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Author Guidelines
Manuscripts are to be submitted online Open Journal Systems (OJS), a fully web-based submission, peer-review, and tracking system. If you are submitting via the online system for the first time, you will first be required to register. From the account you create, you will be able to monitor your submission and make subsequent submissions. Submission of a paper implies that it has not been published, and is not being considered for publication in another journal.
Manuscript Format
Your manuscript should be in MS Word or LaTeX format. All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both British and American English are accepted. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum and all must be italicized with the exception of “e.g.” and “i.e.” If you have concerns about the level of English in your submission, please ensure that it is proofread before submission by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service.
Cover Letter
All submissions should include a cover letter as a separate file. A cover letter should contain a brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to broad readership. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors. It will not be seen by reviewers.
Title
The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. The title should not be more than 50 words and should be able to give readers an overall view of the paper’s significance. Titles should avoid using uncommon jargon, abbreviation and punctuation.
List of Authors
The names of authors must be spelled out rather than set in initials with their affiliations footnoted. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. For contact, the email address of at least one corresponding author must be included. Please note that all authors must view and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.
Abstract
Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 200 words. The purpose of the abstract is to provide sufficient information for a reader to determine whether or not to proceed to the full text of the article. After the abstract, give at least 3 keywords; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.
Section Headings
Please number the section headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) in boldface. Likewise, use boldface to identify subheadings too but distinguish it from major headings using numbers (e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, etc.) Further subsections of subheadings should be differentiated by non-boldface but italics font with the numbers (1), (2), (3), etc.
Introduction
Introduction should provide a background that gives a broad readership an overall outlook of the field and the research performed. It tackles a problem and states its important regarding the significance of the study. Introduction can conclude with a brief statement of the aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.
Materials and Methods
This section provides the general experimental design and methodologies used. The aim is to provide enough detail for other investigators to fully replicate your results. It is also required to facilitate better understanding of the results obtained. Protocols and procedures for new methods must be included in detail to reproduce the experiments.
Ethics
Ethics information, including IACUC permit numbers and/or IRB name, if applicable. This information should be included in a subheading labeled "Ethics Statement" in the "Methods" section of your manuscript file, in as much detail as possible.
Results
This section can be divided into subheadings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.
Discussion and Conclusion
This section should provide the significance of the results and identify the impact of the research in a broader context. It should not be redundant or similar to the content of the results section.
Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.
Author Contributions
This section describes the contribution of each author, designated by initials. For the case of co-first authors, description of each author’s contribution is required.
Conflict of Interest
Authors must provide authorization that does not conflict with any financial institution or funding agency, so as not to affect their results or the interpretation of the manuscript. All authors, members, reviewers and editors must disclose any associations with any conflicts of interest. All authors must declare all activities that may be deemed to have competing sources of interest with their submitted manuscripts. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add "None of the authors have reported a conflict of interest" in this section. Upon acceptance, the corresponding author will be asked to sign all author forms stating potential conflicts of interest.
Funding
Authors should declare both financial and non-financial support that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relations to their submitted manuscript in this section. Financial supports are generally in the form of grants, royalties, consulting fees and more. Examples of non-financial support could include the following: externally-supplied equipment/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors etc.
Acknowledgements
This section should acknowledge contribution(s) from non-authors.
Appendix
This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g. advanced technical details) that has been excluded from the main text but remain essential to readers in understanding the manuscripts. This section is not for supplementary figures. Authors are advised to refer to the section on ‘Supplementary figures’ for such submissions.
Text
The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word or LaTeX format. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.
Figures and Data Processing
Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as 1 file in the OJS system.
Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects (e.g. 3D graphs) as well as be minimally processed (e.g. changes in brightness and contrast applied uniformly for the entire figure). It should also be set against a white background. Any kind of alteration if being done has to be clearly stated in the figure legend and in Methods section. Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis etc.) and add in captions (below the figure) as required. These captions should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. Each caption should describe the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a legend defined as description of each panel. Please identify each panel with uppercase letters in parenthesis (e.g. A, B, C, etc.)
The preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s) are TIFF or JPEG. All figures should be legible in print form and of optimal resolution. Optimal resolutions preferred are 300 dots per inch for RBG coloured, 600 dots per inch for greyscale and 1200 dots per inch for line art. Although there are no file size limitation imposed, authors are highly encouraged to compress their figures to an ideal size without unduly affecting legibility and resolution of figures. This will also speed up the process of uploading in the submission system.
Grouping of data (e.g., cropping of images of removal of lanes from gels and bolts) must be made apparent and should be explicitly indicated in the appropriate figure legends. Data comparisons should only be made from comparative experiments, and individual data should not be utilized across multiple figures. If inappropriate image/data manipulation is identified after publication, we reserve the right to ask for the original data and, if that is not satisfactory, to issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate.
