GUIDE FOR AUTHORS

AUTHOR GUIDELINES

The authors are invited to submit their manuscripts using the journal online manuscript submission system (https://journal.ump.edu.my/ijleal/user/register). Please register as author to submit the manuscript.

DOCUMENT SUBMISSION
During initial submission of the manuscript, authors should ensure that two documents are submitted:

1) The manuscript template, choose English manuscript or Bahasa Melayu manuscript, and 2) Title Page. Incomplete submission will delay the processing of the manuscript.

Read this guide carefully when preparing your manuscript. Submissions which do not adhere to the IJLEAL guidelines will delay the processing of the manuscript, and may be declined.

MANUSCRIPTS PUBLISHED
The IJLEAL publishes the following types of manuscripts:

Full Research Articles 

Full research articles provide significant new findings and conclusions obtained from scientific investigations and processes that fall within the scope of the journal. These articles should not be more than 8000 words in length (excluding the abstract, tables, figures, and references).

Review Articles 

The review articles describe the current state of knowledge and provide suggestions for potential future research direction in the field. The length of a published review article is not more than 8,000 words (excluding abstract, tables, figures, and references).

Editorials

The editorials are opinion essays, which discuss current issues relevant to the scope of IJLEAL or highlight the expert areas of the Editorial Board members. Editorial Board members are invited to submit their essays for each issue, and the essays are reviewed only by the Editorial team. The essays are not more than 3,000 words (excluding abstract, tables, figures, and references). 

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION
These instructions are written in a form that satisfies all the formatting requirements for the author's manuscript. Please use them as a template in preparing your manuscript.

The manuscript should be formatted using the IJLEAL template. All pages must be numbered sequentially, facilitating the reviewing, and editing of the manuscript. Standard fonts are recommended, and the 'symbols’ font should be used for representing Greek characters. The manuscript should be written in English or Bahasa Melayu in a clear, direct, and active style. There should be no information of the authors in the manuscript template.

Manuscripts should include:

  • Title
  • Abstract
  • Keywords
  • Introduction
  • Methodology
  • Results and/or Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements/Funding Information
  • Conflict of Interest
  • Author(s) Contribution
  • References
  • Appendices (Optional)
  • Figures/illustrations and tables included in the text
  • Supportive/Supplementary Material

TITLE
The title is concise and informative. In information retrieval systems, titles are often used as search terms. If possible, avoid using abbreviations and formulas in the title.

ABSTRACT
It is important to write a concise and informative abstract (maximum 300 words). The abstract should include these elements: 1) objective(s) of the study, 2) a brief methodology, 3) the main findings, and 4) implications of the study. The background or the motivation of the study can be added before the objective(s). For an abstract to be effective, it must be stand-alone and self-explanatory. References, tables, and figures should not be cited in the abstract. Additionally, non-standard or unusual abbreviations should be avoided; nevertheless, if they are necessary, they must be explained at the time of their first mention in the abstract text.

KEYWORDS
The keywords should be included right after the abstract, at least three keywords must be provided. Use abbreviations carefully; only abbreviations that are well-established in the field could be acceptable. These keywords will be used for the purposes of indexing.

INTRODUCTION
This section should provide an adequate background and general context for the work, explaining its significance, and indicating why it should be of interest to researchers. 

This section should also consist of an overview, a summary, and an evaluation or synthesis of the current state of knowledge about a specific area of research. It may also include a discussion of methodological issues and suggestions for future research.

Highlight the objectives of the study at the end of this section.

METHODOLOGY
It is recommended that the authors provide adequate information to enable the work to be replicated. Methods that have previously been published should be referenced, and only relevant modifications should be mentioned.

RESULTS AND/OR DISCUSSION
It is appropriate to combine the Results and Discussion sections into a single section. However, authors are allowed to present the Results and Discussion separately. Clear and concise results are required. The significance of the work's findings should be discussed in detail throughout the discussion section. Extensive citations and discussion of already published material should be avoided.

CONCLUSION
A brief paragraph which summarises the main findings, and highlights the significance of the findings. There should also be the future directions and limitations of the study. There should not be any in-text citations, tables and figures in the conclusion.

SECTION HEADINGS
Section headings should be numbered sequentially left aligned and have the first letter capitalised, starting with the introduction. Sub-section headings, however, should be in lower-case and italicised with their initials capitalised. They should be numbered as 1.1, 1.2, etc.

ABBREVIATIONS
The author(s) should define all abbreviations used when the first time appeared in the text. A list of abbreviations may also be included at the end.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This section should describe sources of funding that have supported the work. Please also describe the role of the study sponsor(s) (if any) in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data writing of the paper and decision to submit it for publication. Recognition of personal assistance should be given as a separate paragraph: people who contributed to the work, but do not fit the criteria for authors should be listed along with their contributions. You must ensure that anyone named in the acknowledgments agrees to being so named.

Formatting of funding sources 
List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:

Funding 
This work was supported by the name of funding sources including the type of grant and reference number [grant numbers …]. Detailed descriptions of the programme or grants and awards are not required. The following statement should be included if there is no funding available for the research:

This study was not supported by any grants from funding bodies in the public, private, or not-for-profit sectors.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Author(s) should disclose any financial or non-financial interests such as political, personal, or professional relationships that may be interpreted as having influenced the manuscript. The phrase "The authors declare no conflicts of interest" should be included if there is no conflict of interest.

AUTHOR(S) CONTRIBUTION

Author(s) are encouraged to provide an author statement file describing their specific contributions to the article using the appropriate author contribution roles to increase transparency. The author(s) contribution statement should be provided during the submission process, and it appears above the acknowledgement section of the published article. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors agree on the accuracy of the descriptions. All authors' roles should be mentioned, using the appropriate categories underneath. Author(s) may have played a variety of roles in their contributions. Contributions from authors do not affect the criteria for authorship established by the journal. The following are the words used to describe author contributions.

