Submission Guidlines

Submissions to the Journal of Institute of Management Sciences are made through e-mail to editor/coordinator at ber@imsciences.edu.pk.

Review process
Each paper is reviewed by the editor and, if it is judged suitable for this publication, it is then sent to at least two independent referees for double-blind peer review. Based on their recommendation, as well as consultation between relevant Editorial Board members the editor then decides whether the paper should be accepted as is, revised or rejected.

Copyrights
Articles submitted to the journal should not have been published before in their current or substantially similar form, or be under consideration for publication with another journal. Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty.
The editor may make use of turnitin software for checking the originality of submissions received.

Permissions
Prior to article submission, authors should clear permission to use any content that has not been created by them.  Failure to do so may lead to lengthy delays in publication.  IM Sciences Journal is unable to publish any article which has permissions pending.  The rights of IMSciences 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 (i.e. there should be no time restrictions on the re-use of material e.g. a one-year license).

When reproducing tables, figures or excerpts (of more than 400 words) from another source, it is expected that:

  • Authors obtain the necessary written permission in advance from any third party owners of copyright for the use in print and electronic formats of any of their text, illustrations, graphics, or other material, in their manuscript.  Permission must also be cleared for any minor adaptations of any work not created by them.
  • If an author adapts significantly any material, the author must inform the copyright holder of the original work.
  • Authors obtain any proof of consent statements
  • Authors must always acknowledge the source in figure captions and refer to the source in the reference list.
  • Authors should not assume that any content which is freely available on the web is free to use.  Authors should check the website for details of the copyright holder to seek permission for re-use.

Manuscript requirements
Please prepare your manuscript before submission, using the following guidelines:

Format All files should be submitted as a Word document
Article Length Articles should be between 6000 and 8500 words in length. ‘Viewpoints’ and ‘New Perspectives’ should be a maximum of 3000 words in length. This includes all text including references and appendices. Please allow 280 words for each figure or table.
Article Title A title of not more than twelve words should be provided.
Article Title Page An Article Title Page should be submitted. This should include:
  • Article Title
  • Author Details
  • Acknowledgements
  • Author Biographies
  • Keywords
  • Article Classification
Author Details Details should be supplied on the Article Title Page including:
  • Full name of each author
  • Affiliation of each author, at time research was completed
  • Where more than one author has contributed to the article, details of who should be contacted for correspondence
  • E-mail address of the corresponding author
  • Brief professional biography of each author.
 
Keywords Please provide up to 10 keywords on the Article Title Page, which encapsulate the principal topics of the paper (
Whilst we will endeavor  to use submitted keywords in the published version, all keywords are subject to approval by IM|Sciences in house editorial team and may be replaced by a matching term to ensure consistency.
Article Classification Categorize your paper on the Article Title Page, under one of these classifications:
  • Research paper
  • Viewpoint
  • Technical paper
  • Conceptual paper
  • Case study
  • Literature review
  • General review.
Headings Headings must be concise, with a clear indication of the distinction between the hierarchy of headings.

The preferred format is for first level headings to be presented in bold format and subsequent sub-headings to be presented in medium italics.

Notes/Endnotes Notes or Endnotes should be used only if absolutely necessary and must be identified in the text by consecutive numbers, enclosed in square brackets and listed at the end of the article
.
Research Funding Authors must declare all sources of external research funding in their article and a statement to this effect should appear in the Acknowledgements section. Authors should describe the role of the funder or financial sponsor in the entire research process, from study design to submission.
Figures All Figures (charts, diagrams, line drawings, web pages/screenshots, and photographic images) should be submitted in electronic form.

All Figures should be of high quality, legible and numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. Graphics may be supplied in color to facilitate their appearance on the online database.

  • Figures created in MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, Illustrator should be supplied in their native formats. Electronic figures created in other applications should be copied from the origination software and pasted into a blank MS Word document or saved and imported into an MS Word document or alternatively create a .pdf file from the origination software.
  • Figures which cannot be supplied in as the above are acceptable in the standard image formats which are: .pdf, .ai, and .eps. If you are unable to supply graphics in these formats then please ensure they are .tif, .jpeg, or .bmp at a resolution of at least 300dpi and at least 10cm wide.
  • To prepare web pages/screenshots simultaneously press the “Alt" and “Print screen" keys on the keyboard, open a blank Microsoft Word document and simultaneously press “Ctrl" and “V" to paste the image. (Capture all the contents/windows on the computer screen to paste into MS Word, by simultaneously pressing “Ctrl" and “Print screen".)
  • Photographic images should be submitted electronically and of high quality. They should be saved as .tif or .jpeg files at a resolution of at least 300dpi and at least 10cm wide. Digital camera settings should be set at the highest resolution/quality possible.
 
References References to other publications must be in APA format.

Writing a Bibliography: APA Format

Below are standard formats and examples for basic bibliographic information recommended by the American Psychological Association (APA). For more information on the APA format, see http://www.apastyle.org.

