Guideline of the Journal

Authors should read the “Information for Authors” on the journal’s page before making a submission. Manuscript should be prepared according to the style and specifications stated in the “Manuscript Preparation Guideline” and “information to authors” sections. Authors need to take the following into account while preparing their manuscripts to the IJSSB.

1. Author Guideline 

The manuscripts should not exceed 4000 words excluding tables, figures, and references for original research papers, 2000 words for review articles, book reviews and short communications, and 10000 words for book chapters written in Times New Roman font size 11 and 1.5 spaced for the body of the manuscript and single spacing for the abstract section. Manuscripts that do not comply with the formatting guidelines, or exceed the length restrictions, may be returned to the authors for amendment. Authors should strictly adhere to the styles and formats provided below when organizing their manuscripts for consistency of manuscripts formatting across authors.  

1.1.  Manuscript preparation for original research

Full-length original research manuscripts should follow a format that consists of Title page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Result, Discussion, Conclusion, Declarations and  References.  Do not number the headings; instead, use bold fonts for the headings.

  1. Title Page: The title should be concise, short and informative. It should not be more than 15 words, should be bold capitalized and centred. It should be easily understandable by the reader and should reflect the motive of the research paper. The title, Contact information of all authors such as Surname/Other names, affiliation, emails, and phone/fax numbers should all be included on a title page as the first page of the manuscript file. The full names, institutional addresses, and e-mail addresses for all authors must be included on the title page. The corresponding author should also be indicated in this section (i.e., a clear indication and an active address of the corresponding author (institutions, postal address, telephone, e-mail etc. is required).*
  1. Abstract: An abstract is a brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of the paper that pulls readers to read the entire article. The abstract of the manuscript submitted to IJSSB should be 150-250 words and must contain general objective, methods, major findings, conclusion and the way forward for original articles, followed by 3-5 It should be written in Times New Roman and Italic with font size 11 and single spacing in a structured format.
  • Introduction: A brief section usually not more than a page. The introduction acts as a lead-in to a statement of the more specific purpose of the study. It should provide background that puts the manuscript into context and allows readers to understand the purpose, significance of the study, define the problem and including key literatures of controversies in the field. Thus, the introduction should clearly conceptualizes the topic and indicate the gap in relation to the previous literature.
  1. Methodology: this section must describe, in detail, 1) the approach and design of the study, 2) the study participants (sample size and sampling technique if any), 3) data collection techniques, 4) data analysis and interpretation, and 5) ethical issues (if necessary). Ideally, this section should contain enough information to enable other researchers to replicate the study. Clear and detailed description of what and how the study was conducted increases objectivity for further replication. For example, detailed description about the participants and their recruitment procedures is important. Besides, the instruments subsection should describe the techniques used to gather information, including how the validity and reliability of data collection techniques were checked. The procedure or data collection subsection is used to explain how the study was conducted. The author(s) should describe when the information was collected, where, and by whom. It is very important to provide a full description of the procedures. The extent of details contained in this section may vary depending on the type of research design employed.   
  2. Results: The results should be presented objectively. In general, authors should describe the characteristics of the participants in the first section of the results. Authors may use narrations, descriptions, tables, graphs, charts, statistical models, formulas, etc., to write this section depending on the type of data and research approach employed in their study.
  3. Discussion They should further explain how the results relate to the objectives presented as the basis of the study and provide a succinct explanation of the implications of the findings, particularly in relation to previous related studies and potential future directions for research. In this section the author(s) should indicate how the results are related to the research problem or hypothesis. It should be a nontechnical interpretation of whether the results support a hypothesis or answer a research question. If the study is exploratory or contains unexpected findings, the authors should explain why they believe they obtained these results. The explanation should include an analysis of any deficiencies in the methodology utilized and an indication of other research that may explain why certain results were obtained. The authors should also indicate implications of the study for future research and practical applications.

In general, this section includes the results or findings of the study supported by discussion. It contains data presentation, data interpretation and/or discussion substantiating the result of the study with other relevant literature, theory, and empirical evidence. In this section, authors are expected to show their unique and/or new contributions to knowledge by comparing their findings with existing literature.

  • Conclusion and recommendations: The conclusion statement should include major conclusive ideas of the paper, which emanated from the results or findings of the study. The conclusion may magnify major findings of the study and its implication as well as the importance of the work for practical application of knowledge and extension of ideas. Author(s) can forward the major recommendations, though it is optional. Recommendations of the study should be stated following the conclusion with brief statements. The recommendation may deal on suggestions of remedial options for intervention by concerned bodies to manage investigated issues within the study.
  • Declarations:

Acknowledgments (Optional):

Individuals who who contributed to the work but do not meet authorship criteria should be listed in the acknowledgments with a description of the contribution. Organizations and institutions that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged. Authors are responsible for ensuring that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to be named.

Competing Interests

Declaration of Conflicts of Interest should be stated in the manuscript.  IJSSB requires that all parties involved in a publication (i.e. the authors, reviewers and editors) should transparently declare any potential Competing Interests (also known as Conflicts of Interest). The disclosure of a Competing Interest does not necessarily mean that there is an issue to be addressed; it simply ensures that all parties are appropriately informed of any relevant considerations while they work on the submission. “No competing interests” is declared for none.  Potential competing interests should be declared even if the individual in question feels that these interests do not represent an actual conflict. Examples of Competing Interests include, but are not limited to: possible academic rank promotion and/or financial benefits if the manuscript is published; prior working, or personal, relationships with any of the authors; patent activity on the results; consultancy activity around the results; personal material or financial gain (such as free travel, gifts, etc.) relating to the work; personal convictions (religious, political, etc.) which may have a bearing on the work, and so on. While possible financial benefits should appear here, actual funding sources (institutional, corporate, grants, etc.) should be detailed in the funding disclosure statement.

Funding

Separately from declaring Competing Interests, IJSSB also requires that authors disclose the financing which made the work(s) possible.  The Funding statement is published in the final manuscript. This disclosure provides added transparency.

Ethical consideration

In this section authors are expected to state all activities including ethical approval of their studies and any steps conducted to reduce ethical dilemma during the conduct of the study.

Availability of data

Author (s) may be requested whether the study data are available to third parties to view and/or independent use/reanalyze. Authors are expected to make the data available to public.  Statement of availability of the data should be stated here.  If the authors are unable to make the data available, reasons need to be stated and the links need to be given if they make it available.

Consent of publish

In cases when the authors are to publish images of the participants that disclose the identity of the persons, consent to publish has to be obtained from the participants and this has to be stated in this section.

Authors’ contribution

All authors are expected to have major contribution in the manuscript.  The contribution of each author need to be stated.  For example, authors who conceived the idea, authors who involved in drafting proposals, authors who involved in data collection, involved in data analysis, involved in report writing, involved in revising the manuscript.  All authors should approve the final version of the manuscript prior to submission.  Initials instead of full names will be written for anonymity.

References: IJSSB follows the APA referencing and in-text citation style. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. The references should be alphabetized by first author’s last name, publication year, and pagination where appropriate, as indicated and each listing should follow the latest edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) publication manual. Unnecessary citations must be avoided and only works of value to your paper must be cited. Accuracy in text-citations and references is the mandatory responsibility of the authors. Careful quotations are very important in manuscript preparation.  All formatting and write-up styles of in-text citation (both narrative and parenthetical), tables, figures, referencing, abbreviations, etc. should coincide with the latest APA publication manual manuscript preparation guidelines.

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