Author Guidelines
BEFORE PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT
Ethics in publishing
The author, editor, peer reviewer, and publisher are the four essential parties involved in the act of publishing. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the new and interesting works through scholars, referees, and reviewers. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of ethical behavior from all the parties. Hence the Abyssinia Journal of Science and Technology (AJST) follow Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) publishing ethics to maintain the standard in the area of publishing ethics.
Conflict of interest
All authors should disclose sources of funding for the project through which the investigations were carried out; all authors should also disclose financial or other conflicts of interest that might be taking to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any institutions connected to the papers of the authors, companies, or conflicts among authors; issues linked with employment, honorarium, patent applications or registrations, and grants or other funding that comes under conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the time of submission.
For the conflict of interest form, visit Author resources at https://journals.wu.edu.et/index.php/ajst.
Submission declaration and verification
AJST publish original works and submission of an article to AJST implies that the work portrayed in the article has not been published previously in any research journal, the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and the work must be approved by all authors tacitly or evidently by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out. Acceptance also implies that the present work will not be published elsewhere in the same form or in any other languages, including electronically without the written consent from the copyright holder. For submission declaration form visit Author resources at https://journals.wu.edu.et/index.php/ajst.
Changes to authorship
After acceptance and before publication: Any requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the order of author details, must be communicated to the Editor-in-Chief from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript along with a statement of a valid reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and undersigned declaration in the form of scanned copy through e-mail or consent letter from all authors stating that they agree with the rearrangement, addition or removal. In the case of addition or removal of authors also insists on the confirmation from the author being added or removed. The editor in chief suspends the publication of the accepted manuscript until the authorship issue (addition, rearrangement, or deletion) is resolved.
After the publication: Any request from the corresponding author to add, delete, or rearrange the order of author names in an article already published in an online issue will follow erratum publication in the future issue of the publication.
Copyright
Upon the acceptance of the manuscript, authors will be asked to complete and undersign a copyright form and submit its scanned copy via e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief. Subscribers may reproduce tables of contents or prepare lists of articles that including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions followed by proper citation and acknowledgments. Resale, distribution outside the institution (external circulation), and for other derivative works that include compilations and translations AJST insists on permission from the publisher. For those who are interested to produce excerpts from other copyrighted works; the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article for such works. For copyright form visit Author resources at https://journals.wu.edu.et/index.php/ajst.
Language
Please write your manuscript in lucid and good English, authors can use American or British usage according to their convenience, but not a mixture of these two in one article.
Content of the manuscript
AJST publishes manuscripts in three categories, such as original investigations, short communications, or reviews, occasionally. In the case of longer articles such as reviews, authors are advised to contact the Editor in chief before the submission.
Original investigations: Original investigations should include illustrations, tables, and references in addition to the main text. The main text should be divided into Abstract, Introduction, Material and Methods, Results, Discussion, Acknowledgements, and References. The word count of the whole manuscript should not exceed 6000 words.
Short communications: Short communications should include an Abstract and its contents without any structure like original articles. Such short communications should not include any subheadings like Introduction, Material, and methods, etc. The Word count of the whole manuscript should not exceed 3000 words.
Reviews: Manuscripts that review and integrate the current state of knowledge in a special field of science and technology are also welcome. The review article text must provide an Abstract, Special headings in the review area, Acknowledgements, and References. The Word count of the whole manuscript should not exceed 12000 words.
Submission
The article should be submitted to https://journals.wu.edu.et/index.php/ajst as per the guidelines for authors
Review process
After the submission, AJST follows a double-blinded peer-review procedure. For more details, please refer to peer review policy.
DURING PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPT
Use of word processing software
Save the article file in the default format of the word processor platform (Microsoft Word), keep the text in a single-column format, and maintain the layout of the text as simple as possible. Processing the article involves the removal of the formatting codes, don’t hyphenate words or justify text through word processing platform. However, keep using boldface, italics, subscripts, superscripts, etc. in necessary fields. During the preparation of the tables, if you are using a table grid, use one grid for each individual table and not a grid for each row. The preparation of the electronic text should be just very similar to that of the preparation of the conventional manuscript. Use ‘spell-check’ and ‘grammar-check’ functions provided in your word processing platforms to avoid unnecessary errors. Apply line numbering throughout the text.
