Guidelines for authors

Aims and Scope

Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research is a peer reviewed multidisciplinary journal covering wide areas of research in the fields of natural sciences, Medical and Biological sciences, Humanities, Arts and Social sciences. The journal publishes reviews in hot fields of research. The journal issued on biannual basis; on January the issue will cover research in natural, medical and biological sciences and on June the issue will publish research in Humanities and Arts. Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research accepts research in both English and Arabic Languages for arts and humanities fields and only in English for natural, medical and biological sciences.

Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research publishes the following article types:

- Research Articles

High quality and original research articles are published in all areas that will be of great interest to the audience in Palestine and the World.  Manuscripts should be prepared as Microsoft Word document (see guidelines for authors) and submitted through the electronic submission system together with high resolution figures and all supplementary information and a separate cover letter. The number of words for a full length article should not exceed 3000 words for manuscripts in natural and medical sciences and up to 5000 words in manuscripts in humanities and arts.

- Review Articles

Review articles are published only by invitation from the Editor. Researchers interested to submit review articles should communicate with journal editor to get permission explaining the value and importance of the proposed review. The review articles should be formatted with the standards followed by the journal and subjected to the same peer review process.

Journal Standards

Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research implemented open access policy and accepts high quality research. All submitted manuscripts are subjected for peer review process that include three reviewers working closely in the research field. Authors should aware that manuscripts should describe the research carried by the main author and his team and followed the ethical standards of research. Submission of the manuscript to Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research means that all authors have read and agreed to the Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research policy.

- Ethical approval

All research manuscripts involving human or animal subjects, human data either medical or statistical must be conducted in accordance with ethical standards described in Declaration of Helsinki. An ethical approval by a recognized and institutional ethics committee should be accompanied with the submission package. Research involved plant materials or field collection of plants or plant parts should comply with legal and national laws, plant specimens should be deposited in a public herbarium or other collection institution providing access to deposited materials. Manuscripts described research involving human or animal subjects and not accompanied by ethical approval will be rejected and returned.

- Clinical Data

Publication of data sets containing clinical data, the authors have the ethical and legal responsibility to respect individual’s privacy and protect their identity. Authors should obtain informed consent for publication of such data or they may consult local ethics committee.

- Statistical analysis

Authors should use appropriate statistical methods to analyze data providing justification in the manuscript about the statistical method used. Reviewers may check the statistical methods and may send the manuscript for a statistician for further review.

- Scientific names and nomenclature

Nomenclature of all organisms should be provided by scientific name that include a genus and species names, scientific names should be written in italic. Gene nomenclatures and symbols should be used in accordance with the gene nomenclature databases.

- Author’s contribution

Authors listed on the submitted manuscripts should have a contribution to the research described, author names should be organized according to their contribution. Author contribution should be specified and included in the manuscript. Change the authorship is not permitted after acceptance of the manuscript.

- Confidentiality

Editors and reviewers of Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research will treat all manuscripts in high confidentiality. The manuscripts will not be shared as a whole nor in part with third parties (except if research misconduct is suspected and Journal initiates an investigation) during or after the review process and not to reveal any details of the manuscript beyond the information released by the journal. The journal editors and reviewers are strictly comply with the intellectual rights and publication rules actively practiced and listed as laws and effective in Palestine and the Palestinian National Authority.

- Competing interests

 All competing interests connecting to the research work submitted should be declared, either financial or non-financial. Competing interests declaration should be included in the manuscript. Competing interests may affect author’s interpretation of data and presentation of manuscript information influenced by personal or financial relationships with other people or organizations. If authors have no competing interests, the following statement should read “The author (s) declare (s) that they have no competing interests”.

Reviewers should also declare about the existence of any competing interests, in this case they may be excluded from peer review.

- Acknowledgments

Contributors to the research work but not fulfil the authorship criteria should be listed in “Acknowledgments” section of the manuscript.

- Citations

Appropriate and relevant literature that support the information provided in the manuscript and supported the results and conclusions should be cited appropriately (please see to Authors Guidelines). Self-citation is not recommended and its relevance to the submitted work will be checked by editors and reviewers.

- Publication agreement

All manuscripts submitted to Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research should be original and not submitted for publication if full, in part or not under consideration by any other journal. Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research will assess any overlapping or co-submission and have the right to reject any redundant publication. All manuscripts submitted to Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research will be checked against plagiarism and violation of publication rules using the appropriate software and tools available and in service at Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research. When submitting a manuscript to Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research the authors endorse their compliance to Journal’s rules and policies and accept the publication agreement.

- Research ethics violations and misconduct

Deliberate manipulation of the results including image manipulation like grouping of images from different parts will result in delay the review process and rejection. Adjustments of the image brightness and contrast is acceptable if applied to the whole image and not a part of it. Any manipulations of the results or fabrication or violation the ethical standards of publishing may lead to rejection and reporting to the author’s institution.

Authors Guidelines

The following information is important as guidelines for the preparation of the manuscript. The manuscript may be written in American or British English languages but not a mix of both as well as Arabic language. The font should Times New Roman for manuscripts written in English or Simplified Arabic for those written in Arabic, lines double spaced and font size of 12 points. The page should be formatted as A4 with margins of one inch from every side, inline numbers for manuscripts in English should be in left side margin, for manuscripts in Arabic in right margin.

Title page

The title page should include the following information:

- Appropriate title that reflect the study design

- Full names and affiliations of all authors including institutional addresses and emails.

