About This Journal

Mathematics and Systems Science (MSS) is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal on Mathematics. The journal welcomes submissions relate to mathematics, applied mathematics, computational mathematics, system theory, system control, system engineering, system biology, operations research and management, probability theory, statistics, information processing.  Engineering Mathematics Mathematics and Computer Science Network Science Dynamical Systems Computational and Applied Mathematics Fuzzy Sets, Systems and Decision Making Difference and Differential Equations Financial Mathematics Algebra and Geometry Probability and Statistics

Focus and Scope

For Authors

• Publishing Ethics

  Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

  The publisher strictly adheres to the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

  The journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The editors, authors or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a submitted article may constitute an academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the journal at editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

  Metaverse adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breaching intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the panel’s decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the journal at editorial-mss@apacsci.com within 30 days of the decision date.

• Editorial Policies

  Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.

  All manuscripts submitted to  Mathematics and Systems Science are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to the peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.

  Any manuscripts submitted to  Mathematics and Systems Science will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

  A manuscript would not be accepted if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. The authors are required to notify the editorial team if the findings and data in their submissions have been presented in conferences.

• Conflict of Interest

  Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgements concerning a primary interest have the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g.: financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as the actual conflicts of interest.

  Any agreements with study sponsors (for profit or non-profit), which interfere with the authors’ access to the study data, ability to analyze or interpret the data and publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

  A declaration of interests for all authors must be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

  Authors, reviewers and editors should declare any (potential) non-financial conflicts of interest and declare any unpaid roles or relations that may influence the decision on the article publication. This includes, but is not limited to, unpaid role in a government or non-governmental organization, unpaid role in an advocacy or lobbying organization, and unpaid advisory position in a commercial organization.

  In addition, reviewers and editors must disclose any association that poses a conflict of interest in connection with the manuscript. Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships and events.

  Common reasons for editors and reviewers to be replaced include but are not limited to:

  • The editor or reviewer works at the same organization as one of the authors.
  • The editor or reviewer is one of the authors of this work.
  • The editor or reviewer is on the avoidance list from the author(s).
  • The editor or reviewer has a financial relationship or personal relationship with an author.

• Misconduct Policy

  Duplicate Submission

  Manuscripts submitted to Mathematics and Systems Science should:

  1) not have been published before;

  2) not concurrently be submitted elsewhere.

  If part of a manuscript has been published or will be published elsewhere, the authors must let the editors know in a cover letter. If duplicate submission is detected during peer review, the manuscript may be rejected. If it is detected after publication, the manuscript may be retracted.

  Plagiarism

  Authors are advised to observe high standards in the aspect of publication ethics. Any plagiarism (fabrication or falsification of data) are strictly unacceptable practices in Mathematics and Systems Science, including duplicate publication of the author’s work without proper citation.

  Every manuscript submitted for publication is checked for plagiarism via CrossCheck (powered by iThenticate) after submission and before being sent to the editor for editorial review. Any detection of overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may lead to the manuscript being rejected.

• Ethical Oversight

  Met always follows the Ethical Oversight policy of COPE, and monitors every stage of the completion of best practice followed by the Core Practices and the ethical problem of COPE. All academic misconduct is strictly prohibited. If there is any potential for, including but not limited to academic fraud, plagiarism, and multiple contributions, the manuscript will not be assigned to the next stage for evaluation, and authors are responsible for explaining doubts to the Editorial Office. Met promises that all the submissions are private, and they will not be disclosed to third parties unless the publishing purposes. Authors, editors, and reviewers should expose any potential conflict of interest timely according to the Conflict of Interest Policy.

  For subjects involving humans or animals, Met asks authors to be deeply concerned the privacy and welfare of the subjects based on the policy of Statement of Human and Animal Rights. Authors should provide the approval from the institutional ethical regulator or committee. All the information of the subjects is private, and authors should hide the identifiable information such as face picture, name, and fingerprint picture. Most importantly, Informed Content Statement from all the research subjects should be obtained, and authors need to inform the subjects that this research will be published in future. For the vulnerable, it is necessary to obtain oral or written Informed Content Statement from their parent of kinship.

