Authors Guidelines

 

Data Fabrication/Falsification/Theft

 

It is highly unethical to fabricate, falsify and report selective data to manipulate the results to mislead and deceive the readers. We recommend the authors of original research to maintain a record of any data analysis conducted on data collected from experimentation, survey, interview or other primary and secondary before submission. At any point during the publication process, reviewers or editors can ask authors for the research data and analysis results. After the publication, the authors should keep research data saved for a reasonable amount of time and made available on request. Authors must report results such that they should reflect an accurate account of analysis performed on data, and there should be an objective discussion of the significance.

 

Theft of someone else's data or fabrication of data is unacceptable, and the submitted manuscript will be rejected if any such case is proven and the author is not able to justify SLR-M and TheAPRA reserves all the rights not to accept any further submission from the author(s) and send a formal complaint to the parent institute if there is undeniable evidence of data fabrication/falsification/theft.

 

Plagiarism and Acknowledgement of Sources

 

Plagiarism is a subjective term which takes many forms such as presenting someone else's research paper, research idea or research results as one's own or copying/paraphrasing a substantial portion of another manuscript without reference. Submitted manuscripts may be checked for similarity using Turnitin software. Turnitin checks submission against millions of published articles, institutional repositories and internet sources for overlapping and text similarity. A similarity index of greater than 15% from multiple sources and greater than 5% from a single source is unacceptable. The editor reserves the right to either reject a submitted manuscript or request a revision if plagiarism is detected.

 

An integral part of scholarly research is to acknowledge and credit the work of others. While drafting the manuscript, enough details and references should be included so that sources of information are given valid credited and others can track them. It is unacceptable and highly unethical to present someone else's idea and information from a source, making it appear one's own. Any information that has been obtained privately (conversation, discussion or correspondence) or obtained from confidential sources (e.g. financial grant sources, refereeing manuscripts) must never be reported without the written consent of the third party. Similarly, it is unethical and prohibited to reproduce tables and graphics from another source without written permission of the copyrights holder.

 

Authorship

 

Authorship is an essential aspect of publication as it is directly related to the credit of research work and responsibility and accountability of the published paper. Authorship for a manuscript should be based upon substantial intellectual contribution to the research work. We only recognize individuals like authors, not any agency or institute as an author. All those made a significant contribution to the paper should be enlisted as co-authors. TheAPRA authorship based on one or more of the following contributions:

 

1. Conceived the research idea and planned the research
2. Conducted a literature survey and developed framework
3. Data collection
4. Data entry
5. Data analysis
6. Interpretation of analysis results
7. Drafting manuscript
8. Critically analyzing and revising the draft
9. Overall supervision of the research project (must be involved in multiple stages mentioned above, need to justify if more than one co-author identify as supervisors)
10. Any other significant contribution

Every article should have a corresponding author responsible for the submission and all the correspondence during the review and publication process. All names of corresponding author and contributing authors and their order of appearance should ideally be decided before submitting the manuscript. Any addition, deletion or change in the order of authorship after submission will be entertained case to case basis with the corresponding author providing sufficient proof to why this is important (for instance need to include an author for the sake of revisions after peer review or a contributing author decides to withdraw from the research project).

 

All the contributing authors(s) should

 

1. Agree to be responsible and accountable for the accuracy and integrity of all aspects of published research.
2. Be able to identify which co-author is responsible for which part of the research work.
3. Should have faith in the integrity of co-authors
4. Have reviewed the final version of the paper before submission and before publications.
5. Make sure that there is no ghost author, which means that a potential contributor is left out in the list of authorship
6. Ensure that there is no guest author, which means that a non-contributing individual is added as a co-author.

Disclosure of Conflict of Interest

 

When authors submit a manuscript (any type), they must honestly disclose any conflict of interest that could have influenced their research. These conflicts of interests (COIs) can be financial support/grants, commercial interests, legal or professional relationships with other organizations or individuals, that might influence the study's results or interpretation. Any financial grant or another funding source must be acknowledged within the manuscript. Potential entities that can cause COI may include but not limited to: consultancies, employers, interest groups, financial grants, patents, royalties and stock ownership. In case authors do not have any COI, they must also mention that in the manuscript using this statement "The author(s) declare no conflict of interest for this research". If the authors fail to disclose COI at the time of submission, and there is an actual or potential effect on the interpretation of the results, the manuscript may be returned or rejected.

 

Redundant and Con-current Publications/Self-Plagiarism

 

Publishing manuscripts in multiple journals with almost similar research frameworks and research results without proper citation is strongly discouraged and lies under self-plagiarism. This practice leads to repetition in the scholarly literature and can lead to skewed results of a meta-analysis. However, authors may use the data collected from a larger body of data set for research frameworks that are essentially different, and multiple manuscripts have their specific contributions to the existing literature. Similarly sending the same manuscript to multiple journals is also ethical malpractice and may result in rejection or backlisting of the author.

 

The journal editor will thoroughly investigate any suspected cases of self-plagiarism in a submitted manuscript and may request the author(s) for a logical explanation of the potential overlap. If the explanation is not satisfactory, the manuscript may be rejected. In repeated incidents, SLR-M/TheAPRA may opt not to accept any further submissions from the author(s).

