Submissions

Author Guidelines

Article template is available in Word DOCX format.

Journal policies

• This journal adheres to COPE Core Practices (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices) of ethical scientific publishing.
• All articles are subject to the double-blind anonymous review. The names of contributors and author(s) should appear only on the title page of the manuscripts and not as a running head on each page. The originality of all submitted manuscripts, at any and all stages of the publication process, will be checked using the iThenticate anti-plagiarism online service. Originality issues, as detected by iThenticate, can serve as grounds for a rejection of submitted manuscripts at any stage of the publication process.
• Larger portions of text, not covered by the fair use rule, as well as copyrighted tables, illustrations as images are to be cleared before the manuscript submission. Authors are expected to cover the copyright clearance fees. The established copyright infringement can serve as grounds for rejection of submitted manuscripts at any stage of the editorial process.
• Authors are requested to send manuscripts, which have not been published, accepted for publication, or under consideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts, based on previously defended doctoral dissertations (regardless of their availability in full text), conference and working papers are accepted as original contributions, with the authors required to provide a note on the original source, its author(s) and availability. Papers, considered or previously published in academic journals, cannot be offered for publication to this journal. All publications, submitted to this journal, cannot be offered for publication elsewhere, before receiving the editorial decision, or being formally withdrawn from the editorial process by the author(s).

Author/submission guidelines

The Author/submission guidelines can be downloaded as a PDF file for your reference,

• The journal is published in two regular annual issues (June and December), with special issues being announced on time. Submissions targeted to appear in the June issue should be submitted by January 30, with the submissions, targeted for December issues, to be submitted by June 30 of the current year. However, no guarantees can be provided, as related to the length of the editorial process and the final publication date of the manuscript.
• It is recommended that the contributions have at least 4,000, but not more than 8,500 words (including references, tables and all appendices).
• Include an abstract of 150, up to 250 words and five to seven keywords. The journal does not accept structured abstracts. The journal accepts manuscripts only in English. Translations should be provided for citations in languages other than English.
• A high quality of English is required. While the authors of accepted papers can be assisted with some English corrections in the last stage of publication, major corrections and copy-editing are not available from the editorial office. Poor quality of English can serve as legitimate grounds for desk rejections of submitted papers, or delay in the publication of the accepted manuscripts.
• Submissions should follow the Seventh Edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), available at: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines. Some fundamental guidelines are also available below.

Formatting your article

Order of Pages

Arrange the pages of the APA Style paper in this order: (i) title page; (ii) abstract; (iii) text; (iv) references; (v) appendices.

Title Page Setup

The title page includes the paper title, author names (byline), author affiliation(s), author note and the running head. Follows the description of the layout. Please also check the sample paper.

• Place the title three to four lines down from the top of the title page. Center it and type it in bold font. Capitalize major word sof the title.
• Place one double-spaced blank line between the paper title and the author names. Center author names on their own line. If there are two authors, use the word “and” between authors; if there are three or more authors, place a comma between author names and use the word “and” before the final author name.
• When different authors have different affiliations, use superscript numerals after author names to connect the names to the appropriate affiliation(s). 
• The affiliation is the institution at which the research was conducted. Include both the name of any department and the name of the college, university, or other institution, separated by a comma. Center the affiliation on the next double-spaced line after the author names; when there are multiple affiliations, center each affiliation on its own line.
• Place the author note in the bottom half of the title page. Center and bold the label “Author Note.” Align the paragraphs of the author note to the left.

Page layout, paragraph alignment, indentation, line spacing, font and illustrations

Submission should be made in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) format, or, alternatively, the RTF format. We encourage you to compress the RTF submissions, by using the ZIP (or the compatible) compression utility. We do not accept PDF, or any other formats.

• Set the margins at 2.5 cm. Align the text to the left margin. Leave the right margin uneven.
• Do not insert hyphens (manual breaks) in words at the end of line. However, it is acceptable if your word-processing program automatically inserts breaks in long hyperlinks (such as in a DOI or URL in a reference list entry).
• Indent the first line of each paragraph of text 1.27 cm from the left margin.
• Double-space the text.
• Use the 11-point Calibri or Times New Roman fonts.
• Tables, illustrations and figures should be provided in machine-readable and editable formats, embedded in the Microsoft Word, or the RTF file. We do not accept manuscripts with non-editable tables (embedded into the manuscript files in the form of figures). We prefer vector-based images, but will accept manuscripts with bitmap illustrations and figures, if they are of high-quality and suitable for printing.
• Place illustrations, figures, and tables at the position in the manuscript, where they should appear in print/online publication.
• Exceptions to these paragraph-formatting requirements are as follows:
• Title page: For professional papers, the title (in bold), byline, and affiliations should be centered on the title page.
• Section labels: Section labels (e.g., “Abstract,” “References”) should be centered (and bold).
• Abstract: The first line of the abstract should be flush left (not indented).
• Block quotations: Indent a whole block quotation 1.27 cm from the left margin. If the block quotation spans more than one paragraph, the first line of the second and any subsequent paragraphs of the block quotation should be indented another 1.27 cm.
• Headings: Level 1 headings should be centered (and in bold), and Level 2 and 3 headings should be left-aligned (and in bold or bold italic, respectively). Level 4 and 5 headings are indented like regular paragraphs.
• Tables and figures: Table and figure numbers (in bold), titles (in italics), and notes should be flush left.
• Reference list: Reference list entries should have a hanging indent of 1.27 cm.
• Appendices: Appendix labels and titles should be centered (and bold).