The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher reserve the right to request from author(s) the high-resolution files and unprocessed data and metadata files should the need arise at any point after manuscript submission for reasons such as production, evaluation or other purposes. The file name should allow for ease in identifying the associated manuscript submitted.
Tables, Lists and Equations
Tables, lists and equations must be submitted together with the manuscript. Tables created by using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. Place each table in your manuscript file right after the paragraph in which it is first cited. Do not submit your tables in separate files. The tables should include a concise but sufficiently explanatory title at the top. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead. All tables should be based on three horizontal lines to separate the caption, header and body. A few additional horizontal lines MAY be included as needed (example below). Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in concise footnotes/legends at the bottom of the table. SI units should be used.
Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers. For listing things within the main body of the manuscript, please use roman numbers in parenthesis (e.g. i, ii, iii, iv, etc.)
Supporting Information
This section is optional. Authors can include detailed materials, figures and methods in this section to provide a reader to follow the experiments and results. These information are relevant to the manuscript, however, the main paper should stand on its own and all supporting information should be submitted as a separate file during submission.
References
This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.
Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should be sequenced according to the order A-Z. References should follow the following pattern: author(s) followed by year of publication, title of publication, full journal name in italics, volume number, issue number in parenthesis and lastly, page range. If the referred article has more than three authors, list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors to italicized ‘et al.’ (meaning: "and others"). If the DOI is available, please include it after the page range.The upper limitation of Reference total amount is 100, or author will be asked to revise and resubmit the manuscipt.
Journal
Journal article with one author
Younger P., 2004. Using the internet to conduct a literature search. Nursing Standard, vol.19(6): 45–51.
Journal article with two authors
Zhao, S. Y. and Han, B. P. 2007. Structural analysis of zooplankton community in a large deep oligotrophic reservoir-Xinfengjiang Reservoir, South China. Journal of Lake Sciences, 19(3), 305-314. https://doi.org/10.18307/2007.0312
Journal article with three authors
Jackson D., Firtko A. and Edenborough M., 2007. Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: A literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol.60(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04412.x
Journal article with more than three authors
Jackson D., Firtko A., Edenborough M., et al, 2007. Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: A literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing, vol.60(1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04412.x.
Book
Book with one to three authors
Schneider Z, Whitehead D and Elliott D, 2007, Nursing and midwifery research: Methods and appraisal for evidence-based practice, 3rd edn, Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier Australia.
Book with more than three authors
Davis M, Charles L, Curry M J, et al. 2003, Challenging spatial norms, London: Routledge.
Chapter or Article in Book
Knowles M S 1986, Independent study, in Using learning contracts, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 89–96.
Others
Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers
Chang S S, Liaw L and Ruppenhofer J, (eds) 2000, Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12–15, 1999: general session and parasession on loan word phenomena. Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley.
Conference proceedings (from electronic database)
Wang T, Cook C and Derby B, 2009, Fabrication of a glucose biosensor by piezoelectric inkjet printing.
Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, 2009 (SENSOR-COM-M’09), 82–85.
Online Document with author names
Este J, Warren C, Connor L, et al. 2008, Life in the clickstream: The future of journalism, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, viewed May 27, 2009, http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/foj_report_final.pdf
Online Document without author name
Developing an argument, n.d., viewed March 30, 2009, http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm
Thesis/Dissertation
Gale L, 2000, The relationship between leadership and employee empowerment for successful total quality management, thesis, University of Western Sydney, viewed
March 31, 2009, Australasian Digital Thesis database.
Standards
Standards Australia Online 2006, Glass in buildings: selection and installation, AS 1288-2006, amended January 31, 2008, viewed May 19, 2009, SAI Global database.
Government Report
National Commission of Audit 1996, Report to the Commonwealth Government, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra.
Government report (online)
Department of Health and Ageing 2008, Ageing and aged care in Australia, viewed November 10, 2008, http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing.
No author
Guide to agricultural meteorological practices, 1981, 2nd edn, Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization, Geneva.
Note: When referencing an entry from a dictionary or an encyclopedia with no author there is no requirement to include the source in the reference list. In these cases, only cite the title and year of the source in-text. For an authored dictionary/encyclopedia, treat the source as an authored book.
Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
- The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
- The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
- Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
- The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
- The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
- If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
Copyright Notice
Authors of articles published in this journal retain the copyright of their articles, and agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. Authors can free to reproduce and disseminate their work and allowing third parties to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit), under the condition that the authors are given credit, that the work is not used for commercial purposes, only used for knowledge transmission, the terms of this license are made clear.
Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.
