Author Guidelines

UMT Journals use Open Journal System (OJS), for any manuscript submission in our journals. The corresponding author or any other author may submit manuscripts in the Word format. Kindly note that UMT Journals only accept submissions directly from the authors and submissions from any other author/individuals would not be considered. In case of any query, authors are requested to contact [email protected].

Guidelines for submitting manuscripts for UMT Journals are aligned with the guidelines and best practices outlined by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). The suggested policy rules for article submissions based on COPE's principles are as follows:

Originality and Plagiarism

  • Authors must ensure that their submitted articles are original and have not been previously published elsewhere.
  • Plagiarism, including the use of AI tools and the use of others' work without appropriate citation and/or permission, where necessary, is strictly prohibited.
  • UMT Journals may employ plagiarism detection software to screen submissions for potential plagiarism detection.
  • All the submitted documents would be passed through similarity-checking tools, such as Turnitin, iThenticate, and others.

Authorship and Contributions

  • All individuals who have made substantial contributions to the research and preparation of the article should be listed as authors.
  • The order of authorship should be determined based on their significant contributions. (For details see Authors' Names for Significant Contributions/Credits)
  • It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission.

Disclosure of Conflict of Interest

  • Authors must disclose any financial, personal, or professional conflict of interest, which could potentially influence the research, analyses, or findings.
  • If no conflict of interest exist, authors are required to explicitly state it in the submission. (For details see Conflict of Interest)

Ethical Treatment of Human and Animal Subjects

  • Research involving human or animal subjects should have appropriate ethical approvals and informed consent from participants or their legal guardians.
  • Authors would provide details about the ethical considerations and approvals in their submissions (See Research Ethics Guidelines).

Data Integrity and Reproducibility

  • Authors would ensure the integrity and accuracy of their data and provide a sufficient information to enable the reproducibility of the research (For details see Data Availability policy).

Review Process

  • UMT Journals outlines the peer-review process and criteria used for evaluating the submissions (For details see peer-review policy).
  • UMT journals ensure a fair and unbiased review-process; therefore, reviewers are selected based on their expertise.

Multiple Submissions and Concurrent Publication

  • UMT journal explicitly states that simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to multiple journals is not acceptable even if the manuscript is under review process and status is unknown. The manuscript can be submitted to a journal only if the final decision of rejection has been communicated to the author.
  • Authors are required to disclose the status (if any part of the submitted work has been previously published) or is under consideration elsewhere.

Corrections, Retractions, and Withdrawals

  • UMT journals should have clear policies and procedures for handling corrections, retractions, and withdrawals, aligned with COPE's guidelines.

Authors can consult the policies regarding corrections or retractions of articles if required. (For details see Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawal Policy)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Readers of UMT journals usually access articles from Google Scholar, research gate, and other search engines. Authors can play a crucial role to enhance the visibility and citations of their research by following the given tips.

  • Title of a research article should include 1 or 2 keywords and a phrase of the title must be placed at the very start of the abstract (first or second sentence) as the first two sentences normally display in search engines.
  • As the abstract aims to present the key points of your research, authors are requested to repeat the keywords (3-6 times) in the abstract.
  • Use keywords or keyword phrases throughout the article, including title, abstract, headings, and paragraphs, however, avoid unnecessary repetitions (use 5-6 times in the content of the article)
  • For SEO, keywords can be found using tools, such as, Google Trends and Google Adwords
  • Use field-specific keywords by consulting major papers in the field.
  • Share your paper on different social media networking sites, institutional sites, and colleagues for optimization/visibility.

Article Formatting Guidelines

  • Submit your manuscript in Word format.
  • Use font style Times New Roman, font size 12, and single spacing throughout the manuscript.
  • Manuscript must include the following sections: Abstract, Keywords, Highlights, Introduction (literature review can be a separate section or a part of the introduction), Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Limitations, Implications, and References.
  • Title of the article should be bold and title case (initial capital letter for proper nouns).
  • An abstract should explain the main points of your paper. The authors are requested to write an unstructured abstract of around 200-250 words.
  • Write down 3-5 keywords (particularly related to your research) to improve the discoverability of your research.
  • Add 3-4 highlights in bullet points that best indicate your research work.
  • Word limit of a typical article (including tables, figures, and references) should be 2500-8000 words (except for the review articles only).
  • Reference list of a typical article should be 15-50 (70 for the review article).
  • Spell out abbreviations when you incorporate them for the first time, except for the cases where the abbreviations are well- known, such as, CIA.
  • Follow the journal’s specific format (APA 7th Edition) Avoid using unnecessary headings.
  • Provide a brief description of the Table/Figure before explaining the content in the Table/Figure and also refer to them in the text for clarity. For example (see Table 1).
  • Add the conflict of interest statement and data availability statement at the end of the manuscript (above references).
  • General formatting rules are provided here. For more details, you can see the template of the journal.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As a part of the submission process, authors are required to ensure their submission's compliance with all of the following items, however, the  submission can be returned to authors in case of non-compliance. The authors are required to submit the submission checklist and author consent form in this regard.

Acknowledgement (if necessary)