Author Guidelines
Author Guidelines
- Focus and Scope
The Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (BCSE) is a monthly publication of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia. The BCSE is an open access and peer reviewed journal. The BCSE invites contributions in any field of basic and applied chemistry.
- Types of contributions. The BCSE publishes:
2.1 Full papers reporting the results of original research. The materials should not have been published elsewhere, nor should they be simultaneously submitted either partially or fully for publication elsewhere.
2.2 Short communications containing the results of a limited investigation. These should be properly documented by references to the literature and by description of experimental procedures.
2.3 Reviews presenting thorough documentations on subjects of active and current interest in chemical sciences. The duration (10 years, 20 years) covered in review article should be clearly stated. The total number of references should not exceed 200.
All classes of manuscripts must represent substantial original work and must not be submitted simultaneously to any other journal.
- The Manuscript
3.1 All manuscripts must be written in English.
3.2 Organization of Manuscript. The authors should download one of the recently published article to clarify the manuscript's formatting. Sections and sub-sections should not be numbered. It is preferred to have the manuscript organized under the following headings:
(a) TITLE: The title should be concise, reflecting the manuscript's main content. Title should be types in bold upper case letters and at the center.
(b) Authors: Full names of all the authors should be given with superscript numbers indicating their affiliations. The corresponding author should be indicated by superscript asterisk. If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s) should be given.
(c) Affiliations: A full address of each author should be given and indicated by superscript numbers if the addresses of authors are different.
(d) Corresponding author: The corresponding author e-mail address should be given.
(e) Changes to authorship: The editors of this journal generally will not consider changes to authorship once a manuscript has been submitted. It is important that authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and provide a definitive author list at the original submission. Addition of new author(s) will not be allowed after the acceptance of manuscript.
(e) ABSTRACT. The manuscript must contain a brief and concise abstract that is self-contained, free of citations, and does not exceed 200 words. The abstract should also not contain any undefined abbreviations.
(f) KEY WORDS: 4-6 main words contained in the Title and Abstract should be given. Each key word should be separated by comma.
(g) INTRODUCTION: The purpose of the investigation should be clearly stated and relating the manuscript to similar research in the literature. It should be brief, with no subheadings. Finally the main objectives of the research should be clearly stated.
(h) EXPERIMENTAL: All the chemicals, apparatus, and instruments should be given with model numbers, manufacturer companies and supplier countries. Sample collections and sample preparations should be clearly described.
(i) RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The same data should not be presented in duplicate as Table and Figure. Either the data should be presented as Table or as Figure, but not both. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, ChekDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.
(j) Units of measurement: Units of measurement should be presented precisely and concisely using the International System of Units (SI).
(k) CONCLUSION: The conclusion should be short and concise stating the main achievement of the study.
(l) ACKNOWLEDGEMENT(S): The acknowledgements should contain any financial, material and technical support received for the study.
(m) Ethical guidelines: For any experiments on humans, all work must be conducted by the Declaration of Helsinki (1964) Manuscripts describing experimental work that carries a risk of harm to human subjects must include a statement that the experiment was conducted with the human subjects' understanding and written informed consent, as well as a statement that the responsible ethics committee has approved the experiments.
In the case of any animal experiments, the authors must provide a full description of any anaesthetic or surgical procedure used, as well as evidence that all possible steps were taken to avoid animal suffering at each stage of the experiment. Approval must be obtained from the relevant ethics committee/Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee where required.
(n) Data availability: Authors must include a data availability statement with their submission. When submitting a manuscript, submitting authors use the text editor to tell us about data availability with regard to their submission.
(o) Conflicts of interest: Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. Submitting authors are responsible for co-authors declaring their interests.
(p) Funding statement: Authors must state how the research and publication of their article was funded, by naming financially supporting body(s) (written out in full) followed by associated grant number(s) in square brackets (if applicable), for example: This work was supported by XXXX [grant numbers yyyy, zzzz].
If the research did not receive specific funding, but was performed as part of the employment of the authors, please name this employer. If the funder was involved in the manuscript writing, editing, approval, or decision to publish, please declare this.
(q) Declaration of generative AI in scientific writing: Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies by adding a statement within their manuscript.
Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL/ SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.
This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement.
(r) REFERENCES: reference numbers in the text should appear sequentially in square brackets [ ] and not as super- or sub-scripts. Each reference should be given a separate reference number. The references should be listed in the References section as 1., 2., 3., without [ ].
The total number of references should not exceed 50.
(s) References Writing: Please note the following examples:
JOURNAL: Gashaw, W.; Yohannes, W.; Chandravanshi, B.S.; Getachew N. Levels of heavy metals and physicochemical properties of honey from four selected areas of Ethiopia. Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2024, 38, 1521-1531.
Do not use et al. Include names of all the authors.
BOOK: Miller, J.N.; Miller, J.C. Statistics and Chemometrics for Analytical Chemistry, 6th ed., Pearson Education Limited: Essex, England; 2010; p 202.
M.Sc. Thesis: Kassaye, M. Determination of β-carotene in five selected Ethiopian vegetables using UV-Vis spectrophotometric method. MSc Thesis, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2024.
