Below are the general recommendations and description of different sections of the manuscript:
Title page of the manuscript should include the title of manuscript, short title, author(s) name and their affiliation, type of manuscript (Research article, Review or Short communication), total number of tables, figures and pages in the manuscript.
Title of the manuscript
- Should be descriptive and concise.
- Should not exceed two lines.
- Should be written in sentence case where only the first word of the text, proper nouns, and genus names are capitalized.
- Avoid the use of numbers and abbreviations in the title.
Short title
- Should state the topic of the study (e.g. Heavy metals and Biosorption).
- Should only be 70-80 character long with spacing.
Authors name(s) should be in the following order:
- First name (or initials if used), Middle name (or initials if used) and Last name (Surname, Family)
- Authors name will be published exactly as given in the title page of the manuscript. It’s the responsibility of author to check that the name is spelled correctly.
- Do not write names in capital letters.
Corresponding authorship
- Mark the corresponding author with a star (*).
Author(s) affiliations
- Each author on the manuscript must have an affiliation.
- The affiliation includes department, university, or organizational affiliation and its location, including city, state/province (if applicable), and country.
- Authors may include a current address in addition to the address of their affiliation at the time of the study and should be clearly labeled “current address.”
- Include full postal address with Postal/Zip code, phone number and an official email address for the corresponding author listed on the title page of the manuscript.
Type of manuscript
- On the title page indicate the type of your manuscript (Research article, Review or Short communication).
- At the end of the title page indicate the total number of tables, figures and pages at the end of the title page.
Abstract page
Abstract page follows the title page and should contain the title of the manuscript, abstract and key words. To facilitate the blind review process, there should be no name(s) and address(es) of the author(s) on this and the subsequent pages of the manuscript. Abstract text
- Should introduce the manuscript.
- Should be clearly accessible to a broad readership.
- Should be concise and informative.
- Should not exceed 350 words.
- Should not contain references.
- Avoid using specialist abbreviations in abstract.
- Abstract should conceptually be divided into the following three sections: background, methodology, significant findings, and conclusions/interpretation. However, the abstract should be written as a single paragraph without these headings.
- The final sentence should highlight the significance and wider implications of the study.
Key words
- Should adequately index the subject matter.
- Should be 5-8 in number.
- Should be arranged in alphabetical order.
Main body/text of the manuscript
- Main body/text of the manuscript follows the abstract page and should be preferably subdivided into the standard IMRAD sections: Introduction, Methods and Materials, Results, and Discussion.
Introduction
- Provide a clear description of the study questions/hypotheses, aims, or objectives.
- Provide background information to support the motivation for the study.
- Briefly review the literature to summarize current knowledge.
- Acknowledge inconsistencies in the literature review, rather presenting only studies that support the present study hypothesis.
- Should be specific and informative.
- Should be supported with relevant references.
- Do not summarize study results or conclusions in the Introduction.
- Should also be understandable to readers who are not subject matter experts in the field of the research area of the manuscript.
Materials and Methods
- Should be sufficiently detailed to enable the experiments to be reproduced.
- The standard techniques and methodology may simply be referenced.
- Submit detailed protocols for new or less established methods.
- For research that involves animals, include all relevant details listed in the latest version of the ARRIVE guidelines.
- Indicate that the protocol was approved by an institutional animal care and use committee.
- For research that involves human subjects, include all relevant details listed in an appropriate version of the STROBE or other guidelines and provide information about institutional review board approval.
Results and Discussion
- The Results and Discussion sections may be combined into one section.
- The conclusions and implications of the work should be provided.
- In cases where no conclusion may have drawn, the implications of the study should be provided.
- The author(s) can either provide a conclusion as a subheading under the Discussion section or provide the conclusion with no heading at the end of the Discussion section.
- The Results section should provide details of all of the experiments that are required to support the conclusions of the paper.
- Do not limit results to statistically significant results or selected findings that support the study hypothesis.
- Unnecessary details of experiments should be avoided.
- The Results section should be written in the past tense.
- Results may be split into sub-headings
- Data should be arranged in a unified and coherent sequence and statistically analyzed with significance.
- Position of figures and tables should be indicated in the left margin of Text.
- The same data should not be presented both in Tables and Figures.
- Do not describe methods the first time in the result section.
Discussion
- The Discussion should point out the major conclusions and interpretations of the work.
- Should include some explanation on the significance of these conclusions.
- Review relevant literature to put the manuscript findings into context.
- Provide an honest discussion of limitations of the present study.
- Do not describe methods or results for the first time in the Discussion section.
- The Discussion should be concise and tightly argued.
- It should be based on the results of the study without extrapolating beyond the results being reported and supported by relevant latest references.
- Final paragraph of the Discussion section should provide the conclusions (if any) and the implications of the study and future research, as appropriate.
Acknowledgment
- Should include the names of those who contributed substantially to the work described in the manuscript and/or agencies that aided the research of authors.
- It is the responsibility of authors to ensure that anyone named in acknowledgements agrees to be named.
Author contribution statement
- Should be included at the end of the manuscript before the references.
- Should briefly describe the task of individual authors.
Conflict of interest statement
- Needs to be included at the end of the manuscript before the references.
- All authors are requested to disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.
- For more information on conflicts of interest, see our Editorial Policy.
References
- Use a non-superscripted, numbered reference format.
- References in the main text, boxes and figures are numbered and in square brackets (e.g. [1], [1,5,7], [1-3]), and listed at the end of the main text.
- References should be listed in order of citation, not alphabetically, with one reference per number.
- In tables, references should be cited in numbers in square brackets in a separate column and included in the reference list at the end of the main text.
- AJEB uses the “Vancouver” style of referencing as outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
- Refer to ICMJE sample references for example.
- Unpublished papers should not be included / cited in the manuscript.
Figures
- Number figures according to the order in which they are first mentioned in the main text.
- Ensure that all figures are cited in the main text.
- Provide figure captions on a new page of the main text after tables.
- Should be High-quality color graphics and high-resolution, high-quality pictures.
- Graphics should be in color wherever possible, on a white background.
- For final publication, images must be of high resolution (300 dpi with a maximum width of 9 inches and the maximum height of 6 inches).
- However for the review process images with lower resolution can also be used (>90dpi).
- Use American English spelling.
- Do not use grid lines on graphs.
- Each photo and figure should be submitted as a separate electronic file (jpg or TIFF files preferred).
- The file name should consist of the corresponding author’s last name and the figure number and letter where part of a multipanel figure [eg Anderson Figure 1a].
- If photographs are embedded within a table or figure, supply high-resolution versions of those in a separate files.
- Choose the size of figures between 3.5 and 4.5 inches (8.9–11.4 cm) wide; create your original images as close to these dimensions as possible to avoid distortion caused by shrinking or enlarging, and to preserve the best resolution.
- Graphics should be provided on a white background.
- Each figure should have an explanatory caption.
- Credits for images, when these come from any source other than the author, should be given after a caption, in the format “Courtesy of SK Smith” or “© ABC Publications”.
Tables
- All tables should be created using the Table feature in Microsoft Word or Libre/Open office.
- Begin each table on a new page after the list of references.
- Do not place tables within the manuscript text, these should be placed after the References.
- Try to limit tables to 5-6 columns. If the table is too big divide it into multiple tables.
- All tables are to be numbered sequentially.
- Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. Number tables using numbers (e.g., Table 1, 2, 3, etc.) according to the order in which they are first mentioned in the main text.
- For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table.
- Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption.
- Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.
- Indicate footnotes using lowercase italicized superscript letters.
- Do not use footnotes in the table title.