Information for Authors
Title Page
This is the first page. It should contain a concise title, the names(s) of author(s), followed by affiliation(s) that is the department, school and university as well as complete postal and e-mail address(es). The corresponding author must be indicated by an asterisk (*). Capitalize only the first letter of the title. Any change of affiliation requests will not be allowed after publication. A note about the author's new address can be added to the article's webpage if needed.
Abstract
The abstract should not exceed 500 words and should be on one page. It should briefly describe the introduction, statement of the problem, the objective of the study, research methodology employed, main findings of the study and the conclusions with brief recommendations. Avoid abbreviations, diagrams, and citations in the abstract.
Keywords
A list of four to six key words should be included and each word separated by a period.
Headings and Subheadings
There should be no more than 3 levels of headings. The font of headings should be 14-point Ebrima bold and subheadings should be 11-point Calibri Light and only the first word should be capitalized.
Introduction
Should provide a clear and concise overview of the research problem and significance. It includes a brief discussion of relevant background information, outlines the key issues or knowledge gaps and highlights the study's objectives. It also presents the research questions or hypotheses and explains the importance of the study.
Literature review and Theoretical Review
This section is specifically relevant for social manuscripts. In the Literature Review section, authors should provide a comprehensive synthesis of existing research relevant to the study, highlighting gaps, inconsistencies and key findings that relate to the research problem.
The Theoretical Review should outline the conceptual frameworks or theories that underpin the study, explaining their relevance and application to the research. It should clarify how the chosen theory guides the study's design, analysis, and interpretation of results, providing a solid foundation for the study's hypotheses or research questions.
Materials and Methods
In this section the methodology used should be clearly demonstrated, including relevant references used, so that another person/researcher can be able replicate the same study elsewhere. It should provide the framework for getting answers to the research questions or the overall problem which the study is trying to answer. If materials, methods, and protocols are well established, authors may cite articles where those protocols are described in detail, but the submission should include sufficient information to be understood independent of these. For studies involving human participants, a statement detailing ethical approval and consent should be included in the methods section. For further details of the journal's editorial policies and ethical guidelines.
Results and Discussion
These sections may all be separate, or they may be combined to create a mixed Results/Discussion section (commonly labeled "Results and Discussion". The text should be as objective and descriptive as possible. Only material pertinent to the subject should be included. Avoid giving the same information in both graphical and tabular formats. Discussion section should interpret the results in view of the problems identified in the introduction, as well as in relation with other published work.
Conclusion and Recommendation
The final paragraph of this section could consist of some concluding remarks and recommendations. This section may be combined with the Results section to give Results and Discussion.
Authorship and AI tools
Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
BAP Journals follow COPE's guidelines and policies regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author
Acknowledgement
This should be brief. Authors are advised to limit acknowledgements to those whose contributions were substantial in: financial support, scientific and technical and editorial aspects of the paper; and in the improvement of the quality of the manuscript.
Conflict of Interest
All authors are required, at the time of submission, to declare all activities that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing (commercial) interest in relation to their submitted manuscript. Examples of such activities could include personal or work-related relationships, events, etc. The disclosure should also include all sources of revenue paid (or promised to be paid) directly to authors or their institution on your behalf over the 36 months before submission of the relevant work. Authors who have nothing to declare are encouraged to add "No conflict of interest was reported by all authors" in this section.
During submission, the Conflict of Interest statement should be included in both the cover letter and manuscript (beneath the Acknowledgments section).
Ethical Approval
Author should provide below approvals or consents (wherever necessary)
• Statement of ethical approval: If studies involve use of animal/human subject, authors must give appropriate statement of ethical approval.
• Statement of informed consent: If studies involve information about any individual e.g. case studies, survey, interview etc., author must write statement of informed consent as “Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.”
Citations
Authors should be cited using their surnames, followed by the year of publication in brackets. If there are two authors use ‘and’ but for more than two, the citation should be first author, followed by `et al.’
References
This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts. Footnotes or endnotes are not accepted as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section. If the DOI is available, please include it after the page range.
All citations in the text, figures or tables must be in the reference list and in numerical order; the citations should be called out in square brackets. For accepted but unpublished works, use “in press” in place of page numbers. For material intended for publication but not yet accepted, use “unpublished work” or “submitted for publication”. Unpublished data or personal communications should be cited within the text only and not listed in the references.
References should be formatted as follows:
Journal: Martin, R. K. (1987). Generating alternative mixed-integer programming models using variable redefinition. Operations Research, 35(6), 820-831.https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.35.6.820
Book: Pochet, Y., & Wolsey, L. A. (2006). Production planning by mixed integer programming (Vol. 149, No. 2, pp. 163-175). New York: Springer.
Presentation/Lecture: Haltiwanger, J. (2004, March). What do we know (and not know) about the contribution of young businesses to economic growth. In Presentation, Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century Conference, March (Vol. 26).
Dissertation, Unpublished: Mun, Y. Y. (1998). Developing and validating an observational learning model of computer software training. University of Maryland, College Park.
Interview and Personal Communication: Hunt H. (1976). Interview by Ronald Schatz. Tape recording, May 16. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.
Conference Proceedings: Kasim, H., March, V., Zhang, R., & See, S. (2008). Survey on parallel programming model. In Network and Parallel Computing: IFIP International Conference, NPC 2008, Shanghai, China, October 18-20, 2008. Proceedings (pp. 266-275). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Revisions
1. Reviewers are allowed time to complete their review and submit comments to the editor.
2. Reviewers provide comments aimed to help create a better manuscript. Reviewers will recommend that:
-The manuscript is acceptable for publication.
-The manuscript requires further revisions.
-The manuscript is not acceptable for publication.
3. Editor makes a publication decision based on the reviews and sends out a decision letter.
4. If the manuscript needs modifications:
-One may resubmit after revisions have been made (use a response letter to explain each change, point by point). Where the authors disagree with a reviewer, they must provide a clear response.
-Editor decides whether to accept revised manuscript or refer it back to reviewers for further comment.
-Editor makes final decision.
Note: BAP journals accept two rounds of revisions