AUTHOR CHARGES / PUBLICATION FEE POLICY

AUTHOR CHARGES / PUBLICATION FEE POLICY

(Article Processing Charges (APC) and Publication Fee Disclosure) For open access transparency and indexing purposes, this publication fee is treated as the journal’s open access publishing charge (APC).

Author Charges Policy

The Link Medical Journal of Health and Community Research (LMJHCR) is committed to transparent and ethical publishing practices. The journal clearly declares all charges that may apply from manuscript submission to publication.

Publication Fee (Charged After Acceptance Only)

LMJHCR charges a Publication Fee of PKR 25,000 per accepted article.

  • This fee is charged only after the manuscript is accepted following peer review.
  • The fee is the same for national and international authors.
  • Payment is required before final publication processing begins.

What the Publication Fee Covers

The Publication Fee supports:

  • Professional copyediting
  • Typesetting and formatting
  • DOI assignment (where applicable)
  • Online hosting and journal operations
  • Digital preservation and archiving
  • Editorial and administrative support

No additional charges are applied beyond this amount.

Fast-Track or Priority Review Fee

LMJHCR does not charge any fee for:

  • Fast-track review
  • Accelerated publication
  • Priority handling

All submissions follow the same editorial and peer-review process.

No Hidden or Additional Charges

The only fee charged by LMJHCR is a publication fee of PKR 25,000 per accepted article; there is no submission fee and no pre-acceptance processing or peer review charges. LMJHCR does not impose any hidden or supplementary charges, including (but not limited to):

  • Colour figure charges
  • Page charges
  • Excess length charges
  • Supplementary file charges
  • Editorial handling fees
  • Corrections or minor updates

The journal’s fee structure is fully transparent.

Waiver Policy (Case-by-Case)

LMJHCR may provide partial or full waivers of the Publication Fee in exceptional cases, based on demonstrated need. Waivers may be considered for:

  • Authors from low-income economies
  • PhD scholars and early-career researchers
  • Special thematic issues (where announced by the journal)
  • Authors facing genuine financial hardship

Waiver requests must be submitted after acceptance and before payment, with supporting justification. The editorial decision regarding waivers is final and does not influence the peer-review outcome.

Funding Disclosure

If an author receives a grant or institutional funding that covers publication costs, this must be declared in the Funding Acknowledgement section of the manuscript. Funding information is published in the final article.

Compliance and Transparency

This policy is designed to meet transparency expectations for scholarly publishing and open access journals. The journal publicly declares:

  • Whether any fee is required to publish (Yes — Publication Fee applies)
  • Whether fees are the same for all authors (Yes — PKR 25,000 for national and international authors)
  • Whether any fee is charged during submission or review (No — APC/processing charges = 0)
  • Whether waivers exist (Yes — case-by-case, as described above)