• Errata & Withdrawal Policy

  Errata

  All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication. Any errors in published articles discovered by readers, authors, editors, etc., please contact the journal editor. Asia Pacific Academy of Science will only instigate a corrigendum to a published article after receiving approval and instructions from the editor.

  Withdrawal

  If authors change their mind and decide not to pursue publication of papers with the journal, they must write a letter addressed to our editors at editorial-mss@apacsci.com, explaining the reason(s) of submission withdrawal. Consents of all co-authors must be obtained for author-initiated submission withdrawal. The decision to withdraw a submission would eventually rest with the editors, including the Editor-in-Chief.

  It is relatively more difficult to withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review or is under peer-review compared to withdrawing a new submission because the editors and reviewers have expended much time and energy in editorial process and manuscript evaluation, respectively. To withdraw a paper that has been processed for peer-review, authors should clearly argue their case on scientific reasons; only valid and sound reasons will be accepted. He/she would be required to pay a penalty fee (USD 200). Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant errors or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. Once the approval of submission withdrawal is granted, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

  Submission withdrawal is also possible for accepted papers that have not been formally published, including the newly accepted papers and Articles in Press.

  Withdrawal of an accepted paper and Article in Press is usually editor-initiated. The reasons of withdrawing accepted papers and Articles in Press are similar to those of retracting a published article, i.e., academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The misconducts and violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breaching intellectual property rights. Once the suspected misconduct and ethical violation is brought to our attention, the editors will organize an investigation and authors are required to cooperate in the investigation; any accepted papers or Articles in Press subject to investigation at this stage will not be arranged for article production or finalization. A Panel will be organized to investigate the allegations. If the allegations are proven true with supporting evidence, the accepted paper or Article in Press will be marked for withdrawal, and a notification email regarding the Panel’s Decision will be sent to all authors of the work. Any appeals regarding the Panel’s Decision will have to be made to the journal within 14 days of the decision date. In the absence of an appeal from the authors within the 14 days, the submission will be removed from the journal’s online submission system, and a confirmation email of submission withdrawal will be sent to the authors.

  Authors should note that any amounts of paid Article Processing Charge will not be refunded if their accepted papers or Articles in Press are withdrawn on the grounds of academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication.

• Language

  The language used in manuscripts submitted to Mathematics and Systems Science is English. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

• Preprint policy

  Authors are permitted to post their non-peer-reviewed original research manuscripts to preprint servers before submitting to Mathematics and Systems Science. During submission, authors are obliged to declare in the cover letter if the corresponding preprint version of their submission has been deposited on a preprint server, and provide any associated accession numbers or DOIs.

  Authors are not allowed to post any versions of articles that have been revised as a result of peer review, accepted for publication or published in the journal on a preprint server. The manuscript whose corresponding preprint version has been indexed (e.g. in MEDLINE or PubMed) will not be considered.

  We encourage formal citation of preprints in the reference list if appropriate.

• Authorship

  Authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors.

  In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently to the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work which led to the paper or be involved in the interpretation of its results. A maximum of two corresponding authors are allowed for the associated responsibilities. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

  Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

  Changes to Authorship

  Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

  The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

• Disclaimer

  This journal is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

  As an author, once submitting a manuscript, it means that you have be aware of all publishing policies & ethics,  and will strictly abide by them.

  As a reviewer, once reviewing a manuscript, it means that you must be aware of the peer review policies, and proactively disclose of all potential conflicts of interest, and guarantee that an article will be judged fairly and objectively. 

   

• Copyright and License

  The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

  All articles published by Mathematics and Systems Science are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during the submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) by default. The authors who would like to publish their work under other license, i.e. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), they should express explicit request during the submission stage. Please include statement below in the Comments for the Editor column on the submission page:

  The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons License to *CC BY-NC 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Mathematics and Systems Science.

