AUTHOR GUIDELINES

TITLE

The title of a manuscript helps readers understand its content and research focus. Your title must accurately reflect your research topic and goal to be effective. Avoid unnecessary words and technical language to write a concise, informative title. Focus on simplicity and clarity. The title must also clearly state the research topic to help readers understand the manuscript. The target audience must be considered when choosing a title to grab their attention. Make sure the title accurately describes your research and is free of grammatical, spelling, and syntactical errors. Following these guidelines will help you write a compelling manuscript title that attracts the right readers and meets the journal's standards.

 

AUTHORS NAME AND AFFILIATION

List authors clearly and according to their research contributions. The primary author should be listed first, followed by co-authors in descending order of importance. Authors' institutional affiliations, department names, and locations (city, state, country) should be accurately listed. It's crucial that affiliations match authors' institutional affiliations during research. For accurate authorship attribution, authors should include their ORCID iDs (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) with their names. For manuscript correspondence, designate one author as the corresponding author and provide their email address and institutional affiliation. For transparency and credibility, authors must disclose any financial interests, affiliations, or personal relationships that may influence their research or conclusions. Authors can list their research contributions to promote transparency and collaboration in the scholarly community. These guidelines ensure clear and accurate author names and affiliations, boosting research transparency and credibility.

 

KEYWORDS

Keywords help academic databases and search engines index, search, and categorize research papers. Authors should carefully choose keywords that capture their paper's main ideas, themes, and topics. These keywords should accurately reflect the study's main focus and scope to appeal to readers and researchers. Keyword selection should focus on terms or phrases that capture the research's unique aspects or niche areas rather than broad or generic descriptors. Authors should also include synonyms, related terms, or alternative spellings to accommodate terminology and improve the paper's searchability. Maintaining indexing coherence requires manuscript keyword consistency with submission keywords. To avoid keyword stuffing and maintain relevance, authors should follow the journal's keyword limit. Keywords should also be chosen based on the research paper's audience, including scholars, researchers, and professionals interested in the topic. Regularly updating keywords to reflect research focus, methodology, and terminology keeps the paper discoverable and relevant. Following these guidelines allows authors to strategically choose keywords that boost their research's visibility, accessibility, and impact in the scholarly community.

 

ABSTRACT

The abstract summarizes the research paper's purpose, methodology, findings, and conclusions. The abstract must be clear and concise to convey key study findings without unnecessary detail. To help readers understand the research's context, design, results, and implications, it should be organized into sections like Background, Objective, Methods, Results, and Conclusions (BOYMC). Specific study components must be addressed in each section: Background provides context, Objective states the research question or aim, Methods describes the study design and methodology, Results summarizes key findings, and Conclusions emphasizes key takeaways and their significance. Keywords and phrases help index and search the abstract, ensuring it accurately represents the paper's scope and content. Authors should keep the abstract brief and informative while adhering to the journal's 150–300-word limit. Eliminating ambiguity, errors, and redundancies requires thorough revision and peer or mentor feedback to improve clarity and effectiveness. Following these guidelines, authors can write abstracts that capture readers' attention and clearly explain their research papers' objectives, methods, results, and conclusions.

 

INTRODUCTION

The introduction of a manuscript sets the stage for the research and introduces readers to its goals. Authors must provide a concise but comprehensive overview that situates the study in existing literature and explains its goals. To contextualize the research topic, authors should summarize relevant background information, theories, or previous studies. After that, clearly state the research problem or knowledge gap the study addresses and emphasize its importance and potential contributions to the field. Authors clarify the study's purpose and scope by stating specific research objectives or questions. Additionally, authors should outline the manuscript's structure, indicating how subsequent sections will address different research aspects to help readers navigate the paper. Authors should avoid unnecessary details and tangential information in the introduction to ensure effectiveness. Finally, extensive revision and refinement are needed to ensure coherence, logical flow, and manuscript alignment. Peer or mentor feedback can improve the introduction's engagement and research setting.

 

LITERATURE REVIEW

A manuscript's literature review strengthens the research's theoretical foundation and shows a deep understanding of relevant prior studies. In writing the literature review, authors must find relevant and current research literature. After summarizing, authors must synthesize and analyze the literature, critically analyzing debates, themes, and relevant findings. The literature review should also identify knowledge gaps, highlighting areas where previous research has not adequately answered fundamental research questions. Relevant to the research objectives in the introduction, the literature review should help explain the context and research issues. The literature review should be clear, structured, and coherent, advancing from broad to specific concepts. Citation and bibliography writing must also follow the target journal's style guide. Following these guidelines, authors can write a robust and informative literature review that strengthens their research's theoretical foundation and provides context for understanding their novel contributions to the relevant field of study.

