Information for Authors

Publish with AJSTSS and benefit from:

  • An easy-to-use manuscript submission system
  • Dedicated editors who are active in their specific communities.
  • High editorial standards, ensuring all published manuscripts undergo an in-depth peer-review process.
  • Quick, efficient publication
  • The greater impact, reach, and visibility of your research through open access.
  • Retention of all ownership and copyright of your published research.

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the Online Journal System (OJS). Only electronic PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc, .docx, .odt, .rtf, .txt) files can be submitted through the manuscript submission system.  The page limit for AJSTSS articles shall be 10 pages. Special characters should not be included in the file name of the main manuscript file. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review. For technical help, please contact: journals@must.ac.ke

Terms of submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this Journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the submitting author's responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgement from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. All inquiries concerning the publication of accepted manuscripts should be addressed to journals@must.ac.ke

Peer review

All submitted articles are subject to assessment and peer review to ensure editorial appropriateness and technical correctness.

Research published in the Journal must be:

  • Scientifically valid – adhering to accepted community standards of research.
  • Technically accurate in its methods and results.
  • Representative of a specific advance, replication, or null/negative result, which is worthy of publication.
  • As reproducible as possible – sharing underlying data, code, and supporting materials wherever able.
  • Ethically sound and transparent – adhering to best practices in animal and human studies, consent to publish, and clear declaration of potential conflicts of interests, both real and perceived.

For an article to be accepted for publication, the assigned editor will first consider if the manuscript meets the minimum editorial standards and fits within the scope of the Journal. If an article is considered suitable for the Journal, the article will undergo a double-blind review process, where the editor will ideally solicit at least two external peer reviewers (who will remain anonymous to the authors unless they choose to disclose their identity by signing the review report) to assess the article before confirming a decision to accept. Decisions to reject are at the discretion of the editor.

Our research integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with relevant expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Article-processing charges

The Journal is open access. Article processing charges (APCs) allow the publisher to make articles immediately available online to anyone to read and reuse upon publication.  The journal shall charge article processing fees of KES 10,000 or $100.

Preprints

AJSTSS upports the deposition of manuscripts in preprint servers and does not consider this to compromise the novelty of the results. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered. The preprint should be cited.

Article types (consider more article types)

The Journal will consider the following article types:

  • Research articles

Research articles should present the results of an original research study. These manuscripts should describe how the research project was conducted and provide a thorough analysis of the results of the project. Systematic reviews may be submitted as research articles.

  • Reviews

A review article provides an overview of the published literature in a particular subject area.

Other Manuscripts

  • Letters and viewpoints: Debates on policy issues relating to AJSTSS disciplines; personal views and experiences relevant to important policy issues will be considered.
  • New technologies and products: Evaluation of new products and technologies developed for or relevant to global markets will be considered.
  • Announcements: Information on scientific conferences, training programmes, industrial exhibitions, and awards of interest to the global scholarly community will be considered.

Language of Publication

The Journal publishes papers in UK English only. The use of complex jargon must be avoided.

Footnotes

Footnotes must be avoided in the main body of the manuscript.  Use the APA referencing guide.

Parts of a Review Manuscript

Review manuscripts should range from 3,000 to 4,000 words and contain extensive literature citations. Include a title page, abstract, keywords, introduction, literature review, discussion/application, conclusions and references.

Page-Proofs

Page proofs will normally be sent to the corresponding author through email for correction within a specified timeframe. Failure to comply with the deadline will result in the exclusion of the manuscript from the publication schedule.

Copyright Notice

AJSTSS publications are published under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. The license lets others 1. share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) 2. adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially under the following terms: 1. attribution (You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use) and 2. ShareAlike (If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original).

Privacy Statement

The personal information such as names, email addresses and other contacts entered in the Journal will be used exclusively for the stated purposes and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other third party.

Author Checklist

Authors submitting manuscripts for publication should use the checklist shown below to ensure that their manuscript is in the correct format and to facilitate processing and publication

 

Tick

Item

 

One soft copy

 

Manuscript pages are numbered throughout

 

The title page with the title of the manuscript, followed by authors' names, addresses, and contacts of the corresponding author is clearly indicated

 

Abstract with keywords is provided

 

Citations in text conform to specifications in author guidelines

 

References in the text and in the reference list correspond exactly

 

Journal titles are given in full

 

Tables and figures are properly captioned and placed correctly within the main text.

 

All magnifications of figures are indicated by scale bars

 

Metric standard international units are used

 

Manuscript processing fee payment evidence is enclosed

 

Information for Reviewers

 Applications to review

We appreciate applications to join our community of peer reviewers.

You may apply or be contacted with requests to review for AJSTSS  in your subject area.

Applications to be a reviewer may be sent to . Reviewers are selected on a manuscript-by-manuscript basis.