   

• Advertising Policy

  All advertisements are subject to approval to the journal. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. Advertisements should not be related in any way to editorial decision making, and shall be kept separate from the published content. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

• Article Processing Charges (APCs)

  Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. publishes all its journals in Gold Open Access format. The scientific community and the general public have free of all restrictions on accessing (e.g., subscription) and free of many restrictions on using its contents as soon as it is published online. In order to defray our editorial and production costs, authors of the accepted articles are required to pay the article processing charges (APCs are US $800). The charges will come from authors' institutes or research funding bodies.

  Waiver Policy

  For high-quality articles graded by our editorial board members and authors from low-income countries with difficulty to pay, Mathematics and Systems Science will access in a case-by-case basis and may approve certain discount to ensure the publication of high-quality articles. Mathematics and Systems Science reserves the rights to approve or decline any such request. Please contact: editorial-mss@apacsci.com.

• Statement of Informed Consent

  All papers related to the research involving humans, should declare that they have obtain the "statement of informed consent" written or oral during submitting. Any summion involving human experience will not be considered for the next step without obtaining the "statement of informed consent".

  Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. All information which could contribute to identify patients, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, etc., unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives explicit written or oral informed consent for publication. If identifying characteristics are de-identified, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning, and editors will note that. Furthermore, individuals who provide writing assistance should be identified by the authors, and they should disclose the funding source for this assistance.

• Statement of Human and Animal Rights

  All papers submitted to Metaverse should declare agreement with the following "statement of human and animal rights". Papers describing procedures involving humans or animals must include an explicit and easily identifiable statement pointing out that the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the author's Institutional Review Board or Research Ethics Committee and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008. If any doubt exists as to whether the research was conducted in accordance with local ethics laws, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and then demonstrate that the institutional ethical committee explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

  For vulnerable groups, the written or oral permission of the published experimental data and results must be approved by parents or relatives.

  When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

• Indexing & Archiving

  • All the articles published online will be archived by Portico for long-term digital preservation.

  • Authors are encouraged to self-archive the final version of their published articles into institutional repositories (such as those listed in the Directory of Open Access Repositories).

  • Authors are also encouraged to use the final PDF version published on the website of Mathematics and Systems Science.

• Special Issue Policy

  1. What is a Special Issue?

  A Special Issue Program has been launched by Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. A Special Issue is a collection of research hotspots or topics in a specific field. Guest editors who are experts in this discipline, has the responsibility to drive the special issue program. Manuscripts accepted will both be ordered/archived in a regular volume/issue and special issue.

  Benefits of Special Issue

  • More quickly discovered and cited.
  • Promote academic exchanges in this field.
  • Avoid repetition of topics.
  • Dissemination of the latest achievements.
  • Broaden the visibility and maximize the impact of a certain field so that more experts could focus on the topic.

  Benefits of being Guest Editors

  • Expanding the popularity.
  • Faster to initiate the communication and establish co-operatives ties.
  • Learn the latest research.
  • Publish one article without any APCs as the privilege.

  2. How to drive a Special Issue?

  There are two ways to obtain a special issue proposal.

  • Guest Editors will be invited by the assistant editor to submit a professional proposal.
  • Authors and readers could be welcomed to submit proposals on the Special Issue section of the journal website, and EiC will evaluate them for the viability and suitability for this journal.

  Preparation for a proposal

  A great topic is the crucial element for success. Each candidate topic will be selected by EiC for considering whether it is consistent with the scope of this journal. Hot topics are usually considered to be more attractive.

