Author Guidelines

Before your submission, please check that your manuscript has been prepared in accordance to the step-by-step instructions for submitting a manuscript to our online submission system. We recommend that you keep this page open for your reference as you move through the submission process.

If there are any differences in author guidelines between the print and online version, it is recommended that authors refer to the online version for use.

 

Manuscript Format

Your manuscript should be in MS Word or LaTeX 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 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 jargons, abbreviations 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 (maximum 2) 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.

Abstract

Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 200 words. The purpose of 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 5-8 key words; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.

Section Headings

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.)

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 with 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 to 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

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.

Conclusion

Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.

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 relations 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.

Funding

Authors should declare all 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 equipments/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors etc.

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. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.

 

Nomenclature for genes and proteins

This journal aims to reach researchers all over the globe. Hence, for both reviewers’ and readers’ ease in comprehension, authors are highly encouraged to use the appropriate gene and protein nomenclature. Authors may prefer to utilize resources such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene

Figures

Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as 1 file in the OJS system. Reference to the “Instructions for Typesetting manuscript” is strongly encouraged. 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. 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. All figures must have a brief title (also known as caption) that describes 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 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

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 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 footnotes at the bottom of the table. SI units should be used.

Supplementary information

This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. This information are 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’.

In-text citations

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 identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications and the word ‘Unpublished’ in parenthesis.

E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished)

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.

For references in reference list, all authors must be stated. Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. 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 year of publication, title of publication, full journal name in italics, 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 to italicized ‘et al.’ (meaning: "and others").

Journal

Journal article (print) with one to three authors

[1] Yao Yao, Xia Bin. Application of Phase Frequency Feature Group Delay Algorithm in Database Differential Access [J]. Computer Simulation, 2014, 31(12): 238-241.

Journal article (print) with more than three authors

[2] Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, et al. Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children [J]. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2009, 105: 731–738.

Journal article (online) with one to three authors

[3] Jackson D, Firtko A, Edenborough M. Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: a literature review [J]. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2009, 60(1): 1–9,

Journal article (online) with more than three authors

[4] Hargreave M, Jensen A, Nielsen TSS, et al. Maternal use of fertility drugs and risk of cancer in children—A nationwide population-based cohort study in Denmark [J]. International Journal of Cancer, 2015, 136(8): 1931–1939.

Book

Book with one to three authors

[5] Schneider Z, Whitehead D, Elliott D. Nursing and midwifery research: methods and appraisal for evidence-based practice. 3rd edn. 2009, Elsevier Australia, Marrickville, NSW.

Book with more than three authors

[6] Davis M, Charles L, Curry MJ, et al. Challenging spatial norms. 2013, Routledge, London.

Chapter or Article in Book

[7] Knowles MS. Independent study. In Using learning contracts. 1986, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 89–96.

Others

Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers

[8] 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)

[9] 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

[10] 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

[11] Developing an argument n.d., viewed March 30 2009, http://web.princeton.edu/sites/writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm

Thesis/Dissertation

[12] Gale L. The relationship between leadership and employee empowerment for successful total quality management [D]. 2000, University of Western Sydney.

Standard

[13] Standards Australia Online. Glass in buildings: selection and installation. AS 1288–2006. 2006, SAI Global database.

Government Report

[14] National Commission of Audit. Report to the Commonwealth Government, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1996, Canberra.

Government report (online)

[15] 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

[16] 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.