Form
The manuscript should be typed (12-point font, Times New Roman), 1.5 spaced (Including abstract and references) on A4 size white paper with 1-inch margins. The title page along with author names and their affiliation should appear on the first page and nowhere else in the manuscript.
Article structure
The manuscript should be structured clearly with specific defined sections.
Introduction: It should explain the objectives of the research work with adequate background and supporting literature. At the same time, it should not be a detailed review of literature or historical perspective or just a summary of any research findings.
Materials and Methods: In this section, sufficient necessary details need to be provided so that work can be reproduced. The methods already published elsewhere should be acknowledged with appropriate reference with necessary modification, if any. In addition to this, the necessary details of software such as ChemDraw, SPSS, SAS, etc., should be provided in this section
Results: Data should be clear and concise and presented preferably in the form of tables or figures or text as per the need of the manuscript, but do not try to present the same data in more than one form. Do not include too many tables and try to combine wherever possible. Use Arabic numerals for the table and figures and they should not exceed the specified margin area.
Discussion: This should investigate the significance of the results obtained during the work, not repeating them in words or with units. Try to avoid extensive citations, review, and discussion of published literature in the Discussion section.
Conclusions: Conclusions section should present the main conclusions of the study that may stand alone at end of the discussion. It should be short and precise.
Appendices: Appendix should be identified as A, B, C, etc. Equations or formulae in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. 1: and Eq. 2: etc.; in a successive appendix similarly for figures and tables: Fig. 1; and Table 1, etc.
Essential title page information
Title: The title of the manuscript should be meaningful and precise. Preferably, the title should not contain any kind of abbreviations and formulae.
Author names and affiliations: The corresponding author should clearly specify and endorse the accurate spelling of all author's full first, middle, and last name(s). Precise authors' affiliation, details of the addresses, should be provided by the corresponding author just below all names. In addition to this, provide the full postal address of each affiliation and the e-mail address of each author. Indications such as a, b, c need to be used to denote the different organizations if authors belong to different organizations. The author should provide the affiliation or address details where the actual work was done.
Corresponding author: The corresponding author is one who will handle correspondence at all stages of publication and after the publication process. The corresponding author should use a valid email address and he should make ensure that he is using the same email address throughout the publication process. Otherwise, he must provide a valid reason for changing his email address, if any.
Abstract
The abstract should contain a brief summary of the manuscript, not more than 250 words. It should state the purpose of the research and ascertain the paper's purpose with the principal results and major conclusions. The abstract should be presented separately from the article without references. If any essential abbreviations are required in the abstract they must be defined at its first mention. Non- standard and uncommon abbreviations should be avoided in the abstract.
Keywords
As keywords help to display the paper to interested readers, other researchers and browsers abstract should be followed with a maximum of six keywords in chronological order Always avoid common words such as ‘of’ ‘and’, and plural terms. Use abbreviations that are firmly established in the field of investigation.
Abbreviations
Use appropriate and standard abbreviations where and when required, regardless of how well known they are, always write a long name in full for the very first time you use them. Abbreviations that are unavoidable must be defined at their first mention; the first abbreviated term should be used in full with the abbreviation included in brackets. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article. Abbreviations should not be used in the title.
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments are polite gestures that enable authors to thank all those who helped in carrying out the research. Express your acknowledgments in a separate section at the end of the article before the references.
Units
In the modern metric system of measurement and scientific reporting use of the international system of units (SI) is widely accepted. Hence the authors are advised to use only the SI units thought out the length of the article.
Tables, figures, and images
Submit tables and figures only in the editable default format and not in images format. It is mandatory to place tables on separate page(s) at the end of the article with the caption. Give numbering to the tables consecutively as mentioned in the appendix and in accordance with their appearance in the text. If there were any table notes write it below the table body. Ensure that the data presented in the table do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Images (if any) should be provided in JPEG format with the necessary number and
annotation.
References
Citation: It is mandatory that the citation of every reference in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Citation of a reference in the reference section as 'in press' implies that the item has been accepted for publication and the same can be mentioned in the reference section. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the text as well as the reference list. Web references and secondary references are not accepted. Citations in the text provide brief information, usually the name of the author and the date of publication, to lead the reader to the source of information in the reference list at the end of the paper. All citations must be in the Hanging Indent Format with the first line flush to the left margin and all other lines indented. This journal follows the American Psychological Association (APA) style in the reference list.
