Author Guidelines

Manuscript Categories

Category

Word Count (excl. references)

Original Research Article

6,000 – 8,000 words

Review Article / Systematic Review

7,000 – 10,000 words

Conceptual / Theoretical Paper

5,000 – 7,000 words

Policy Analysis / Case Study

5,000 – 7,000 words

Short Communication

2,000 – 3,000 words

Book Review

1,000 – 1,500 words

Formatting Requirements

  • File Format: Microsoft Word (.docx); supplementary data in PDF or Excel
  • Font: Times New Roman 12 pt (body) · 14 pt (title) · 10 pt (footnotes)
  • Spacing: 1.5 line for body text · single spacing for abstract and references
  • Margins: 2.54 cm on all sides · A4 paper
  • Language: English (British or American, applied consistently)

Manuscript Structure

  • Title: Concise, ≤ 15 words, no abbreviations
  • Authors & Affiliations: Full name, institution, country, email; corresponding author marked with asterisk (*)
  • ORCID iD: Mandatory for all authors
  • Abstract: Structured (Background, Methods, Results, Conclusions) for empirical articles; unstructured for conceptual papers; 150–250 words
  • Keywords: 4–6 terms from controlled vocabularies where applicable
  • Introduction: State the problem, research gap, and objective clearly
  • Literature Review / Theoretical Framework: Situate the study within existing scholarship
  • Methodology: Describe in sufficient detail for reproducibility
  • Results and Discussion: Present findings and interpret in relation to research questions
  • Conclusion: Summarise key findings, implications, limitations, and future directions
  • Acknowledgments (if applicable): Funding sources, institutional support
  • Conflict of Interest Statement: Required for all submissions
  • References: APA 7th Edition; minimum 30 references for research articles; ≥ 60% from last 10 years; ≥ 30% from Scopus/WoS-indexed journals

Ethical Requirements

  • IRB/ethics committee approval number and statement required for manuscripts involving human subjects
  • Informed consent statement included where applicable
  • Data availability statement mandatory for all submissions
  • Funding/grant information disclosed in the acknowledgments

APA 7th Edition Examples

  • Journal: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, volume(issue), pp–pp. https://doi.org/xxxxx
  • Book: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of work: Subtitle. Publisher.
  • Chapter: Author, A. A. (Year). Chapter title. In E. Editor (Ed.), Book title (pp. xx–xx). Publisher.

Submission Checklist

  • Manuscript in .docx format, anonymised (no author names or affiliations in the file)
  • Cover letter: article category, originality statement, declaration of no duplicate submission
  • ORCID iDs for all authors
  • Ethics approval documentation (if applicable)
  • Permission letters for third-party copyrighted material (if applicable)
  • Conflict of Interest declaration
  • Funding disclosure