How to peer review for AJSTSS

AJSTSS encourages the publication of findings of various researches conducted by scholars to facilitate sharing and dissemination of knowledge. The manuscripts acceptable cover a wide range of areas in regard to the scope identified for AJSTSS publications.

 Manuscripts are reviewed, in accordance with the following criteria and guidelines: consider google form.

QUESTION

TICK AS APPROPRIATE

1. Write the title of the paper here:

 

2. Is the content of this manuscript original?

YES

NO

3. Does this paper address any of the areas listed in the scope?

YES

 

NO

4. Rate the length of this paper.

The ideal length is 10 single-spaced pages, font size of 10

TOO LONG

TOO SHORT

JUST RIGHT

5. You recommend it be:

a

Published as it is

 

b

Published subject to MINOR corrections

 

c

Published subject to MAJOR corrections

 

d

Rejected

 
         

 

Write corrections you would wish the authors to effect to improve the paper.

The reviewer report should comprehensively critique the submission and consist of much more than a few brief sentences. We encourage reviewers to help authors improve their manuscripts. The report should give constructive analysis to authors, particularly where revisions are recommended.

Some core aspects that should be critiqued by reviewers may include:

  • Are the research questions valid?
  • Is the sample size sufficient?
  • Is there necessary ethical approval and/or consent and was the research ethical?
  • Are the methods and study design appropriate for answering the research question?
  • Do the experiments have appropriate controls?
  • Is the reporting of the methods, including any equipment and materials, sufficiently detailed that the research might be reproduced?
  • Are any statistical tests used appropriately and correctly reported?
  • Are the figures and tables clear and do they accurately represent the results?
  • Has previous research by the authors and others been discussed and have those results been compared to the current results?
  • Are there any inappropriate citations, for example, not supporting the claim being made or too many citations to the authors' articles?
  • Do the results support the conclusions?
  • Are limitations of the research acknowledged?
  • Is the abstract an accurate summary of the research and results, without spin?
  • Is the language clear and understandable?

To help authors receive timely reviews, reviewer reports should be submitted via the manuscript tracking system on or before the agreed deadline. Reviewers should contact AJSTSS if they are unable to meet the deadline so an alternative date can be arranged.

We encourage reviewers to focus their reports on objectively critiquing the technical aspects of the submission, including the soundness of the methodology and whether the conclusions can be supported by the results. At the end of their review, we ask reviewers to recommend one of the following actions:

  • Publish as it is
  • Consider after Minor Corrections
  • Consider after Major Corrections
  • Reject

However, it is important to note that the overall decision will be made by the Editor in Chief.

 Confidentiality

Manuscripts under peer review should be strictly confidential. Reviewers must not share manuscripts or discuss their content with anyone outside the peer-review process. Reviewers will be anonymous to the authors unless they choose to disclose their identity by signing the review report.

Conflicts of interest

Reviewers should decline to review a manuscript from an author if: -

  • Have a recent publication or current submission with the author
  • Share or have recently shared an affiliation with the author
  • Collaborate or have recently collaborated with the author
  • Have a close personal connection to the author
  • Have a financial interest in the subject of the work
  • Feel unable to be objective in reviewing the submission

 

Consent for identifying information

The AJSTSS conforms to the requirements stipulated by COPE with regard to consent to publish identifying information. Manuscript having datas or images or information which can identify the individual will not be accepted for publication.

 Language of Informed Consent Documents:

  1. a) We acknowledge that we live in a multi-lingual society. We underscore that informed consent to participation in research is a process that is distinct from its affirmation in an informed consent document. Consequently, the language in which informed consent process is conducted may not always be the language in which the informed consent document is written. The flexibility to use the language that is most effective in communication or even more than one language to obtain consent and its written affirmation is considered congruent to and required in a multilingual society, and should be seen and deployed as providing added value rather than being a compromise (as it may appear when judged from a unilingual context).
  2. b) If research participants by virtue of research selection, all speak the same language at home, we strongly advise that the informed consent document be in that language. However, we appreciate that most studies are not restricted to people who all speak the same language, hence we acknowledge that English and Kiswahili as the lingua franca in where we are dormained will usually be the most practically appropriate language in which an informed consent document will be written, reflecting the local realities as expressed in point (a) above.
  3. c) We encourage that (but do not insist upon) informed consent documents be made available in English, Kiswahili and Local Languages (as appropriate) from which a specific research participant may choose. Note that translations of informed consent documents from English must be accurate. (if any other language is used, then translation to English and Kiswahili will be required)
  4. d) In case an informed consent document is available in more than one language, we underscore that research participants may choose to use an informed consent document in a language that is different from their home language.

General requirements

The information that is given to the participants needs to be presented in a language that promotes their understanding of the proposed research study. Translated Informed Consent Form or Translators can be used.