Basics

Your list of works cited should begin at the end of the paper on a new page with the centered title, References. Alphabetize the entries in your list by the author’s last name, using the letter-by-letter system (ignore spaces and other punctuation.) Only the initials of the first and middle names are given. If the author’s name is unknown, alphabetize by the title, ignoring any A, An, or The.
For dates, spell out the names of months in the text of your paper, but abbreviate them in the list of works cited, except for May, June, and July. Use either the day-month-year style (22 July 1999) or the month-day-year style (July 22, 1999) and be consistent. With the month-day-year style, be sure to add a comma after the year unless another punctuation mark goes there.

Underlining or Italics?

When reports were written on typewriters, the names of publications were underlined because most typewriters had no way to print italics. If you write a bibliography by hand, you should still underline the names of publications. But, if you use a computer, then publication names should be in italics as they are below. Always check with your instructor regarding their preference for using italics or underlining. Our examples use italics.

Hanging Indentation

All APA citations should use hanging indents, that is, the first line of an entry should be flush left, and the second and subsequent lines should be indented 1/2".

Capitalization, Abbreviation, and Punctuation

The APA guidelines specify using sentence-style capitalization for the titles of books or articles, so you should capitalize only the first word of a title and subtitle. The exceptions to this rule would be periodical titles and proper names in a title which should still be capitalized. The periodical title is run in title case, and is followed by the volume number which, with the title, is also italicized.
If there is more than one author, use an ampersand (&) before the name of the last author. If there are more than six authors, list only the first one and use et al. for the rest.
Place the date of publication in parentheses immediately after the name of the author. Place a period after the closing parenthesis. Do not italicize, underline, or put quotes around the titles of shorter works within longer works.

Format Examples

Books.

Format:
Author’s last name, first initial. (Publication date). Book title. Additional information. City of publication: Publishing company.
Examples:
Allen, T. (1974). Vanishing wildlife of North America. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.
Boorstin, D. (1992). The creators: A history of the heroes of the imagination. New York: Random House.
Nicol, A. M., &Pexman, P. M. (1999). Presenting your findings: A practical guide for creating tables. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Searles, B., & Last, M. (1979). A reader’s guide to science fiction. New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Toomer, J. (1988). Cane. Ed. Darwin T. Turner. New York: Norton.

Encyclopedia & Dictionary

Format:
Author’s last name, first initial. (Date). Title of Article. Title of Encyclopedia (Volume, pages). City of publication: Publishing company.
Examples:
Bergmann, P. G. (1993). Relativity. In The new encyclopedia britannica (Vol. 26, pp. 501-508). Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica.
Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary (10th ed.). (1993). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
Pettingill, O. S., Jr. (1980). Falcon and Falconry. World book encyclopedia. (pp. 150-155). Chicago: World Book.
Tobias, R. (1991). Thurber, James. Encyclopedia americana. (p. 600). New York: Scholastic Library Publishing.

Magazine & Newspaper Articles

Format:
Author’s last name, first initial. (Publication date). Article title. Periodical title, volume number(issue number if available), inclusive pages.

Note: Do not enclose the title in quotation marks. Put a period after the title. If a periodical includes a volume number, italicize it and then give the page range (in regular type) without “pp." If the periodical does not use volume numbers, as in newspapers, use p. or pp. for page numbers.
Note: Unlike other periodicals, p. or pp. precedes page numbers for a newspaper reference in APA style.
Examples:
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-896.
Henry, W. A., III. (1990, April 9). Making the grade in today’s schools. Time, 135, 28-31.
Kalette, D. (1986, July 21). California town counts town to big quake. USA Today, 9, p. A1.
Kanfer, S. (1986, July 21). Heard any good books lately? Time, 113, 71-72.
Trillin, C. (1993, February 15). Culture shopping. New Yorker, pp. 48-51.

Website or Webpage

Format:
Online periodical:
Author’s name. (Date of publication). Title of the article. Title of Periodical, volume number, Retrieved month day, year, from full URL
Online document:
Author’s name. (Date of publication). Title of work. Retrieved month day, year, from full URL

Note: When citing Internet sources, refer to the specific website document. If a document is undated, use “n.d." (for no date) immediately after the document title. Break a lengthy URL that goes to another line after a slash or before a period. Continually check your references to online documents. There is no period following a URL.
Note: If you cannot find some of this information, cite what is available.
Examples:
Devitt, T. (2001, August 2). Lightning injures four at a music festivals. The Why? Files. Retrieved January 23, 2002, from http://whyfiles.org/137lightning/index.html
Dove, R. (1998). Lady freedom among us. The Electronic Text Center. Retrieved June 19, 1998, from Alderman Library, University of Virginia website: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/afam.html

Note: If a document is contained within a large and complex website (such as that for a university or a government agency), identify the host organization and the relevant program or department before giving the URL for the document itself. Precede the URL with a colon.
Fredrickson, B. L. (2000, March 7). Cultivating positive emotions to optimize health and well-being. Prevention & Treatment, 3, Article 0001a. Retrieved November 20, 2000, from http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume3/pre0030001a.html
GVU’s 8th WWW user survey. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2000, from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/usersurveys/survey1997-10/
Health Canada. (2002, February). The safety of genetically modified food crops. Retrieved March 22, 2005, from http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/protection/biologics_genetics/gen_mod_foods/genmodebk.html
Hilts, P. J. (1999, February 16). In forecasting their emotions, most people flunk out. New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2000, from http://www.nytimes.com

Sample

Sample Bibliography: APA Reference List Format