Ph.D. Thesis: Adane, W.D. Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for the Determination of Selected Antibiotic Drug Residues in Food and Water Samples. PhD Thesis, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2024.
Internet: NHS inform. Antibiotics. May 2024. Available at:
Habte, T.; Amare, A.; Bettridge, J.; Collins, M.; Christley, R.; Wigley, P. Guide to chicken health and management in Ethiopia. ILRI Manual 25. Nairobi, Kenya: International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), 2017. Available at: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/132697854.pdf.
The authors are advised to make comprehensive review of the scientific literature and appropriately cite related work published by the BCSE.
3.3 Formulas, Schemes, Figures and Tables should be drawn using appropriate software and should be placed within the main body of the manuscript. They may be drawn in 1.5 times the size finally required. The font size of lettering on Figures should ensure that reductions of ca 70% would still result in easily readable sizes. The widths of Tables and Figures should not exceed 5 inches (12.5 cm) in the published version. Legends should be typed below the Figures and should not be grouped with the Figures.
The total number of Schemes, Tables and Figures should not exceed 10.
3.4 Supporting Information
Authors are encouraged to submit supporting information such as NMR spectrum, HRMS, and images as a single pdf file. Submitted supplementary items are not published online but will send to reviewers for evaluation.
3.5 Submission of Manuscript
For a work conducted by a group of researchers, the corresponding author has the obligation to obtain the consent of all co-authors prior to submission of the manuscript. The soft copy of the original manuscript typed with double spacing and formatted according to guide for authors should be sent as an e-mail attachment to: csechem@yahoo.com and copy to bscv2006@yahoo.com. The covering letter should be addressed to: The Editor-in-Chief, Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia, P.O. Box 32934, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The cover letter should include the names and addresses (including e-mail addresses) of five reviewers who have expertise in the subject matter of the manuscript or who have published similar work. The reviewers should not be from the authors’ own organization and preferably from different countries. All inquiry about the status of manuscript should be addressed to: csechem@yahoo.com
- The Peer Review Process
All submissions are subjected to an internal review by the corresponding discipline editor. Manuscripts that fall outside the scope of our journal or that fail to meet a minimum quality and originality criteria will be rejected without being sent out to reviewers. Abstracts of manuscripts that passed the internal review process will be sent out to five referees. The full manuscript will be sent to referees who accepted the initial invitation to provide a review. The author will be requested to submit a new list of potential reviewers if majority or all of the invited referees turn down the invitation. A decision to accept, reject, or 'reject and resubmit' a manuscript is based on at least two reviewer reports.
- Open Access Statement and Creative Commons License
Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia is an open access, peer reviewed journal, which means that all articles are freely available without charge to all users immediately upon publication. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. To facilitate this open and free access to all users, the BCSE depends upon the funding generously provided by the Chemical Society of Ethiopia and the Addis Ababa University, and the goodwill of its editorial team and advisory board, and the continuing support of peer reviewers.
The Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia also implements the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to works we publish. This license allows users to copy, distribute and transmit an article, adapt the article as long as the author is attributed. The CC BY license permits commercial and non-commercial reuse.
The author retains copyright of their work with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0) license.
- Article Processing Charges
Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia published all accepted manuscripts without any article processing charges and article submission charge up to August 2022. The publication cost was covered by donation from individual Ethiopians. Now the Chemical Society of Ethiopia has no source of any income to cover the cost of publication of the Bulletin of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia. Therefore, the Chemical Society of Ethiopia has decided to charge USD 200 article processing charge for every accepted manuscript starting from September 1, 2022. The authors should confirm their willingness to pay article processing charge of USD 200 at the time of manuscript submission to start the review process. While payment should done after acceptance of the manuscript but before its publication.
We offer waivers and discounts on the article processing charge for authors from Sub-Saharan African countries up on request.
- Plagiarism Screening Policy
This journal uses CrossCheck plagiarism screening system (iThenticate) to detect any possible plagiarism in the submissions.
- Abstracting and Indexing
African Journal OnLine (AJOL); Chemical Abstracts; Scopus; ISI Index; EBSCO; Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
- Conflict of Interest
All authors should declare any conflict of interests related to the manuscript, these interests include but not limited to commercial, personal, political and intellectual aspects. All editors, editorial staff and reviewers should also report potential conflict of interests related to the submissions they are working with.
- For Reviewers
The reviewers should provide unbiased comments for the manuscript, and indicate whether the work is original, creative and scientifically accurate and sounded. The reviewers should provide suggestions to editors whether the work is within the journal’s scope, suitable to be published in the journal and make their recommendation in one of these categories: the work should be published as is, published after revising, or be rejected. Reviewers should not cite the work and refrain from using the part of the manuscript to advance their own research before publication. Reviewers are also expected to destroy or delete the manuscript files after finishing reviewing, and may not disclose any information to third parties.
- Human and Animal Rights, and Informed Consent
Published research must comply with the guidelines for human studies and animal welfare regulations. Authors should state that subjects have given their informed consent and that the study protocol has been approved by the institution’s ethical committee on human research. Further, they should also state that animal experiments conform to institutional standards.
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.
