Licensing Policy

The Journal of Exact Community Health & Rehabilitation Sciences (JECH), published by EXACT RESEARCH SOLUTIONS (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED, adopts the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) as its standard publishing license for all accepted research articles in health, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and allied medical disciplines.

Permitted Uses Under CC BY 4.0

Under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, readers, researchers, and clinical practitioners are permitted to:

  • Share: Copy and redistribute the material in any medium, format, or platform.

  • Adapt: Remix, transform, and build upon the published content for any purpose.

  • Use Commercially: Utilize the content for commercial purposes, clinical teaching, educational modules, or derivative research works.

All of the above uses are granted freely without the need for advance formal permission from the authors or the publisher, provided that proper credit is given to the author(s) and the original place of publication in JECH.

Author Rights

Authors publishing in JECH retain full, unrestricted copyright of their work. By submitting a manuscript to JECH and agreeing to publication, authors grant EXACT RESEARCH SOLUTIONS (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED a non-exclusive license to publish, index, and disseminate the final version as part of the permanent scholarly record.

Under this policy, authors retain the right to:

  • Deposit submitted manuscripts (preprints), accepted post-review versions (postprints), and final published PDFs (Version of Record) in any institutional repository, subject-specific archive, or personal website without embargo periods.

  • Reuse their published findings in book chapters, academic theses, conference presentations, or teaching materials without restrictions.

  • Share the accepted and published versions freely with colleagues, clinical teams, and students.

License Display and Article-Level Licensing

To ensure total publishing transparency and optimal metadata indexing, JECH applies rigorous article-level licensing displays:

  • The CC BY 4.0 license statement is prominently displayed on every individual article web page on the official OJS journal platform.

  • The formal CC BY 4.0 logo and direct licensing link are embedded within:

    • Article landing pages

    • PDF full-text downloads

    • HTML full-text displays (where applicable)

Standard license text inserted under each article:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). > https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Recommended license note displayed on PDFs:

© Author(s). Published by EXACT RESEARCH SOLUTIONS (SMC-PRIVATE) LIMITED under CC BY 4.0.

Third-Party Content

Authors submitting to JECH are strictly responsible for securing appropriate copyright permissions for any third-party figures, tables, clinical images, or copyrighted illustrations included in their submission. Any third-party material incorporated into the article must clearly display its original source attribution and specific license permissions.

Funder Compliance

The CC BY 4.0 license model implemented by JECH guarantees full compliance with global open access mandates and research funding guidelines, including:

  • Plan S

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH)

  • Wellcome Trust

  • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)

  • Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan

  • Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) standards