 

Human and Animal Subjects

 

All studies involving human subjects require documented review and approval from an institutional review board or ethics committee. In case researchers do not have access to these ethical bodies, they should strictly adhere to principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The researchers must obtain informed consent from all participants above 16 years of age and their guardians/next of kin if below 16 years. In case an informed consent is not possible (such as an observation study), the review board must decide if this procedure is ethically acceptable. All these steps must be documented in the manuscript. Similarly, a study involving animal must also be ethically and legally approved by the relevant committee, and the name of the approving authority must be mentioned in the manuscript. Any use of chemicals, experimental procedures or equipment that may prove hazardous must be documented in the manuscript.

 

Ready to submit your paper? Your ethics checklist

 

Before you submit, make sure you've:

 

• Read the journal's instructions for authors, and checked and followed any instructions regarding data sets, ethics approval, or statements.
• Named all authors on the paper, and the online submission form.
• I referenced all material in the text clearly and thoroughly.
• Carefully checked data and included any supplemental data required by the journal.
• He declared any relevant interests of the journal.
• We obtained (written) permission to reuse any figures, tables, and data sets.
• Only submitted the paper to one journal at a time.
• Finally, notify all the co-authors once you have submitted the paper.

 

Formatting and Manuscript Preparation

To submit the paper the authors are recommended to submit two separate MSWord files

1. Title Page [Includes: Paper Title, Authors’ Names, Authors’ Affiliation, Authors’ Email, Corresponding Author’s Name, Abstract, and Keywords (3 to 5)]
2. Article Text [Includes all other Sections i.e. Introduction, Literature Review … References]

Furthermore,

• Acknowledgements of others' help in preparing the paper for submission should be included in the letter to the editor that is featured as part of the web-based submission process.
• Your entire submission (including references) is a single-spaced in 12-pitch or larger font with margins of one inch or more.
• Your submission contains few and only necessary footnotes or endnotes.
• Any hypotheses are explicitly identified as such constructs and variables are identified in words, not abbreviations.

Content and length of manuscripts

Constructs and variables are identified in words, not abbreviations.

1. The Editor welcomes original articles that fall within the aims and scope of the Journal, and which are as concise as the subject matter and research method permitted.
2. The manuscript's language should be English and where possible the text should be restricted to around 5000 to 10,000 words.
3. The first page of the text should begin with the title, authors' name, and their affiliations, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Plus a list of at most three to five keywords, suitable for indexing and abstracting services. This abstract should summarize the whole paper and not the conclusions alone.
4. Manuscripts should be typed single-spaced.

Preparation of manuscripts

1. A title page should give the title of the manuscript, the authors' name, position and institutional affiliation, together with an address for correspondence; in the case of co-authors, names and affiliations and addresses should be clearly indicated. Correspondence will be sent to the first-named author unless otherwise specified. In order to enable the publisher to do everything to ensure prompt publication, the full postal and email addresses should be given for the author who will check the proofs, along with the telephone, telex, and telefax numbers where possible. Any acknowledgements desired should also be placed on the cover page.
2. Figures, tables, and footnotes should be placed within the Text. Where it is in the dud should be reasonably interpretable without reference to the text. Footnotes should be avoided if possible; where they are used they should be numbered consecutively with superscript Arabic numerals.
3. With regard to manuscripts that refers to questionnaires or other research instruments which are not fully reproduced in the text, the author may also submit a copy of the complete research instrument. Where research instruments are not fully reproduced, a note must be inserted on the cover page indicating the address from which the complete instrument is available.
4. Hypotheses should normally be presented in the positive rather than the null form so that each hypothesis states the result that is expected if the prior theoretical development is supported by the empirical evidence. However, where a null result provides support for a theoretical position or where no prior expectation exists, the null form is appropriate. Care should be taken to state clearly how standard statistical tests were applied (e.g. one- or two-tailed). Where possible, statistical significance should be stated to the nearest percentage point (e.g. p < 0.04) rather than at conventional levels of significance.
5. Literature citations should be made in a uniform style in text and footnotes, and follow the Harvard System with (Name, Date) in the text and an alphabetical list of references at the end of the manuscript. Please use the IJMS style for formatting your reference list:

The article in a journal:

Michel, J. G., & Hambrick, D. C. (1992). Diversification posture and top management team characteristics. Academy of Management Journal, 35(1), 9-37.

Book:

Neter, J. M. H. Kutner, C. J. Nachtsheim and W. Wasserman (1996). Applied Linear Regression Models. Irwin Press, Illinois.

Chapter in book:

O’Reilly, C., Snyder, R., & Boothe, J. (1993). Effects of executive team demography on organizational change. Organizational change and redesign, 147-175.

Works by the same author should be listed in order of publication. Where reference is made to more than one work published by the same author in a single year, a suffix, a, b, etc. should follow the date, thus: (Smith, 1989b). If an author's name is mentioned in the text, it need not be repeated in the citation, thus ˜Hopwood (1989, p. 5) claims that

Please include a short authors’ biography of 50-75 words to accompany the article.