The in-text citation: Author surname(s) or family name(s) or last name (as they appear on the actual publication), followed by the year of publication e.g., (Vijayachandran, 2016). The in-text citation should be placed immediately after the information being cited. In-text citations are usually included in the word count of your document. If the citation is at the end of a sentence, ensure the full stop is placed after the reference. For citations in brackets with two authors, the ‘&’ symbol can be used. If the author citation forms part of your sentence the word ‘and’ must be used, e.g. (Goudar & Shah, 2010) OR “Goudar and Shah (2010) indicate that…”. In the case of three and above the number of authors, the corresponding author needs to cite as “.............. (Asmara et al., 2003)” OR “Asmara et al. (2003) ……...”. In addition to this, reference citation should be in chronological order if more than one article is mentioned for one sentence.
Reference citation in the reference section: Author surname(s) or family name(s) or last name (as they appear on the actual publication) need to be mentioned in full and first and second names as initials. The journal's complete name and the volume number are in italics. Issue numbers are not required if the journal is continuously paged. If paged individually, the issue number is required in parentheses adjacent to the volume number.
General Form
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Name of the article. Title of Journal, xx, xxx-xxx.
Article in Journal
Mellers, B. A. (2000). Choice and the relative pleasure of consequences. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 910-924.
Klimoski, R., & Palmer, S. (1993). The ADA and the hiring process in organizations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 45(2), 10-36.
Article in electronic journal
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a standardized method for identifying an electronic object. The author should mention the same at the end of each reference.
Zhao, S., Grasmuck, S., & Martin, J. (2008). Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 24(5),816-1836. DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2008.02.012
Reference to a book for one author
Bernstein, T. M. (1965). The careful writer: A modern guide to English usage (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Atheneum.
Reference to electronic book
Anderson, C.A., Gentile, D.A., & Buckley, K.E. (2007). Violent video game effects on children and adolescents: Theory, research, and public policy. DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309836. 001.0001
Reference to a chapter in an edited book
Beiner, R.A., (2000). Arendt and Nationalism. In D.A. Villa (Ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Hannah Arendt (pp. 44- 64). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Submission checklist
The following list will be very useful to authors for the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. The author needs to endorse the following things at the time of submission
The manuscript is prepared as per the instructions to the authors.
The manuscript is prepared within the specified word limit
The manuscript is prepared using MS-Word 2007 in a single-column format with 12-point font, Times New Roman, 1.5 spaced (Including abstract and references) on A4 size white paper with 1-inch margins.
The title page (First page) contains all author names, their affiliations and corresponding author email and phone number. Any of these details are mentioned nowhere else in the manuscript.
The abstract is on the second page and the word limit for the abstract of this manuscript is within 250 words. Keywords are six and arranged chronologically arranged. Keywords do not contain any abbreviations.
Tables and figures are mentioned at the end of the references and their respective numbers are mentioned in the text at relevant places.
The figures (if any) are with 300 dpi in JPEG format with appropriate shape, necessary number and annotation.
Based on the content, the size of figures and images mentioned in this manuscript are either “2.6-inch height and 2.86-inch in width” or 4.14-inch in height and 5.83 inches.
References are prepared as per the American Psychological Association (APA) 2005 style.
In all references, author surname(s) or family name(s) or last name (as they appear on the actual publication) was mentioned in full and first and second names as initials.
The citation of references in the reference section and in the text is synchronized.
M. Sc. or Ph.D. Thesis is not used as references as such references are not accepted by AJST.
Website references are not used as references as such references are not accepted by AJST.
Revisions
After receipt of the reviews, the authors should return their revised version of the article or paper to the editorial office within 15 days; Otherwise, the article or paper will be treated as new submissions.
AFTER ACCEPTANCE OF MANUSCRIPT
Proofs
One set of galley proofs in PDF format will be sent to the corresponding author. If authors have any problem with using the PDF annotations function, they may contact the editor in chief with the reference ID number of your manuscript. Please use galley proof only for checking the typographical errors in editing, completeness, and correctness of the text, tables, and figures.
Reprints
The corresponding authors can download his electronic form of the article without any charges from the official journal website. Authors need to request Editor-in-Chief for print version (Charges are applied). For more details contact Editor-in-Chief at editor.ajst@wu.edu.et.
Copyright Notice
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