Headings

• There are five levels of heading in APA Style. Level 1 is the highest or main level of heading, Level 2 is a subheading of Level 1, Level 3 is a subheading of Level 2, and so on through Levels 4 and 5. The number of headings to use in a paper depends on the length and complexity of the work.
• Use only the number of headings necessary to differentiate distinct sections in your paper. Please avoid the following:
  • Avoid having only one subsection heading within a section, just like in an outline.
  • Do not label headings with numbers or letters.
  • Double-space headings; do not switch to single spacing within headings.
  • Do not add blank lines above or below headings, even if a heading falls at the end of a page.

In-text citations

Each study cited must appear in the reference list, and each work in the reference list must be cited in the text (or in a table, figure, footnote, or appendix). Both paraphrases and quotations require citations.

All references in the text and notes must be specified by the authors’ last names and date of publication together with page numbers for direct quotations from print sources. Do not use ibid., op. cit., infra., supra.

Note the following for the style of in-text citations:

• For narrative citations, the author’s surname appears in running text, and the date appears in parentheses immediately after the author’s name.
  • ... Author Last Name (year) has argued ...
• For parenthetical citations both the author and the date, separated by a comma, appear in parentheses. A parenthetical citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence.
  • ... several works (Author Last Name, year) have described ... For direct quotations, the page number follows the year, preceded by ‘p.’ (not a colon):
  • ... it has been noted (Author Last Name, year, p. XXX) that ...
• Where there are two authors, always cite both names, joined by ‘and’ in narrative citations and joined by an ampersand (&) if within parenthetical citation, in tables and in captions, and in the reference list:
  • …Author Last Name and Author Last Name (year) stated that…
  • ... it has been stated (Author Last Name & Author Last Name, year) ...
• When a work has six or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by ‘et al.’ (not italicized and followed by a period after ‘al’) and the year for the first and subsequent citations. If two or more references by the same author are cited together, separate the dates with a comma (in chronological order):
  • ... the author has stated this in several studies (Author Last Name, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2006) ...
• If there is more than one reference to the same author (or by the same two or more authors in the same order) and year, insert the suffixes ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc. after the year of publication and repeat the year. The suffixes are assigned in the reference list, where these kinds of references are ordered alphabetically by title (of the article, chapter, or complete work):
  • ... it was described (Author Last Name, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c) ...
• List two or more works by different authors who are cited within the same parentheses in alphabetical order by the first author’s surname, separated by semicolons:
  • ... and it has been noted (Clark, 2001; Miller, 2001) ...
• When a work has no author as such, cite in the text the first few words of the reference list entry (usually the title) and the year. Use double quotation marks around the title of an article or chapter or web page and italicize the title of a journal, book, etc.:
  • ... it was stated (“Title of publication”, year) that ...

Reference list

• Arrange entries in alphabetical order by surname of the first author followed by the author’s given name(s). Alphabetize letter by letter: Brown, A.J. precedes Browning A.T.
• Names should be in initial cap then lower case.
• Last Names containing de, van, von, De, Van, Von, de la, etc. should be alphabetized according to the language of origin.
• One-author entries by the same author are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first:

Upenieks, V. (2003).

Upenieks, V. (2005).

• One-author entries precede multiple-author entries beginning with the same surname (even if the multiple-author work was published earlier :

Alleyne, R. L. (2001).

Alleyne, R. L., & Evans, A. J. (1999).

• References with the same first author and different second or third authors are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the second author or, if the second author is the same, the surname of the third author, and so on:

Hayward, D., Firsching, A., & Brown, J. (1999).

Hayward, D., Firsching, A., & Smigel, J. (1999).

• References with the same authors in the same order are arranged by year of publication, the earliest first:

Cabading, J. R., & Wright, K. (2000).

Cabading, J. R., & Wright, K. (2001).

• The date of retrieval of online material is not required, only the URL.