to describe an experiment and the results.

Proceedings SZMC is an open access journal and copyright is retained by the author(s).

Authors grant Proceedings licence to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.

Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

Waiver Policy

Once APC is introduced, the waiver policy will be uploaded that primarily involves giving waiver on case to case basis, submitted with a sound justification.