Author Guidelines

Before you start ..

For queries relating to the submission process or status of your paper pre-selection, please contact the Editor or Journal Editorial Office ([email protected]). More details can be found in the Contact Us section.

Responsibilities of Authors:

SRI will ensure to provide you with a professional experience at each stage of the review and publication process. However, there are some responsibilities that sit with you as an author. These include:

1. Read and understand Author Guidelines and Submission Guidelines completely before going ahead with the submission.

2. Responding quickly to any queries during the complete publication process.

3. Be liable for all aspects of your work i.e. investigating and resolving any queries about the accuracy or integrity of your manuscript.

4. Communication between you and the editor must remain confidential until an editorial decision is made.

5. Abide by all the research ethics. 

Guidelines:

1. Before going ahead with the submission, Author's should ensure whether the manuscript is aligned with the scope of the journal. Please read the details about the scope of SRI at About the Journal.

2. Manuscripts should be submitted electronically at https://journals.umt.edu.pk/index.php/SRI/about/submissions

3. Manuscript must be submitted as an MS Word file which includes all contents. The author owns complete rights of the text inside. Editors and Publishers will not make any changes to it. 

4. The length of the articles should not exceed 8000 words.

5. Please make sure that manuscripts have been spell-checked & grammar-checked. 

6. The references mentioned in the Bibliography section must be cited in the text and vice versa. 

7. SRI follows the HEC Plagiarism policy, which allows a similarity index less than 18%.

Formatting Guidelines:

1. The guidelines for preparing the manuscript for submission are summarized in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.; APA, 2010; pp. 228–231). You will find detailed guidelines about APA formatting here.

2. The Title Page must contain the title of the paper, the name(s) of the author(s), and a footnote giving the current affiliation and email address of the author(s) and any acknowledgments or authors' note.

3. All manuscripts must include an Abstract containing a maximum of 250 words typed on a separate page. After the abstract, please supply up to five keywords or brief phrases (APA). The abstract should explain the purpose of the research, the primary results, major conclusions, and any policy prescriptions.

4. The Introduction should have a brief background,  a clear rationale for why the problem deserves new research, placing the study in the context of current knowledge and prior theoretical and empirical work on the topic.

5. In the Literature Review section, the author needs to extend the background to the article’s introduction and identify the most relevant previous literature on the topic for positioning the paper and demonstrate its significance. Please provide relevant and significant theories.

6. The author is required to provide relevant and reliable supporting empirical or other material to the conclusion and that the Methodology is appropriate and systematic.

7. Results should be clear and concise. The significance of the results of the research work, with no repeatedly mentioning of results in the text is often appropriate. 

8. Tables should be numbered and headed with appropriate concise titles. The tables are preferred to be presented after the main body of the text and not inserted in the manuscript. Tables for the main text and each of its appendices should be numbered serially and separately. The title of each table as well as the captions of its columns and rows should be clearly expressive of the contents. The source of the tables should be given in a footnote immediately below the line at the bottom of the table; but, unlike other footnotes, which must be numbered consecutively, it should not be numbered. Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end (not a mixture of both)

9. Please include Mathematical Equations and expressions as editable text and not as images. Write equations and formulas using the equation editor.

10. Ensure that each illustration has a Caption. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used. The resolution of image should be 300dpi.

11. The original contribution of the manuscript and the discussion of implications of findings should be clearly mentioned in the Conclusion section. Provide a critical assessment of the limitations of the study, and outline possible directions for future research.

12. SRI requires all References in APA format. All references used in the text should be listed in the alphabetical order of the authors’ surnames at the end of the text. References should be complete and correct. References in the text should include the name(s) of author(s) with the year of publication in parentheses. List of all these references needs to present at the very end of the paper under the heading of “References”. Use of DOI is highly encouraged. Write DOI of all the references, if available

13. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Reference management softwares such as Mendeley, EndNote etc. are preferable for reference citation.

14. Make sure that you have first 'accepted' all changes previously listed in earlier versions under 'track changes', and that all embedded comments or highlighting of the text has likewise been removed. To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the "spell-check" and "grammar-check" functions of your word-processor.

15. The manuscripts submitted in the SRI must be original and unpublished. They must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. The authors are solely responsible to acquire the permission to reproduce the copyright material from other sources, if necessary.

16. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized.

SRI requires all the contributing authors and co-authors to provide their ORCID iDs, as they are important for indexing and profiling, but also for enhancing their integral search visibility all over the internet. ORCID iDs are for lifetime and can be obtained free of charges through a simple registration process at https://orcid.org/.