- One of the authors should be indicated as corresponding author

- Equally contributed authors should be designated by asterisks

Abstract

This section should be concisely written and not exceed 400 words, abbreviations and citing references should not appear in this section.

Keywords

Appropriate keywords representing the research and contents of the manuscript should be included in the manuscript, the total number of keywords is from three to five.

Introduction

This section includes background information that explain why the study is necessary and important, aims and a literature review. Information provided in this section should be properly cited.

Materials and Methods

Described the detailed description of all methods used in the study, including statistical analysis, and the names of all materials and equipment used. Brand names, manufacturer and country should be included in parenthesis. Names of organisms should be supported with scientific names, DNA sequences should be submitted to GenBank and their accession numbers should be provided in the manuscript.

Results

The findings of the study should be included in this section, either as text or in tables and figures, a detailed description of the findings should be reported.

Discussion

A discussion of the results of the study with the context of existing research and limitations of the study should be reported in this section. Explanation of the importance and relevance of the study to the field may be included in this section or provided under “Conclusions” section.

Acknowledgments

Anyone who contributed and helped toward the study but not fulfil the criteria of authorship should be acknowledged either providing technical support or in the writing process.

Citations

The references should be cited in the text as author date system. The list of references should aphetically ordered in references section of the manuscript. Al-Quds Journal for Academic Research will use author date style (see examples below). For a convenient and correct format, the authors are advised to use one of available software like EndNote or the freely available Mendeley.

  • Book

- (Molyneux and Ashford 1983)

Ashford, R. W. and S. Bettini, Eds. (1987). The Leishmaniasis in Biology and Medicine Ecology and epidemiology: Old world. London, Academic press.

- (Avise 2000)

Avise, J. C. (2000). PhyloGeographyraphy: the History and Formation of Species. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press.

Chapter in a book

- (Crampton, Beard et al. 1997)

Crampton, J. M., C. B. Beard and C. Louis (1997). The molecular biology of insect disease vectors : a methods manual. London ; New York, Chapman & Hall.

  • Translated book

- (Lahiri 2016)

Lahiri, Jhumpa. 2016. In Other Words. Translated by Ann Goldstein. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

  • Edited book

- (Ashford and Bettini 1987)

Ashford, R. W. and S. Bettini, Eds. (1987). The Leishmaniasis in Biology and Medicine Ecology and epidemiology: Old world. London, Academic press.

- (Mitton 1997)

Mitton, J., B, Ed. (1997). Selection in Natural Populations. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

  • Book chapter

- (Arnheim 1983)

Arnheim, N. (1983). Concerted evolution of multigene families. . Evolution of Genes and Proteins. M. Nei, Koehn, R.K. Sunderland, MA, Sinauer Associates: 38–61.

-  (Arnheim and Graham 1983)

Arnheim, N. Graham, L. (1983). Concerted evolution of multigene families. . Evolution of Genes and Proteins. M. Nei, Koehn, R.K. Sunderland, MA, Sinauer Associates: 38–61.

  • Journal article

- (Hamarsheh 2011)

Hamarsheh, O. (2011). "Distribution of Leishmania major zymodemes in relation to populations of Phlebotomus papatasi sand flies." Parasit Vectors 4: 9.

- (Hamarsheh and Amro 2011)

Hamarsheh, O. and A. Amro (2011). "Characterization of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) from Phlebotomus papatasi (Diptera: Psychodidae) expressed sequence tags (ESTs)." Parasit Vectors 4: 189.

- (Hamarsheh, Azmi et al. 2017)

Hamarsheh, O., K. Azmi, A. Amro, M. Schultheis, Z. Abdeen, R. Firdessa, K. Sawalha, F. Al-Rimawi, R. Yaghmour and a. H. Moll (2017). "Antileishmanial potential of crude plant extracts derived from medicinal plants in Palestine." Annals of Clinical Cytology and Pathology 3(4): 1065.

  • Thesis or dissertation

- (Hamarsheh 2007)

Hamarsheh, Omar. 2007. “Molecular systematics and population structure analysis of the Leishmania major vector; Phlebotomus papatasi ” PhD dissertation. Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin.

  • Website content

- (Bloor, Barker et al. 2001, WHO 2011)

Bloor, P. A., F. S. Barker, C. Watts, H. A. Noyes and S. J. Kemp. (2001). "Microsatellite Libraries by Enrichment, Protocol available at http://www.liv.ac.uk/~kempsj/genomics.html

Preparation of figures

The following guidelines should be followed when preparing the figure, figures not formatted in a corrected way will be returned to the authors.

- Figures should be original and authors should obtain permission for copyright materials.

- Figures should be submitted separately in single files that fits maximum a single page

-  Multi part figures (A,B, C..etc) should be grouped first in a single figure.

-  Figures should be numbered according to the first mentioned in the text

- Each figure should has a title (max 10 words) and a legend ( max 200 words)

- Each figure should uploaded in the correct orientation and its size should not exceed 10 MB.

- Figures should be in JPEG or TIFF formats with resolution of 3500 DPI at the final size.

Preparation of tables

- Tables should be numbered according to first mentioned in the text

- Tables should prepared using Microsoft Word table tools (table object) and should not developed as image

- Tables that accommodate more than one A4 page should be submitted as supplementary materials

-Tables should supplied with title (max 15 words) and legend (max 200 words)

- The Font for data should be times new roman with 12 points with black automatic color. Shading and further formatting or coloring is not needed.

 

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