General Format of Articles

1. Manuscript Structure

Manuscripts should comprise:

Front matter: Title, Author list, Affiliations, Abstract, Keywords.

Main text: For Articles, a structured format, e.g., Introduction, Results, Discussion, Methods, Conclusions, is recommended, while Reviews may use a more flexible structure.

Back matter: Acknowledgment, Funding Statement, Author Contributions, Availability of Data and Materials, Ethics Approval, Conflict of Interests, Supplementary Materials (if any), Glossary (if any), Appendices (if any), and References.

2. Guidelines for Manuscript Components

● Title

The title of your manuscript should be precise, clear, and directly related to the study. It should indicate whether the research involves human or animal trial data, or if it is a systematic review, meta-analysis, or replication study. Avoid including short forms like running titles or headers, as these will be removed by the Editorial Office. They can be used in abstracts only if the related expanded form is provided (just after the acronym, in parentheses) the first time they are used.

● Author Information

Please provide the full names of all authors, including first and last names, with middle name initials included if necessary. Affiliations should follow the PubMed/MEDLINE standard format, including detailed address information such as city, postal code, state/province, and country. At least one author must be designated as the corresponding author, whose email address will be publicly displayed in the published article. Please note that after acceptance, changes to author names or affiliations may not be permitted. For authors with equal contributions, use a superscript symbol (#) for identification and include the following statement below the affiliation: “These authors contributed equally to this work.” Additionally, equal contributions should be clearly detailed in the author contributions section. Please review the relevant criteria to ensure authorship qualifications are met.

● Author Affiliations

All authors must include their current affiliation as well as the institution where the majority of the research for the manuscript was conducted. The primary affiliation should typically reflect the institution that provided the most support or where the bulk of the research was performed, but authors are encouraged to confirm any specific requirements with their institution, particularly regarding contractual agreements.

Accurate author names and affiliations are crucial to ensure proper attribution, citation, and to avoid issues related to recognition, promotions, or funding. Once an article is published, requests for updates or corrections to author details, including affiliations, may not be accommodated.

For Independent Researchers

Authors who are not currently associated with any university, institution, or organization, and were not during the development of the manuscript, should identify themselves as “Independent Researchers.”

● Abstract

Abstracts of a research paper should be typically 200 to 400 words in length, and 150 to 300 words for a review paper. Abstracts shall be running continuously and shall not include referencecitations. Abbreviations that appear only once in the abstract should be defined in full. If abbreviations appear more than once, the full definitions should be provided first before they can be used elsewhere.

● Keywords

Please list 3 to 10 pertinent keywords specific to the article yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.

3. Declarations

Please note that the 6 pieces of information (Acknowledgement, Funding Statement, Author Contributions, Availability of Data and Materials, Ethics Approval, Conflicts of Interest) need to be truthfully provided at the end of the article.

● Acknowledgement

This section is intended for acknowledging any support not covered under the Author Contributions or Funding Statement sections. This may include administrative and technical assistance, as well as in-kind contributions such as materials or equipment provided for the research. Please be aware that the specific funding grant number should only appear in the Funding Statement. If there are no acknowledgments to be made, please use “Not applicable”.

● Funding Statement

Authors should describe sources of funding that have supported the work, including specific grant numbers, initials of authors who received the grant, and the URLs to sponsors’ websites: “This research was funded by Name of Funder, grant number xxx” or “The APC was funded by xxx”. If there is no funding support, please write “The author(s) received no specific funding for this study”.

● Author Contributions

The Author Contributions statement is mandatory for research articles, except for papers with a single author. It should represent all the authors and is to be included upon submission. All listed authors must have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contribution. We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:

“The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: Conceptualization, First-name Lastname1 and First-name Lastname2; methodology, First-name Lastname1; software, First-name Lastname1; validation, First-name Lastname1, First-name Lastname2 and First-name Lastname3; formal analysis, First-name Lastname1; investigation, First-name Lastname1; resources, First-name Lastname1; data curation, First-name Lastname1; writing—original draft preparation, First-name Lastname1; writing—review and editing, First-name Lastname1; visualization, First-name Lastname1; supervision, First-name Lastname1; project administration, First-name Lastname1; funding acquisition, First-name Lastname1. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript”.

Please turn to the CRediT role descriptors—CRediT for the term explanation.