  A proposal should include necessary information:

  • List of Guest Editors
  • Types of manuscript
  • Main topics
  • Submission deadline
  • Keywords

   

  3. Special Issue Ethics

  Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. abides to the Code of Conduct of COPE and Best Practice Guidelines in all the editorial process. Each new submission must follow the journal’s Editorial Policies, and any potential unethical manuscript will not passed to the nest stage. Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. promises to protect the confidentiality of all submissions unless the publishing needs. All the editors and reviewers must strictly abide by the Conflict of Interests of the journal, and they are asked to inform the Editorial Office if any potential conflict of interests exists, and then, the Editorial Office may consider to change the editor or reviewer. As authors, they have the right to provide a list of avoided experts. Please appeal to editorial-mss@apacsci.com for any requests related to manuscript promotion.

  4. Workflow of Special Issue

  Once the members of the Guest Editors are exactly online, the assistant editor will collect manuscripts on behalf of the Guest Editors. Manuscripts are submitted to open journal system and go through double-blined peer-reviewed process. Any new submission will be checked by assistant editor, and then the leader of Guest Editors will assign it to at least 2 reviewers. The leader of Guest Editors will make the final decision and inform the author. Once a manuscript is accepted, it will go into production, and it is both ordered in the current regular issue and collection of the Special Issue. Articles may be archived in different regular volume/issue of this journal, although they are collected and marked as Special Issue articles.

  Guest Editor has the privilege to publish only one article free, and experts from the same affiliate with guest editors could not be one of the reviewers at any stage. EiC has the responsibility to oversee all the editorial process for academic fairness.

• Section Collection Policy

  The Section Collection program has been driven by Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. for a new chance to run an open access journal. This program aims to collect multidisciplinary topics, and concentrate authors from diverse research fields to focus on a special theme. It is great attempt to develop new ideas and applications. Section editorial team is composed of many scientists whose research fields covering various interests. They all supervise the implementation of the program, and the editorial process must comply with editorial policies of the journal.

  A Section Collection is usually launched by an expert with great trust among peers and invited by the Editorial Office, or scholars could apply a section collection. Section Editors are representatives focusing on a theme from multidisciplinary topics. They have different research background, and gather to initiate new ideas and collaborations. Great responsibilities of Section Editors include:

  • Preparing the title, summary, keywords, submission deadline, etc.
  • Preparing a potential contributors’ list.
  • Suspecting and contributing to the editorial progress , including but not limited to the initial screening, peer-reviewed process, and final decision making.

   

  Workflow of Section Collection

  Section Editors are invited to prepare the summary of Section Collections, and advert the project. New manuscripts should be submitted via the open journal system, and then Section Collection Editors will evaluate the research field and the integrality of the manuscripts. Assistant Editors will screen the originality by iThenticate. Any manuscript with potential misconduct must be prevented to the next stage. The Editorial Office will pass it for the double-blind peer-reviewed process for further review comments with no less than two reviewers. The Section Collection Editors have the responsibility to supervise the rigor and scientificity of the whole process. All the comments are collected to Section Editors, who will make the final decision on the manuscript such as acceptance, revision, or rejection. Accepted manuscripts will go through the production stage. Meanwhile, authors will get the article accepted notification. Published papers will be archived in the current issue of the journal, and also collected on the Section Collections page.

• Author Guidelines

  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.

  Manuscript Format

  Your manuscript should be in MS Word format. All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both British and American English are accepted. Usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum. 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 should be listed along with their affiliations. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, and country. For contact, email address of at least one corresponding author must be included. Please note that all authors must see and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.

  Abstract

  The abstract is a brief description of the full text. 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 3–8 key words; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.

  Text

  The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word. 

  Section Headings

  Please number the section headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4) in boldface. Likewise, use boldface to identify subheadings too but please distinguish it from major headings using numbers (e.g. 1.1., 1.2., 2.1., 2.2.) Further subsections of subheadings should be italic, bold without numbers.

  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 importance regarding the significance of the study.

  Materials and Methods

  This section provides the general experimental 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 experiments.

  Results

  This section can be divided into subheadings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

  Conclusion

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

  Discussion

  If this section is included, it may 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.

