Submissions

Author Guidelines

Authorship

The responsibility for the content of the paper must be taken by the corresponding author including all the other authors. The authorship and the order of the authors should be given according to the  intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study. The particular individual who does not meet the above guidelines should not be awarded the authorship.

Those who have significantly contributed to the work should be listed as co-authors and the corresponding author should get the consent of all the listed co-authors for the submission. It is the author's responsibility to acknowledge all the other individuals who supported the work. If there is any change in the names or the order of names after the initial submission, it must be approved by all the other authors and clear justification must be provided to the editor.

Please carefully check all the information including spelling and format of all author names, affiliations and funding information before the submission. If your paper is accepted for publication, it is important this information is accurate to ensure your article is correctly indexed, which may affect citations and future funding evaluation.

Safety and Hazardous

Authors must state any hazards associated with the current work in the experimental section. Also, it is important to call attention to any hazardous materials or operations. Moreover, authors should state any relevant safety precautions or standard codes of practice as supplementary information, as necessary.

Author responsibilities

• Authors must avoid separating their work into several manuscripts (undue fragmentation) to get multiple publications as communications. Editors can reject submitted articles without reviewing if undue fragmentation has happened. 

• Make sure not to engage in redundant publications without full cross-reference. If two or more papers share the same hypothesis, data and results and discussion, that is considered as a redundant publication.

• If the author is having related manuscripts under review in separate journals, it is important to inform the editor at the time of submission. Also, authors are required to provide copies and the status of those manuscripts.

• The author must be aware that the same manuscript is not valid to submit for more than one journal at a time. Authors can submit a full paper for publication based on their previous communication. But they should inform the editor about their previous communication.

Types of Publications

Manuscript length is unrestricted at SLJoAS except for the communications, as long as the text is concise and comprehensive. To ensure that the results can be replicated, all experimental information must be provided. SLJoAS asks authors to submit all experimental controls and, when possible, full datasets, if applicable Manuscripts submitted to SLJoAS should not have been previously published or be in the process of being published in another journal. The following are the main article types:

1. Articles: All original research articles are considered by the journal as long as they contain scientifically sound studies and give a significant amount of new information. Short Communications of preliminary but noteworthy results will be considered, however, authors should not divide their work into numerous linked publications. unnecessarily. The quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review.
2. Reviews: These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research. The PRISMA guidelines should be followed while conducting systematic reviews.
3. Communications: A shorter version of "Original Paper", whose methods, findings, etc. don't justify a full-length paper. They still contain original findings but are generally much more straightforward. 
    

Manuscript Submission Process

SLJoAS manuscripts must be submitted online through the user account portal of the journal website. During the submission and peer-review process, the corresponding author is usually in charge of the manuscript. The corresponding author must ensure that all qualified co-authors are listed in the author list (see the Requirements for Authorship ) and that they have all read and approved the paper in its current state.

Accepted File Formats

To prepare their manuscript, authors must use the Microsoft Word template. Using the template file will significantly reduce the time it takes to finish copy-editing and publish accepted papers. When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, the SLJoAS Microsoft Word template file must be used.
Supplementary files: It is recommended that you use common, non-proprietary formats where possible

Free Format Submission

Please note that SLJoAS accepts free-format submission:
SLJoAS does not have strict formatting requirements, however, all manuscripts must include the following sections: Title, Author Information, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials & Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, Figures and Tables with Captions, Funding Information, Author Contributions, Conflict of Interest, and other Ethics Statements. Check the Journal Instructions for Authors for more details.

Cover Letter

Each manuscript submission must contain a cover letter. It should be concise and explain why the content of the paper is significant/important, setting the findings in the context of previous research and explaining why it matches the journal's scope. Confirm that the paper, or any portions of it, is not currently being considered or published in another journal. Any prior submissions of the manuscript to SLJoAS must be acknowledged. The names of proposed and excluded reviewers should be provided in the submission system, not in the cover letter.

Manuscript Preparation

General Considerations
Research manuscripts should comprise:

• Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords
• Research manuscript sections: Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions (optional).
• Back matter: Supplementary Materials, Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Conflicts of Interest, References.

