About This Journal

Value, Function, Cost (VFC, eISSN: 2810-918X) is an open-access peer-reviewed journal, which focuses on value engineering related topics. The journal welcomes all relevant submissions of research articles, case studies, reviews and etc.

Focus and Scope

For Authors

• Editorial Policies

  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) in compliance with the information and guidelines on handling publishing ethics allegations as described in the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK).

  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 publisher 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 and in PERK. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the publisher at editorial-vfc@apacsci.com.

  The Value, Function, Cost (VFC) 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 breached 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 publisher at editorial-vfc@apacsci.com within 30 days of the decision date.

• 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. 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.

• 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.

• 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 VFC, 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.

• Language

  The language used in manuscripts submitted to Value, Funtion, Cost 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.

• Withdrawal Policy

  If the author decides to withdraw an article that has already been submitted to the journal, he/she would be required to pay a penalty fee. Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant error or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

• Waiver Policy

  The Value, Function, Cost is committed to ensuring that financial constraints do not present a barrier to knowledge sharing and learning, and thus has developed a waiver policy especially for authors from low- or middle-income countries. Authors who are interested in applying for a waiver may contact the editorial office prior to submitting their article. VFC reserves the right to approve or reject a waiver application.

• Permission and Reprints

  Any part of materials published in Frontiers in Cancer Research may not be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please click here to write in the permission request.

• 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 Frontiers in Cancer Research are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to 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 Frontiers in Cancer Research 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.

• Changes to Authorship

  The authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The Editorial Office considers the authorship list is definitive by the time the original submission is received.

  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.

   

• 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 the Characterization and Application of Nanomaterials are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) by default. The authors who would like to publish their work under a more accommodating license, i.e. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), they should express explicit request during 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 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Characterization and Application of Nanomaterials.

   

• Advertising Policy

  All advertisements are subject to approval to the Publisher. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial-vfc@apacsci.com.

• Indexing & Archiving

  Value, Function, Cost (VFC) has be indexed by several world-class abstracting/indexing databases:

     Google Scholar

     Scilit

   

   

  • 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 Value, Function, Cost.

• 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 and all must be italicized with the exception of “e.g.”, “i.e.” and “etc.” 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 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, state, postal code, 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

  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.

  Text

  The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50,000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7,000 words.

  Section Headings

  Please number the section headings (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) 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, etc.) Further subsections of subheadings should be differentiated with the numbers 1.1.1, 1.1.2, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 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 importance regarding 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 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.

  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 does 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.

   Acknowledgements

  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, 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.

  Figures

  Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as one file in the OJS system. 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 number them (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. Please also add in captions (below the figure) as required and number them (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. 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), 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 colored, 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 created using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. The tables should include a title underneath. 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), (4), etc.)

  Supplementary Information

  This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. These materials are relevant to the manuscript but remain 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’. Videos may be included in this section.

  In-text citations

  Reference 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. 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.

  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 parentheses. Authors referenced are listed with their surname followed by their initials. All references should also appear as an in-text citation. References should follow the following pattern: Author(s), title of publication, full journal name followed by year of publication, volume number, issue number in parenthesis and lastly, page range. 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"). If the DOI is available, please include it after the page range.

  Standard journal article

  Journal article with one to three authors

  •Jackson D, Firtko A and 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. http://dx.doi.org/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. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ijc.29235.

  Book

  Book with one to three authors

  •Schneider Z, Whitehead D and Elliott D. Nursing and Midwifery Research: Methods and Appraisal for Evidence-based Practice, 3rd ed. Marrickville, NSW: Elsevier Australia; 2007.

  Book with more than three authors

  •Davis M, Charles L, Curry M J, 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.

  *Note that the editor’s name is not inverted.

  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, Ryan C, Tettamanzi AG, editors. Genetic programming. EuroGP 2002: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Genetic Programming; 2002 Apr 3-5; Kinsdale, Ireland. 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 5th Germ Cell Tumour Conference; 2001 Sep 13-15; Leeds, UK. 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. Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance. 2008; Retrieved from http://www.alliance.org.au/documents/ foj_report_final.pdf

  Online Document without author name

  •Princeton Writing Program. (n.d.). Developing an argument. Retrieved from http://web.princeton.edu/ sites/ writing/Writing_Center/WCWritingResources.htm

  Thesis/Dissertation

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

  Standards

  •Standards Australia Online. Glass in buildings: Selection and installation. AS 1288-2006, amended January 31, 2008. Retrieved from SAI Global database 2006.

  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; 2008. Retrieved from http://www.health.gov.au/internet/ main/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing

  Patent

  •Rencher W F. Bioadhesive pharmaceutical car- rier. US Patent 5462749 A. 1995.

  No author

  •Guide to agricultural meteorological practices, 2nd ed. Secretariat of the World Meteorological Organization, Geneva; 1981.

  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.

• Copyright Notice

  Authors contributing to this journal agree to publish their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License, allowing third parties to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it, under the condition that the authors are given credit, that the work is not used for commercial purposes, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear. With this license, the authors hold the copyright without restrictions and are allowed to retain publishing rights without restrictions as long as this journal is the original publisher of the articles.

  

• Privacy Statement

  The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

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