For Authors

Before you start

Author responsibilities

We aim to ensure a professional and courteous experience throughout the review and publication process. As the author, you also have certain responsibilities. We expect you to:

Respond swiftly to any queries during the publication process.
Be accountable for all aspects of your work. This includes investigating and resolving any questions about accuracy or research integrity
Treat communications between you and the journal editor as confidential until an editorial decision has been made.
Read about our research ethics for authorship. These state that you must:
- Include anyone who has made a substantial and meaningful contribution to the submission (anyone else involved in the paper should be listed in the acknowledgements).
- Exclude anyone who hasn’t contributed to the paper, or who has chosen not to be associated with the research.
- In accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools, Large Language Models cannot be credited with authorship as they are incapable of conceptualising a research design without human direction and cannot be accountable for the integrity, originality, and validity of the published work. The author(s) must describe the content created or modified as well as appropriately cite the name and version of the AI tool used; any additional works drawn on by the AI tool should also be appropriately cited and referenced. Standard tools that are used to improve spelling and grammar are not included within the parameters of this guidan.
- Take full responsibility for all aspects of your work, including investigating and resolving any issues related to accuracy or research integrity.
- Keep communications between you and the journal editor confidential until an editorial decision is made.
- Familiarize yourself with our research ethics for authorship, which require you to:
- Include anyone who has made a significant and meaningful contribution to the submission (others involved should be acknowledged).
- Exclude anyone who has not contributed to the paper or who has opted out of being associated with the research.
- According to COPE’s position on AI tools, Large Language Models cannot be credited with authorship as they cannot conceptualize a research design independently and are not accountable for the integrity, originality, and validity of the published work. Authors must describe the content created or modified by AI tools, cite the name and version of the AI tool used, and appropriately reference any additional works used by the AI tool. Standard tools for spelling and grammar improvements are not included in this guidance. The Editor and Publisher reserve the right to determine the permissibility of AI tool usage.ce. The Editor and Publisher reserve the right to determine whether the use of an AI tool is permissible.
If your article involves human participants, you must ensure you have considered whether or not you require ethical approval for your research, and include this information as part of your submission.

Generative AI usage key principles

Copywriting any part of an article using a generative AI tool/LLM would not be permissible, including the generation of the abstract or the literature review, for as per JORMA Journals’ authorship criteria, the author(s) must be responsible for the work and accountable for its accuracy, integrity, and validity.

The generation or reporting of results using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permissible, the author(s) must be responsible for the creation and interpretation of their work and accountable for its accuracy, integrity, and validity.
The in-text reporting of statistics using a generative AI tool/LLM is not permissible due to concerns over the authenticity, integrity, and validity of the data produced, although the use of such a tool to aid in the analysis of the work would be permissible.
Copy-editing an article using a generative AI tool/LLM in order to improve its language and readability would be permissible as this mirrors standard tools already employed to improve spelling and grammar, and uses existing author-created material, rather than generating wholly new content, while the author(s) remains responsible for the original work.
The submission and publication of images created by AI tools or large-scale generative models is not permitted.

Research and publishing ethics

Our editors and staff are dedicated to ensuring the ethical integrity of the content we publish. To support this, we adhere to the guidelines and flowcharts provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Additionally, we have established our own research and publishing ethics guidelines.

A few key points:

Any manuscript you submit to this journal should be original. That means it should not have been published before in its current, or similar, form. If any substantial element of your paper has been previously published, you need to declare this to the journal editor upon submission. Please note, the journal editor may use Crossref Similarity Check to check on the originality of submissions received.
Your work should not have been submitted elsewhere and should not be under consideration by any other publication.
If you have a conflict of interest, you must declare it upon submission; this allows the editor to decide how they would like to proceed.
By submitting your work to JORMA Journals, you are guaranteeing that the work is not in infringement of any existing copyright.

Third party copyright permissions

Prior to article submission, you need to ensure you have applied for, and received, written permission to use any material in your manuscript that has been created by a third party. Please note, we are unable to publish any article that still has permissions pending. The rights we require are:

Non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the article or book chapter.
Print and electronic rights.
Worldwide English-language rights.
To use the material for the life of the work. That means there should be no time restrictions on its re-use e.g. a one-year licence.

Open access submissions and information

All our journals currently publish open access articles, thus, Article Processing Charge ( APC) will apply to cover the cost of publication.

