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Submission Preparation Checklist |
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 Instructions for Authors.
- If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
Your manuscript should be in MS Word format. All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both American and British English are acceptable. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum and all must be italicized (except for e.g. and i.e.). If you have concerns about the level of English in your submission, please ensure that before submission, it is proofread by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service.
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.
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 overview of the paper's significance. Titles should avoid using uncommon jargons, abbreviations and punctuation.
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 (maximum two) should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. For contact, email address of only one corresponding author is expected within the manuscript. Please note that all authors must see and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.
Articles must include an abstract containing 150-200 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, please give 4-6 keywords; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.
The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word, and the length of it should be between 6,000 to 8,000 words.
Please number all section headings, subheadings and sub-subheadings. Use boldface to identify major headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.) and subheadings (e.g. 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2 etc.). For the sub-subheadings, please distinguish it further using non-boldface numbers in parenthesis (e.g. (1), (2), (3), etc.).
a. 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 the significance of the study. Introduction can conclude with a brief statement of the aim of the study and a comment about whether the aim was achieved.
b. Research Methods
This section provides the general research design and methodologies used. The aim is to provide enough details 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 study.
c. Ethics
Research involving human participants requires Ethics Approval. 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.
d. Findings
This section focuses on the findings of the study, which can be divided into subsections under subheadings.
e. Discussion
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 Findings section.
f. Conclusion
Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.
g. Conflict of Interest
All authors are required to declare all activities that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships, events, etc. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add "No conflict of interest was reported by all authors" in this section.
h. Funding
In this section, authors should declare all financial and non-financial support that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. 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/sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors, etc.
i. 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 information" for such submissions.
Authors may include a maximum of 20 figures into the manuscript and submit it as one file in the OJS system. Reference to the "Instructions for Typesetting manuscript" is strongly encouraged to read. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts, and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects 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. Please remember to number and label all figures (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface, and add a caption below each figure that describes the entire figure.
The preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s) are TIF or JPG. All figures should be legible in print form and of optimal resolution. Optimal resolutions preferred are 300 dots per inch for RBG colored, 600 dots per inch for greyscale and 1200 dots per inch for line art. Although there is 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, if necessary.
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 must be submitted together with the manuscript. Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers. Tables created using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. Place each table in your manuscript 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. Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table. SI units should be used.
This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the main text. This information is relevant to the manuscript but remains non-essential to readers' understanding of the manuscript's main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain "Suppl. Info."
Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:
1.Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3, 4].
2.This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman [5].
3.This effect has been widely studied [1-3, 7].
Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. They should also be easily identified by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications, for example, (Smith, 2000, unpublished), and (Smith, personal communication, 2000).
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. The referencing style for the journal is the American Psychological Association/APA.
For references in reference list, all authors must be stated. Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. If there are three or more items, put a comma after each item to separate them. All references should be numbered (e.g. 1. 2. 3. etc.) and sequenced according to the order it appears as an in-text citation. References should follow the following pattern: Author(s) followed by the title of publication, full journal name, year of publication, volume number, issue number in parenthesis, page range, and lastly the DOI (if applicable). If the referred article has more than three authors, list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors “et al.” (meaning: “and others”). We encourage authors to use reference tools such as EndNote and Mendeley for consistency.
a. Journal
Journal article (print) with one author
[1] Zhang D. Courtyard houses of Beijing: lessons from the renewal [J]. Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 2015, 27(1): 69-82.
Journal article (print) with one to three authors
[2] Chan CS, Xiong Y. The features and forces that define, maintain, and endanger Beijing courtyard housing [J]. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 2007, 24(1): 42-64.
Journal article (print) with more than three authors
[3] Ekblad S, Chen CH, Huang YQ, et al. Effects of dwelling types and facilities on crowding, stress, life satisfaction and health of households in western Beijing [J]. Ekistics, 1992, 354/355: 195-205.
Journal article (online) with one to three authors
[4] Biswas-Diener R, Kashdan TB, King LA. Two traditions of happiness research, not two distinct types of happiness [J]. Journal of Positive Psychology, 2009, 4(3): 208-211.
Journal article (online) with more than three authors
[5] Boonekamp GMM, Colomer C, Tomás A, et al. Healthy cities evaluation: the co-ordinators perspective [J]. Health Promotion International, 1999, 14(2): 103-110.
b. Book
Book with one author
[6] Knapp RG. Chinese houses: the architectural heritage of a nation. 2005, Tuttle Publishing, North Clarendon, VT.
Book with one to three authors
[7] Butina-Watson G, Bentley I. Identity by design. 2007, Routledge, London.
Book with more than three authors
[8] Alexander C, Ishikawa S, Silverstein M, et al. A pattern language. 1977, Oxford University Press, New York.
Chapter or Article in Book
[9] Knapp RG. China's houses, homes, and families. In House home family: living and being Chinese. 2005, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 1-9.
c. Others
Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers
[10] Chang SS, Liaw L and Ruppenhofer J (eds). Proceedings of the twenty-fifth annual meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, February 12-15, 1999: general session and parasession on loan word phenomena. 2000, Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley.
Conference proceedings (from electronic database)
[11] Bukowski RM. Prognostic factors for survival in metastatic renal cell carcinoma: update 2008. Innovations and challenges in renal cancer: proceedings of the third Cambridge conference. Cancer, 2009, 115 (10): 2273, viewed 19 May 2009, Academic OneFile database.
Online Document with author names
[12] Este J, Warren C, Connor L, et al. Life in the clickstream: the future of journalism, Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, 2008, viewed 27 May 2009, http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/foj_report_final.pdf
Online Document without author name
[13] Developing an argument n.d., viewed March 30 2009,
http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm
Thesis/Dissertation
[14] Zhang D. Courtyard housing and cultural sustainability: a study of housing renewal and redevelopment in Beijing and Suzhou [T]. 2012, Oxford Brookes University.
Standard
[15] Standards Australia Online. Glass in buildings: selection and installation. AS 1288-2006. 2006, SAI Global database.
Government Report
[16] National Commission of Audit. Report to the Commonwealth Government, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1996, Canberra.
Government report (online)
[17] Department of Health and Ageing. Ageing and aged care in Australia, 2008, viewed 10 November 2008, http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing
No author
[18] Guide to agricultural meteorological practices. 2nd edn, Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization, 2010, 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.
Author(s) shall retain the copyright of their work and grant the Journal/Publisher rights for the first publication with the work concurrently licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License.
Under this license, author(s) will allow third parties to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and/or copy the content under the condition that the authors are given credit and that the work is not used for commercial purposes. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher.
This broad license intends to facilitate free access, as well as the unrestricted use of original works of all types. This ensures that the published work is freely and openly available in perpetuity.
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.