Ethical Responsibilities of Authors
The authors who submit their manuscripts to the journal are expected to comply with the following ethical responsibilities:
Principles of Writing and Publishing
Articles must be sent in the format stated below. Articles that are not uploaded to the system in this format will not be evaluated.
Writing A Research Paper
Title: should be unambiguous, understandable to specialists in other fields, and reflect the article's content.
List of authors: The authors listed first should be those who did most. The name order of authors should be determined before submission of the manuscript. Any changes made after submission should be approved by all authors and explained to the journal editor. Names of authors must be supplemented with their affiliations (during the study) and the present address of an author for correspondence. E-mail addresses of all authors should be provided so that they can be contacted easily.
Abstract: briefly explain why you conducted the study (BACKGROUND), what question(s) you aimed to answer (OBJECTIVES), how you performed the study (METHODS), what you found (RESULTS: major data, relationships), and your interpretation and main consequences of your findings (CONCLUSIONS). The abstract must reflect the article's content, as for most readers, it will be the major source of information about your study. It would be best to use keywords within the abstract to facilitate on-line searching for your article by those who may be interested in your results (many databases include only titles and abstracts). Do not refer in the abstract to tables or figures, as abstracts are also published separately. References to the literature are also not allowed unless they are necessary (but then you need to provide detailed information in brackets: author, title, year, etc.). Make sure that all the information given in the abstract also appears in the main body of the article. Remember to comply with the journal’s instructions to authors in respect of abstract length, style of references, etc.
List of keywords: include all relevant scientific terms or only additional keywords that are absent from the title (if required by the editors). Keep the keywords specific. Add more general terms if your study has interdisciplinary significance.
Introduction: explain why the study was needed and specify your research objectives or the question(s) you aimed to answer. Start from more general issues and gradually focus on your research question(s).
Methods: describe in detail how the study was carried out (eg study area, data collection, criteria, the origin of analyzed material, sample size, number of measurements, age and sex of participants, equipment, data analysis, statistical tests, and software used).
Results: present the new results of your study (usually published data should not be included in this section). All tables and figures must be mentioned in the main body of the article and numbered in the order they appear in the text. Make sure that the statistical analysis is appropriate. Data on humans, animals or any material originating from humans or animals should be disaggregated by sex. Do not fabricate or distort any data, and do not exclude any important data; similarly, do not manipulate images to make a false impression on readers. Such data manipulations may constitute scientific fraud.
Discussion: This section is not the place to present new results, including statistical results. Answer your research questions (stated at the end of the Introduction) and compare your main results with published data as objectively as possible. Discuss their limitations and highlight your main findings. If your study included subjects of one sex, discuss the implications and potential to generalise your findings for both sexes. Consider any findings that run contrary to your point of view. To support your position, use only methodologically sound evidence. At the end of the Discussion or in a separate section, emphasize your major conclusions and the practical significance of your study.
Acknowledgments: Mention all people who contributed substantially to the study but cannot be regarded as co-authors, and acknowledge all sources of funding. The recommended form is: “This work was supported by the Research Council [grant number xxxx]”. If no specific funding was provided, use the following sentence: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”. If relevant, disclose to the editors any other conflicts of interest, eg financial or personal links with the manufacturer or with an organization that has an interest in the submitted manuscript. If you reproduce previously published materials (eg figures), ask the copyright owners for permission and mention them in the captions or in the acknowledgments. If you were helped by a language professional (eg author’s editor or translator), a statistician, data collectors, etc., you should acknowledge their assistance for the sake of transparency. It must be clear that they are not responsible for the final version of the article. You need to ensure you have the consent of all the people named in this section.
References: make sure that you have provided sources for all information extracted from other publications. In the list of references, include all data necessary to find them in a library or in the Internet. For non-English publications, give the original title (transliterated according to English rules if necessary), wherever possible, followed by its translation into English in square brackets. Avoid citing inaccessible, coercive, and irrelevant references. Wherever appropriate, cite primary research articles instead of reviews. Do not include unpublished data in the list of references – if you must mention them, describe their source in the main body of the article, and obtain permission from the producer of the data to cite them.
Scientific content
Clearly distinguish your original data and ideas from those of other people and from your earlier publications – provide citations whenever relevant. Preferably summarize or paraphrase text from other sources. This also applies to translations. When copying text literally (eg, a whole sentence or longer text), put it in inverted commas (eg, Roig 2011, Kerans & de Jager 2010). Otherwise, you could commit plagiarism (see COPE flowcharts) or self-plagiarism.
Define every uncommon or ambiguous scientific term at first use. You can list its synonyms if there are any (to aid in searching) but later employ only one of them consistently (to prevent confusion).
Avoid unclear statements, which require the reader to guess what you meant.
When reporting percentages, make clear what you regard as 100%. When writing about correlations, relationships, etc., make clear which values you are comparing with which.
Text structure
Sentences generally should not be very long. Their structure should be relatively simple, with the subject located close to its verb. Do not overuse passive constructions.
The text should be cohesive, logically organized, and thus easy to follow.
Each paragraph preferably should start with a topic sentence, and the next sentences fully develop the topic.
Make figures and tables easily understandable without reference to the main body of the article. Omit data that are not informative.
Language matters
Wherever scientific terms are not necessary, preferably use commonly known words.
Define abbreviations when they first appear in the main body of the article (if they may be unclear to readers). Do not use too many different abbreviations, as the text would be hard to understand. Do not abbreviate terms that are used only rarely in your manuscript. Avoid abbreviations in the abstract.
In general, use the past tense when describing how you performed your study and what you found or what other researchers did. Preferably use the present tense in general statements and interpretations (eg, statistical significance, conclusions) or when writing about your article's content, especially tables and figures.
Unless required otherwise by the editors, do not write about yourself “the author(s)”, as this is ambiguous. Instead, write “we” or “I” if necessary, or use expressions like “in this study”, “our results” or “in our opinion”.
Check if all verbs agree in number with their subjects and if the references for all pronouns are clear.
Read the text aloud to check punctuation. All intonation breaks necessary for proper understanding should be denoted with commas or other punctuation marks.
Do not include information that is not relevant to your research question(s) stated in the Introduction.
Do not copy parts of your previous publications, and do not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at a time. Otherwise, you may be responsible for redundant publication (see COPE flowcharts: http://www.publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).
Information given in one section preferably should not be repeated in other sections. Obvious exceptions include the abstract, the figure legends, and the concluding paragraph.
Consider whether all tables and figures are necessary. Data presented in tables should not be repeated in figures (or vice versa). Long lists of data should not be repeated in the text.
Captions to tables and figures must be informative but not very long.
Preferably delete obvious statements (eg, “Forests are very important ecosystems.”) and other redundant fragments (eg, “It is well known that…”).
If a long scientific term is frequently repeated, define its abbreviation at first use in the main body of the article, and later apply it consistently
Express your doubts if necessary but avoid excessive hedging (eg write “are potential” rather than “may possibly be potential”). However, do not overgeneralize your conclusions.
Unless required otherwise by the editors, use numerals for all numbers, ie, also for one-digit whole numbers, except for zero, one (if without units), and other cases where misunderstanding is possible, eg at the beginning of a sentence or before abbreviations containing numbers.
Ask a thoughtful colleague to read the whole text to see if there are any ambiguous fragments.
See. EASE Ethics Checklist for Authors
Submitting Your Manuscript
References
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