Author Guidelines
Before submitting to the journal, authors should read through the author guidelines for preparing their manuscript. Starting in 2024, a new layout style will be applied, so please download the new manuscript template.
Manuscript Format
The manuscript should be in MS Word format. The language of all manuscripts must be English (either British or American) and non-English words should be used sparingly. Poor English may lead to article rejection. Authors are encouraged to seek language polishing by a native English speaker or a professional editing service.
Article Types
Please refer to the Article Types for choosing an appropriate type.
Cover Letter
Authors should attach a cover letter together with the article text. A cover letter should encompass a declaration of originality, affirm compliance with the journal's editorial policies, and also contain the statement of a brief explanation of the significance of their work and the intention of doing the work. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors. It will not be seen by the reviewers.
Article Title
Titles should be no more than 50 words, with significant and attractive information for readers. Titles should not include uncommon jargons, abbreviations, and punctuation.
List of Authors
The list of authors should be arranged based on the level of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. Corresponding authors should be marked with an asterisk (*). Affiliation information should be provided with the following elements: department, institution, city, postal code (if available), and country. The email address of at least one corresponding author must be provided. All authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and agree with the submission. For more information about authorship, please refer to our Authorship Policy.
Abstract and Keywords
Depending on the article type, an abstract should be provided, which gives a concise summary of the article. It is usually a single paragraph of about 200–250 words maximum. Between 5–8 keywords should be included. Words and phrases in article titles should be avoided as keywords.
Text
The text of manuscripts should be in MS Word format. Original research articles should include the Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion (optional) sections.
Section Headings
Headings are used to indicate the hierarchy of the sections of the text. No more than three levels of headings should be employed. The first level of heading should be numbered as 1., 2., 3., 4. in boldface. Likewise, the second and third levels of headings should also be in boldface, for example, 1.1., 1.2., 1.1.1., 1.1.2.
Introduction
The introduction should provide a background that gives the broad readership an overall outlook on the field and the research performed. It pinpoints a problem and states the significance of the study. The introduction can conclude with a brief statement on 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 details for other investigators to fully replicate the experiments. It is also to facilitate a better understanding of the results obtained.
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 (Optional)
The conclusion section can only be used for interpretation, and not be used to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.
Figures and Tables
Figures (photographs, images, graphs, charts, and schematic diagrams) and tables should be referred to within the main text and numbered consecutively as Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, Table 2, etc. They should be placed as close as possible to where they are first cited and center-aligned. Both figure captions and table captions should be center-aligned, with figure captions set underneath the figures and table captions above the tables. When captions are longer than one line, they should be left-aligned.
Figures can contain multiple panels. They should be numbered by Latin letters with parentheses, e.g., (a), (b), (c), or (A), (B), (C), placed below the image or within the image.
Tables should be in MS Word/Excel table format. Tables containing too much information can be provided as supplementary material.
In the main text, all figures and tables should be cited, e.g., "Table 1 indicates…", "Figures 1 and 2 shows…", and "Figure 1a,b shows…".
Lists and Equations
Both bulleted lists and numbered lists are acceptable (refer to the template). Equations should be center-aligned and equation numbers should be right-aligned. If cited in the text, equations should be labeled with numbers in parentheses, e.g., Equation (1).
In-Text Citations
All bibliographical references that make an important contribution to the article should be numbered according to the appearance order. When cited in the text, the number should be placed in square brackets, for example:
- Negotiation research spans many disciplines [3,4].
- This effect has been widely studied [1–5,7].
Appendix (Optional)
An appendix provides information supplementary to an article and is included at the end of the article after the References section and it should start on a new page. For one appendix, it is designated as "Appendix"; for more than one appendix, they are designated "Appendix A", "Appendix B", etc.
An appendix should be cited in the main text. Tables, figures, and equations should be started with the prefix A (i.e., Figure A1, Figure A2, Table A1, etc.).
Back Matter
The sequence of back matter elements in an article is listed below. There is no numeral label for back matter headings. Some of these elements are optional.
Supplementary materials (Optional)
The Supplementary Materials section provides a short description of the supplementary materials. One or more individual supplementary files are allowed and should be submitted in Step 4 during submission. These materials are relevant to the manuscript but remain non-essential to readers' understanding of the article's main content. Please ensure the names of such files contain "suppl. info". Videos may be included in this section.
