Author Guidelines & Submission Checklist

Before submitting a manuscript, authors should review the aims and scope of the selected journal and confirm that the subject, methodology, scholarly contribution, and intended readership are appropriate for that journal.

Manuscripts that fall substantially outside the journal's stated scope may be declined during initial editorial screening without external peer review.

Authors should also review the journal's current policies on article types, peer review, Open Access, copyright, licensing, author charges, research ethics, competing interests, data, artificial intelligence, and post-publication corrections before submission.

A manuscript submitted for consideration as an original scholarly article should not simultaneously be under formal consideration for publication as the same article by another journal.

Authors should inform the editorial office promptly if a potentially overlapping publication, submission, preprint, conference paper, dataset article, or related manuscript may be relevant to editorial assessment.

Scholarly manuscripts should include a clear and informative abstract appropriate to the article type.

The abstract should accurately represent the purpose, methodology or approach, principal findings, and main conclusions of the work where those elements are applicable.

Claims made in the abstract should be supported by the manuscript and should not exaggerate the significance or certainty of the findings.

Where a journal publishes articles in a language other than English, the journal-specific requirements concerning an accurate English-language title and abstract should be followed.

Manuscripts should provide sufficient methodological and contextual information to permit meaningful scholarly assessment.

Authors should use recognised reporting standards or discipline-specific guidelines where these are applicable to the study design.

Methods, datasets, statistical procedures, software, materials, instruments, and experimental conditions should be identified with sufficient precision where they materially affect interpretation or reproducibility.

Research requiring ethical, institutional, regulatory, or other formal approval must have received the appropriate approval before the research was conducted where required by applicable standards and law.

Authors should provide the name of the approving body, committee, or authority and relevant approval information where applicable.

Research involving identifiable human participants should include appropriate information concerning informed consent, privacy, and publication consent where required.

The journal may request supporting documentation where ethical compliance requires clarification.

Authors should disclose funding, grants, equipment, materials, services, or other material support relevant to the work where applicable.

Where a funder or sponsor participated materially in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit the work, that role should be disclosed where relevant.

Where the research received no external funding and the journal requires a funding declaration, authors should state that clearly.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, reasoning, images, data interpretation, and integrity of submitted manuscripts regardless of whether artificial intelligence or automated tools were used during manuscript preparation.

An AI system or generative AI tool must not be listed as an author because responsibility and accountability for scholarly work must remain with identifiable human contributors.

Authors should disclose material use of generative AI or other AI-assisted tools where required by the Macaw Publications AI & Generative AI Use Policy or the individual journal.

Authors must independently verify AI-assisted content, particularly factual statements, references, quotations, calculations, interpretations, and other scholarly claims.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that material included in their manuscript can be published lawfully.

Where figures, tables, photographs, questionnaires, substantial extracts, maps, datasets, or other material are protected by third-party rights, authors should obtain the necessary permission before publication unless lawful reuse is otherwise permitted.

Appropriate credit and licence or permission information should accompany reused material where required.

Macaw Publications journals use Open Journal Systems (OJS) for journal publishing and manuscript workflow management.

Authors should submit manuscripts through the official submission interface of the selected journal unless that journal explicitly provides another authorised procedure.

During submission, authors should complete the requested metadata accurately rather than relying solely on information contained in the uploaded manuscript.

Author names, affiliations, article title, abstract, keywords, funding information, and other metadata entered into OJS should correspond with the submitted manuscript.

Primary research and other peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts are evaluated according to the peer-review model publicly stated by the individual journal.

Authors should respond carefully to editor and reviewer comments and should identify substantive revisions clearly when submitting a revised manuscript.

Reviewers provide scholarly recommendations; final editorial responsibility remains with the authorised journal editor in accordance with the journal's governance and conflict-of-interest procedures.

Macaw Publications does not apply one universal Article Processing Charge across its journal portfolio.

Some journals may charge an Article Processing Charge or other clearly disclosed author-facing fee, while other journals may operate without author publication charges.

Authors must consult the selected journal's current fee page for the authoritative APC amount, currency, author category, payment stage, other applicable charges, and waiver or reduction arrangements where offered.

The existence, payment, waiver, reduction, or absence of an author charge must not determine peer-review recommendations or scholarly editorial decisions.

Accurate metadata improves identification, attribution, discoverability, citation linking, DOI registration, and downstream scholarly indexing.

Authors should carefully verify spelling and sequence of author names, institutional affiliations, countries, manuscript title, abstract, keywords, references, funding information, and other metadata before final submission.

Requests to correct substantial metadata errors after publication may require formal post-publication action.

Authors should read the policies relevant to their manuscript before completing submission. Depending on the selected journal, these may include:

Publication Ethics & Research Integrity; Peer Review & Editorial Process; Editorial Independence & Conflict of Interest; AI & Generative AI Use Policy; Open Access, Copyright & Licensing; Post-Publication Corrections & Retractions; Special Issues & Guest Editor Policy; and Transparency & Business Practices.

Where a journal-specific instruction differs from a general publisher-level formatting instruction, the current journal-specific instruction should be followed provided that it remains consistent with applicable publisher ethics and integrity requirements.