Conceptualisation; Methodology; Validation; Formal analysis; Data curation; Formal analysis; Investigation; Resources; Software; Visualisation; Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing; Funding acquisition; Project administration; Supervision.

Authorship statements should be formatted with the names of authors first and the author contribution role(s) following, such as

H. Kassim (Conceptualization; Formal analysis; Supervision)

N. R. Mohd Radzuan (Methodology; Writing - original draft; Resources)

REFERENCES STYLE
Author(s) are required to conform to the APA 7th edition (https://apastyle.apa.org/). Authors need to ensure references for manuscript in English and Bahasa Melayu are adhered and written correctly. Please check the examples of how the references can be written for manuscripts in English and Bahasa Melayu. All references must be arranged alphabetically.  

APPENDICES
If there is more than one appendix, they should be labelled with the letters A, B, etc. There should be a different numbering system for formulae and equations in the appendices. For example, the equations for Appendix A are expressed as Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), and so on; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

FIGURES
Figures should be self-explanatory and contain a short but adequately detailed caption. Figures should be provided in one of the following formats: PNG, EPS, TIFF, JPEG, BMP. The figure(s) should have a resolution of 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour. All figures must be numbered sequentially in the text in the same order in which they appear (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2).  Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) are examples of multi-part figures in which each component should be labelled. The figure(s) caption should be written in title case and placed above the image, aligned to the left, with no period at the end of the caption. 

TABLES
Tables should be self-explanatory and include a concise yet sufficiently descriptive caption. Tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals and referred to in the text by number. Table legends should follow the main text, each on a separate page. Tables must be submitted as editable text and not as images. The table(s) caption should be written in title case and placed above the image, aligned to the left, with no period at the end of the caption.

TITLE PAGE
Please provide complete information in the Title Page document.

Author Names and Affiliations

Before submitting the manuscript, please clearly indicate each author's given name(s) and family name(s) and double-check that all names are correctly spelt. Include the affiliation addresses of the authors underneath the list of names. All affiliations should be indicated with a lower-case or roman number as a superscript letter directly after the author's name and in front of the corresponding address. Please provide the complete postal address of each affiliation (with the country name) and the email address of each author.

Corresponding Author

The corresponding authors should be designated, and their complete address, business telephone and fax numbers, and email address must be clearly stated to receive correspondence at all stages of the reviewing and publishing processes and after the paper has been published. The corresponding author must provide an email address and keep the contact details up to date. Email address must be provided with an asterisk “*” in front of the corresponding author's name.

Potential Reviewers

The authors must suggest at least two potential reviewers. Names, email addresses, complete contact details, and expert areas of the potential reviewers must be provided. The reviewers should meet these requirements:

  • They must NOT be from the same institutions as all authors of the manuscript.
  • They must have the same expert areas of the study discussed in the manuscript.
  • They must NOT be any of the members of the IJLEAL Editorial Board.

Providing names of potential reviewers can expediate the reviewing process; however, the Editorial Team may decline the names suggested by the authors if the requirements are not met.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL 
It should contain relevant and complementary data to those presented in the manuscript. Supplemental material always remains associated with its article and is not subjected to any modifications after publication. These files may be submitted in various formats but should be publication-ready, as these files are published exactly as supplied. Material that has been published previously is not acceptable for posting as supplemental material. Their format can be tables, graphs, spectra, films and so on. All supporting information should be referred to in the manuscript, with titles (and, if desired, legends) for all files listed under the heading ‘Supporting Information’.

REPRODUCTION PERMISSION
For any illustrations, tables, or figures already published elsewhere, authors are responsible for getting permission from the copyright holders. The publisher of the journal or book in which the Figure or Table first appeared is most often the copyright owner. In this case, a letter from the author(s)/publisher should be included to confirm that permission to reproduce the image has been given.

PEER-REVIEW
All papers are subjected to a preliminary evaluation by an Editor, who may reject an article before it has been submitted for peer review if it falls outside the journal's scope or is of inadequate quality. Following this first screening, manuscripts that seem to be appropriate are submitted to double-blind peer-review by a minimum of two independent reviewers, experts and/or the editors. The authors are requested to nominate at least two individuals who are qualified to evaluate their manuscripts by completing the Title Page form. Only manuscripts for the Editorials Section undergo a reviewing process by the Editorial Board. 

LANGUAGE
The manuscript should be written in the English language or Bahasa Melayu clearly and understandably. The manuscript should be proofread for proper spelling and grammar use. We shall promptly return any manuscripts that are not complete or are not in good condition.

PLAGIARISM
A well-established component of the editorial process is plagiarism screening. Turnitin software will be used to verify all submitted manuscripts for plagiarism check, of which the maximum similarity index allowed is set at 25%. .

GALLEY PROOFS
The galley proofs are solely supplied to correct printing mistakes. It is not recommended to utilise the galley proof correction for language or content enhancement purposes. Make sure to proofread and correct any errors as soon as possible. Corrected galley proofs need to be returned within 72 hours or three business days after they are received.

COST OF PUBLICATION
The publication of an article in this journal is completely free of charge.
Articles are published in this journal with no charge to the author.

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST
It is hoped that this list will be helpful during the final checking of an article before sending it to the Editor. Ensure that the following items are present:

  • One author designated as the corresponding author
  • Email address
  • Full postal address
  • Telephone and fax numbers
  • All necessary files have been uploaded
  • Keywords
  • All figure captions
  • All tables
  • Title Page
  • Names of potential reviewers

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS

  • The manuscript has been "spellchecked" and "grammar-checked."
  • References are in the correct format for this journal
  • All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
  • Permission has been obtained for the use of copyrighted material from other sources