Prepare your submission

Manuscript requirements

Before you submit your manuscript, it is important you read and follow the guidelines below.

Format	Article files should be provided in Microsoft Word format. While you are welcome to submit a PDF of the document alongside the Word file, PDFs alone are not acceptable.
Article length / wordcount	Articles should range from 1500 to 5500 words in total (depending on the type of article). This word count encompasses all text, including the structured abstract, references, text within tables, figures, and appendices. See your chosen journal for additional guidiance.
Article title	A concisely worded title should be provided.
Author details	The names of all contributing authors should be added to the OJS submission; please list them in the order in which you would like them to be published. We will reproduce it exactly, so any middle names and/or initials they want featured must be included. Author affiliation. This should be where they were based when the research for the paper was conducted. In multi-authored papers, it is important that ALL authors that have made a significant contribution to the paper are listed. Those who have provided support but have not contributed to the research should be featured in an acknowledgements section. You should never include people who have not contributed to the paper or who do not want to be associated with the research.
Biographies and acknowledgements	If you want to include these items, save them in a separate Microsoft Word document and upload the file with your submission. Where they are included, a brief professional biography of not more than 100 words should be supplied for each named author.
Research funding	In the acknowledgements section of your article, you must reference all sources of external research funding. Additionally, describe the role of the funder or financial sponsor throughout the research process, from study design to submission.
Structured abstract	All submissions must include a structured abstract, following the format outlined below. Background/Aim/Methods/Findings/Conclusion. The maximum length of your abstract should be 250 words in total.
Keywords	Your submission should include keywords. Please note, while we will always try to use the keywords you have suggested, the in-house editorial team may replace some of them with matching terms to ensure consistency across publications and improve your article’s visibility.
Article classification	During the submission process, you will be asked to select a type for your paper; you will find the iptions in your chosen journal.
Headings	Headings must be concise, with a clear indication of the required hierarchy. The preferred format is for first level headings to be in bold, and subsequent sub-headings to be in medium italics.
Page numbers and footnotes	Page numbers and footnotes should be left out in the manuscript file. If your manuscript contains footnotes, move the information into the main text.
Figures	All figures (charts, diagrams, line drawings, webpages/screenshots, and photographic images) should be submitted electronically. Both colour and black and white files are accepted. There are a few other important points to note: All figures should be supplied at the highest resolution/quality possible with numbers and text clearly legible. Acceptable formats are jpeg, .bmp, and .tif.
Supplementary files	Where tables, figures, appendices, and other additional content are supplementary to the article but not critical to the reader’s understanding of it, you can choose to host these supplementary files alongside your article on Insight, ‘Supplementary_material_appendix_1’ or ‘Supplementary tables’. All supplementary material must be mentioned at the appropriate moment in the main text of the article, there is no need to include the content of the file but only the file name.
References	All references in your manuscript must be formatted using APA style. See your chosen journal for additional information.

Submit your manuscript

There are a number of key steps you should follow to ensure a smooth and trouble-free submission.

Double check your manuscript

Before submitting your work, it is your responsibility to check that the manuscript is complete, grammatically correct, and without spelling or typographical errors. A few other important points:

Give the journal aims and scope a final read. Is your manuscript definitely a good fit? If it is not, the editor may decline it.
Does your manuscript comply with our research and publishing ethics guidelines?
Have you cleared any necessary publishing permissions?
Have you followed all the formatting requirements laid out in these author guidelines?

Post submission

Review and decision process

Each submission is checked by one of the editors. At this stage, they may choose to decline or unsubmit your manuscript if it does not fit the journal aims and scope, or they feel the language/manuscript quality is too low.

If they think it might be suitable for the publication, your manuscript will be reviewed by one of the editors or a member of the editorial board. Once these reviewers have provided their feedback, the editor may decide to accept your manuscript, request minor or major revisions, or decline your work.

While all journals work to different timescales, the goal is that the editor will inform you of their first decision within 14 days.

If your submission is accepted

Open access

Once your paper is accepted, you will be asked to pay the APC (article processing charge). This varies per journal and can be found on our APC price list or on the editorial system at the point of submission. Your article will be published with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 user licence, which outlines how readers can reuse your work.

Copyright

If there is a reason why you can not assign copyright to us, you should discuss this with your journal content editor.

JORMA Journals