 

METHODS

The methods section of a manuscript describes the research methods. Authors must clearly describe the research methodology for transparency and replicability. This section should address several key elements. First, authors should state the study design—experimental, observational, qualitative, quantitative, or a combination—and justify its choice based on the research objectives. The recruitment process, informed consent procedures, and study participants' demographics and inclusion/exclusion criteria should also be described. Authors should also describe data collection methods, such as surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments, and any standardized protocols used. Explain how statistical analyses, thematic coding, and content analysis were used to process and interpret data to meet research objectives. IRB approval, ethical guidelines, participant confidentiality, and research validity and reliability through pilot testing or inter-rater reliability checks should be addressed. Authors should also acknowledge methodological limitations and provide enough detail for other researchers to replicate the study. By following these guidelines, authors can ensure that the methods section provides a comprehensive and transparent overview of the research methodology, improving study credibility, rigor, and reproducibility.

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Authors must clearly present and interpret their research findings in the results and discussion section of a manuscript. This section summarizes the study's findings and discusses their implications. First, authors should organize their research findings using tables, figures, and descriptive statistics to summarize key findings. After presenting results, authors should interpret them within the research questions or hypotheses. This involves identifying data patterns, trends, and relationships and discussing their implications for the field. Additionally, authors should compare their results to those of previous studies to identify similarities, differences, and possible explanations for discrepancies. Addressing study limitations helps readers understand how they may have affected the findings and suggests future research. Authors should contextualize the findings and discuss their theoretical, practical, and methodological implications. Critical discourse and proposed mechanisms or theoretical frameworks enrich the discussion and encourage reader reflection and debate. The section should conclude by summarizing the main findings and their significance, providing clear takeaways, and encouraging further research. Authors can navigate the results and discussion section and advance their field by following these guidelines.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In the acknowledgement section, authors thank those who helped with research or manuscript development. Authors should identify and specify contributors, such as colleagues, mentors, collaborators, and funding agencies. It is important to acknowledge any financial, technical, or material support received during the research process, such as grants, scholarships, equipment, or access to facilities. Authors should get consent before including names in the acknowledgement section to show respect. Avoid lengthy narratives and excessive detail to keep the section focused on the manuscript's main content. Follow academic writing conventions and write in a professional and formal manner, mentioning people and organizations in order of importance. Authors should also follow the target journal's formatting and stylistic guidelines. These guidelines help authors write an acknowledgement section that properly acknowledges and appreciates others' contributions, improving their research manuscript's professionalism and integrity.

 

REFERENCES

The references section of a manuscript follows specific guidelines outlined by the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Authors should meticulously adhere to these guidelines to ensure accuracy and consistency in formatting. Here are the key guidelines for preparing the references section in APA style:

1. Alphabetical Order: Arrange references alphabetically by the surname of the first author. If the reference has no author, alphabetize by the first significant word in the title (disregarding articles such as "a," "an," or "the").
2. Hanging Indentation: Use a hanging indentation format for each reference, with the first line flush left and subsequent lines indented by 0.5 inches.
3. Author Names: List all authors' surnames and initials, separated by commas. If there are more than seven authors, list the first six authors followed by an ellipsis (...) and then the last author's name.
4. Publication Year: Place the publication year in parentheses immediately after the authors' names.
5. Title: Italicize the titles of books, journals, and other standalone works. Use sentence case for the titles of articles or chapters (capitalize only the first word of the title, proper nouns, and the first word after a colon or em dash).
6. Journal Articles: Include the volume number in italics, followed by the issue number in parentheses (if applicable), and page numbers. Use the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) if available; otherwise, provide the URL or permalink.
7. Books: Include the publisher's name and location (city and state or country) for books.
8. Electronic Sources: Provide the DOI or URL for online sources. If no DOI is available, use the URL. Include the retrieval date for sources that may change over time.
9. Conference Paper: Include the conference name and location (city or country).
10. Formatting: Use single spacing and a hanging indent of 0.5 inches for each reference. Ensure consistency in punctuation, capitalization, and abbreviation usage.
11. Proofreading: Thoroughly proofread the references section to ensure accuracy and completeness before final submission.

Uses of Artificial Intelligence:

Authors should limit the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology during the writing process to improve the readability and syntax of their articles. Artificial intelligence has the potential to produce outputs that appear authoritative but may be inaccurate, incomplete, or biased, so humans must supervise and control the application of such technologies. In addition, the author must diligently review and edit the results. It is inappropriate to include artificial intelligence or AI-powered technology as authors, co-authors, or sources of citations.