Author contributions
For original research articles, this section is required, except when there is only one author for the article. The contribution of each co‐author should be reported in this section.
The following statements should be used "Conceptualization, XX and YY; methodology, XX; software, XX; validation, XX, YY and ZZ; formal analysis, XX; investigation, XX; resources, XX; data curation, XX; writing—original draft preparation, XX; writing—review and editing, XX; visualization, XX; supervision, XX; project administration, XX; funding acquisition, YY. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript."
Funding (Optional)
Authors can acknowledge financial support in this section, which is NOT mandatory. If authors provide a funding statement, it should be in the same style as the template.
For example:
"This research was funded by [name of funder] grant number [xxx]" and "The APC was funded by [XXX]". Please check carefully that the details given are accurate and that the standard spelling of the funding agency's name in https://search.crossref.org/funding is used, as any errors may affect the authors' future funding.
Acknowledgments (Optional)
Authors can acknowledge any support and contribution that cannot be included in the Author Contributions and Funding sections. This section is NOT mandatory.
Conflict of interest
According to our Conflict of Interest Policy, 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 include personal or work-related relationships and events. Authors who have nothing to declare should add "No conflict of interest was reported by all authors" or "The authors declare no conflict of interest" in this section.
References
This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of the manuscript. Footnotes or endnotes should not replace 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 should be excluded from this section.
The format of author names should be "Last-Name Initial", e.g., David Smith should be written as Smith D.
Journal
Journals in English:
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. Title of the article. Journal Name. Year, Volume(Issue) (if available): Firstpage–Lastpage. doi (if available)
Journals in languages other than English:
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. English title of the article (original language). Journal Name. Year, Volume(Issue) (if available): Firstpage–Lastpage. doi (if available)
Book
A book without editors:
- Author AA, Author BB. Chapter (optional). Title of the Book, Edition (if available). Publisher; Year. pp. Page range (optional).
A book with editors:
- Author AA, Author BB. Title of the contribution. In: Editor CC, Editor DD (editors). Title of the Book, Edition (if available). Publisher; Year. Volume (optional), pp. Page range (optional).
For a translated book, the translators' names should be placed after the editors' names: "Translator AA (translator)" or "Translator AA, Translator BB (translators)".
If the editors and translators are the same, the format should be as follows:
- Author AA, Author BB. Title of the contribution. In: Editor CC, Editor DD (editors and translators). Title of the Book, Edition (if available). Publisher; Year. Volume (optional), pp. Page range (optional).
Conference
Full citations of published abstracts (proceedings):
In most cases, proceedings will be simply called "Proceedings of the Name of the Conference (full name)" without a book title. In this case, please only add the conference name in the proceedings' title and keep that in regular font (i.e., do not italicize):
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. Title of presentation. In: Proceedings of the Name of the Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available). Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).
If the proceedings are published as a book with a separate title (i.e., not "Proceedings of the Name of the Conference (full name)" as the title), the book title should be included:
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of presentation. In: Editor DD, Editor EE (editors) (if available). Title of Collected Work, Proceedings of the Name of the Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available). Publisher; Year. Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).
Oral presentations without published material:
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of presentation (if any). Presented at the Name of Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available); Paper number (if available).
Thesis/Dissertation
- Author AA. Title of Thesis [Level of thesis]. Degree‐Granting University; Year.
The level of thesis can be called "XX thesis" or "XX dissertation". Thesis types include but are not limited to the following:
- PhD thesis
- Master's thesis
- Bachelor's thesis
- Licentiate thesis
- Diploma thesis
Newspaper
- Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, et al. Title of article. Title of Periodical, Complete Date, Pagination (if available).
Patent
- Patent Owner AA, Patent Owner BB, Patent Owner CC. Title of Patent. Patent Number, Date (Day Month Year, the Application granted date).
Unpublished work
- Author AA, Author BB. Title of unpublished work. Journal Title. Year (if available); Phrase Indicating Stage of Publication (submitted, in press, etc.).
Online resources
- Author (if available). Title of content (if available). Available online: http://URL (accessed on Day Month Year).
For a homepage, the access date is not required.