Front Matter

These sections should appear in all manuscript types

• Title: Your manuscript's title should be brief, specific, and relevant. It should specify whether the study is a systematic review, meta-analysis, or replication research, or if it reports (human or animal) trial data.
• Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. The initials of any middle names can be added. At least one author should be designated as the corresponding author, and his or her email address and other details should be included at the end of the affiliation section. Adapt to the same name format listed in other publications if the listed authors have previous publications. The order of the author list must be determined by the corresponding author and (please see the authorship section, 4.1 for more details)
• Abstract: The abstract should be around 200 words long at the most. The abstract should be a single paragraph with no headings, citations and should be written in the form of structure that gives a clear snapshot of the study.
• Keywords: After the abstract, three to six relevant keywords should be added. The keywords should be relevant to the content while also being quite common within the topic.
• Featured Application: Authors are encouraged to provide a concise description of the specific application or a potential application of the work. This section is not mandatory.

Research Manuscript Sections

Introduction: The introduction should briefly summarize the significance of the study and put it in perspective. It should state the work's objective and relevance, as well as the precise hypotheses being tested.

Materials and Methods: They should be explained in sufficient details for others to be able to duplicate and build on previously published results. New methods and protocols should be presented in detail, whereas well-established approaches should be stated and cited appropriately. Give the name and version of any software that was utilized, as well as whether or not the computer code was available. Any pre-registration codes should be included.

Results and Discussion: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn. The results should be discussed in a logical manner, as well as how they might be interpreted considering past research and the working hypotheses. The findings and their consequences should be described in the broadest possible way.

Conclusions: This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex. This section should explains the brief summary and conclusions that we can draw from the present study.

Back Matter

Supplementary Materials: Describe any supplementary material published online alongside the manuscript (figure, tables, video, spreadsheets, etc.).

Funding: The study's funding sources should be made public. Indicate any funding you've received to assist your study, as well as any monies you've gotten to cover publication fees. If the donor and grant number are not clearly and appropriately specified in the publication, some funders will not refund article processing charges (APC).

Acknowledgements: In this section, you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections. This may include administrative and technical support, or donations in kind (e.g., materials used for experiments).

Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results. If no conflicts exist, please state that “there are no conflicts to declare” under a Conflicts of interest heading as the last section before your Acknowledgements.

References: must be numbered in order of appearance in the text (including table captions and figure legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript.

The editorial team will decide on a suitable format for references.

Submission of a revised paper

If the reviewers ask for any change on the manuscript or any additional data for the acceptance of the paper, the corresponding author should be responsible to submit the revised paper through their user portal along with addressing all comments and concerns of the reviewers. If they failed to do so in the given time of period, the editor has the right to reject the article without further consideration. In case if the authors need more time to complete the requested experiments by reviewers, they must contact the editorial office with a valid extension request before the deadline.

Research Data Policies

UWU is committed to supporting open scientific exchange and enabling our authors to achieve best practices in sharing and archiving research data. We encourage all authors of articles published in SLJoAS to share their research data. Generated data should be publicly available and cited in accordance with journal guidelines.

Citation Policy

Authors should ensure that where the material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing) the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.
Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.
Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

Reviewers Recommendation

Authors can recommend potential reviewers. Journal editors will check to make sure there are no conflicts of interest before contacting those reviewers, and will not consider those with competing.

Ethical Clearance

    Subject consent forms

Subjects have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying details (written or photographic) should be omitted if they are not essential, but subject data should never be altered or falsified in an attempt to attain anonymity. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, and a consent form should be obtained if there is any doubt.

Ethics committee approval

Authors must sign a declaration that the research was conducted within the guidelines below and under the terms of all relevant local legislation. The Editors reserve the right to judge the appropriateness of the use and treatment of humans or animals in experiments for publication in the journal.
Human experiments: All work must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of proper authority. Papers describing experimental work on human participants which carries a risk of harm must include (1) a statement that the experiments were conducted with the understanding and the consent of each participant, and (2) a statement that the responsible, ethical committee has approved the experiments.