  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, and events. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add "No conflict of interest was reported by all authors" in this section.

  Acknowledgements

  If possible, authors may 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 if possible. 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, and contributions from non-authors.

  Appendix

  This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g. advanced technical details) that have 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. This section is after References.

  Figures

  Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as one file in the OJS. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis) and number them (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2) in boldface. Please also add in captions (below the figure) as required. The caption should describe the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a legend defined as description of each panel. Please identify each panel with letters in parenthesis (e.g. (a), (b), (c)).

  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. 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 editors 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 created using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. The tables should include a title on top. Titles and footnotes/legends should be concise. These must be submitted together with the manuscript. Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers. For listing things within the main body of the manuscript, please use Arabic numerals in parenthesis (e.g. 1, 2, 3, or (1), (2), (3), (4)).

  In-text citations

  Citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:

  a) Negotiation research spans many disciplines^[3,4].

  b) This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman^[5].

  c) 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. 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.

  References should be numbered consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text. Identify references in text, tables, and legends by Arabic numerals in square brackets. Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should also appear as an in-text citation. 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").

  Standard journal article

  Journal article with one to three authors

  •Jackson D, Firtko A, Edenborough M. Personal resilience as a strategy for surviving and thriving in the face of workplace adversity: A literature review. Journal of Advanced Nursing 2007; 60(1): 1–9. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2007.04412.x.

  Journal article with more than three authors

  •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. International Journal of Cancer 2015; 136(8): 1931–1939. doi: 10.1002/ijc.29235.

  Book

  Book with one to three authors

  •Schneider Z, Whitehead D, Elliott D. Nursing and midwifery research: Methods and appraisal for evidence-based practice. 3^rd ed. Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier Australia; 2007.

  Book with more than three authors

  •Davis M, Charles L, Curry MJ, et al. Challenging spatial norms. London: Routledge; 2003.

  Chapter or Article in Book

  •Meltzer PS, Kallioniemi A, Trent JM. Chromosome alterations in human solid tumors. In: Vogelstein B, Kinzler KW (editors). The genetic basis of human cancer. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2002. p. 93–113.

   

  Others

  Proceedings of meetings and symposiums, conference papers

  •Christensen S, Oppacher F. An analysis of Koza’s computational effort statistic for genetic programming. In: Foster JA, Lutton E, Miller J, et al. (editors). Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5^th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3–5; Kinsdale, Berlin: Springer; 2002. p. 182–191.

  Conference proceedings (from electronic database)

  •Harnden P, Joffe JK, Jones WG (editors). Germ cell tumours V. Proceedings of the 5^th Germ Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13–15; Leeds, New York: Springer; 2002.

  Online Document with author names

  •Este J, Warren C, Connor L, et al. Life in the clickstream: The future of journalism [Internet]. Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance; 2008. Available from: http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/foj_report_final.pdf.

  Online Document without author name

  •Developing an argument. Princeton Writing Program [Internet]. Princeton: Princeton University; 1999. Available from: https://www.haverford.edu/sites/default/files/Office/Writing-Center/developinganargument.pdf.

  Thesis/Dissertation

  •Borkowski MM. Infant sleep and feeding: A telephone survey of Hispanic Americans [PhD thesis]. Mount Pleasant (MI): Central Michigan University; 2002.

  Patent

  •Rencher WF (inventor). Bioadhesive pharmaceutical carrier. US patent. 5,462,749 A. 1994 May 24.

  Legislation

  •Digital Economy Act 2017 [Internet]. 2017 Apr 27 [cited 2021 Jan 13] (Great Britain). Available from: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/30/introduction/enacted.

  Standards

  •AS 1288-2006. Glass in buildings:  Selection and installation.

  Government Report

  •National Commission of Audit. Report to the Commonwealth Government. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service; 1996.

  Government report (online)

  •Department of Health and Ageing. Ageing and aged care in Australia [Internet]. 2008. Available from: http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing.

   

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