● Availability of Data and Materials

This statement should make clear how readers can access the data used in the study and explain why any unavailable data cannot be released. The following five statements are offered for reference:

1. Data openly available in a public repository.

“The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL].”

2. Data available within the article or its Supplementary Materials.

“The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its Supplementary Materials.”

3. Data available on request from the authors.

“The data that support the findings of this study are available from the Corresponding Author, [author initials], upon reasonable request.”

4. Data not available due to [ethical/legal/commercial] restrictions.

“Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data is not available.”

5. “Not applicable.” (This article does not involve data availability, and this section is not applicable).

● Ethics Approval

Guidelines for ethical approval statements may differ based on the journal, a standard ethical approval statement will usually include:

1. Whether or not the study included human or animal subjects. In all cases, the ethical approval status of the work should be stated in the ethical approval statement.

2. The committee which approved the study.

3. The compliance documents. What policies, declarations, acts, etc.

4. Persistent identifier: reference or approval number. Include the registration ID/reference number if applicable.

5. “Not applicable.” for studies not involving humans or animals.

● Conflicts of Interest

Declare conflicts of interest or state: “The author(s) declare(s) no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study”.

4. Supplementary Content and Reference Guidelines

● Supplementary Materials

In addition to the data, computer code, and research materials transparency guidelines, TSP encourages authors to provide supplementary materials that complement their main articles and enhance the readers' understanding of the research. Supplementary materials may include additional data, figures, tables, multimedia content, or relevant information.

1. Supplementary Materials Submission: Authors should submit supplementary materials along with their main article during the manuscript submission process. These materials should be in a separate section and clearly labeled as "Supplementary Materials.".

2. Content Relevance: All supplementary materials should be directly relevant to the main research article and provide valuable additional insights or data that support or expand upon the article's findings. Supplementary materials should not duplicate information already presented in the main text.

3. File Formats: Supplementary materials can be submitted in various formats, such as Word, PDF, Excel, CSV, images (JPEG or PNG), audio (MP3), video (MP4), or any other appropriate format for the content type.

4. Supplementary Data: Authors can provide raw data or additional data that support the article's findings but are not included in the main text due to space constraints. Data should be well-organized, properly labeled, and accompanied by clear explanations of the data's context and significance.

5. Supplementary Figures and Tables: Authors may include supplementary figures or tables to complement the main article, which should be clear, readable (with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi), and accompanied by accurate legends. These materials must be referenced in the main text using the prefix "S" (e.g., Fig. S1, Eq. (S2), Table S1) and should be submitted without tracked changes, highlights, comments, or line numbers.

● Appendices

The appendix is an optional section that can contain details and data supplemental to the main text. Authors that need to include an Appendix section should place it before the References section. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the style used for above. They should be ordered as such: A, B, and C, etc.

Appendix sections must be referenced in the main text. Within the appendices, figures, tables, and other elements should be labeled starting with “A”—e.g., Figure A1, Figure A2, etc.

● References

All references must be formatted according to APA style.

SCIMET Series Publications Division recommends editors and authors to utilize professional reference management tools such as EndNote for academic writing and literature formatting. EndNote is a reference management software from Clarivate Analytics. It is designed to manage bibliographies and references and available for Windows and MacOS. For authors, EndNote offers a convenient and efficient way to format their references according to a particular journal's guidelines. For journals and publishers, EndNote can save editorial time, and also shortens production time potentially.

All references should be cited in the main text sequentially (including citations in tables and legends) and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package, such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero, to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references. Include the digital object identifier (DOI) for all references where available.

For citations of references, please use square brackets and consecutive numbers, e.g., [1], [2,3], [4–6]. For embedded citations in the text with pagination, use both parentheses and brackets to indicate the reference number and page numbers; for example [5] (p. 10), or [6] (p. 101–105). When a cited reference is the subject of a sentence, use the author’s last name (e.g., Rhee [1]) or “Reference/Ref.” (e.g., Reference [1]). For multiple authors, use the first author followed by et al. (e.g., Al-Khshali et al. [2] or Refs. [4–6]). It is not recommended to cite more than 5 consecutive references. Please include the first 6 authors' names before using “et al.” in the references. Citations and references in the Supplementary Materials are permitted if they also appear in the reference list here.