Author Guidelines

Stage 1A: First Submission

  1. Kindly read the Aims and Scope of the journal to ensure that the subject matter of submission is covered within it. Submissions must be completed within 30 days from the day of beginning the process. All incomplete submissions with more than 30 days old will be removed. Authors will have to make a fresh submission in such cases. Please ensure that the submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  2. Author will need to give an undertaking that the submission in no way whatever a violation of any existing copyright and that it contains nothing obscene, objectionable, indecent, or of a libelous or scandalous character or nature. A declaration to this effect will be included in the cover letter. It will also include willingness of the author to publish the work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
  3. All articles are to be submitted through Submissions portal. All authors must submit (a) a Cover Letter, (b) Title and Author Information, (c) Abstract, (d) Anonymized Text in four separate files (see, below). In order to facilitate anonymous review all identifying information of the author(s) shall be removed from the text of the submission. Else, submission will not be processed.  All text files must be in .doc or .docx.
  4. The following copy-editing rules must be followed: British English (ize, iza, izy) for spellings (set Language as English (UK));  Oxford English Dictionary for hyphenation; Chicago Manual of Style author-date references style (parenthetical citation) for all citations and references. Where available, DOI and URLs for the references are to be provided by the author (may use https://search.crossref.org/ for locating DOIs).
  5. The line spacing may be set at single spacing, and a 12-point font size, font Garamond. Footnotes and in-text citations are to be used. Footnotes can be used for evaluative bibliographic comments but not for references/citations. Footnotes should be numbered--using insert reference function of the native programme--sequentially throughout the text.
  6. All illustrations, figures, and tables are preferably placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end. Alternatively, provide separate files with tables, figures, maps and other display items, but indicating their preferred location in the text. Authors may note that coloured display items (maps, figures, images) will be placed only in the e-version. The printed version will only carry items in grayscale. For all coloured items please submit a grayscale version as well. Please check that the quality of such items is sufficient. Each item to accompany heading (above the item), sources and notes (both below). Further,
  1. Maps: High resolution files (with at least 300 dpi, in PNG) are to be provided.
  2. Tables: These items need to be in editable formats, ordinarily in .doc/.docx or .xls/.xlsx.
  3. Figures: This items need to be in editable formats, ordinarily in MS Excel with headings, number and sources. along with the base data files.
  1. All authors must be registered with EES on OJS platform. However, during the registration corresponding author be indicated for multi-authored submissions.
  2. All contributors will have to submit a declaration on the (a) copyright-free attribute of the content, (b) plagiarism-free attribute of the content, and any such. In case copyrighted material is used, the necessary permission must be enclosed with the submission in a separate file.

Stage 1B: Submission of Revised Text:

Authors who has received a 'revise and resubmit' decision are expected to complete a revision within 45 days since notified. A revised version submitted after this deadline would ordinarily be treated as a new submission, though the Editor handling the paper has the discretion to treat such a paper as a re-submission. If a paper is returned after this period it may or may not be sent to the original Associate Editor. Revised submissions should be accompanied by a document containing point-wise replies to reviewer comments.

Stage 2: Copyediting and Query Resolution

Once a submission is approved for publication, it is sent for copyediting. Copyediting involves a thorough review of grammar, spellings, punctuation, citations, references, stylistic elements for maintaining the stylistic consistency across the pages of the journal. The aim is to make the text clear, coherent, correct, and consistent as much as possible. All suggested changes will be made in the track change mode in the .doc (MS-Word 1997-2003) version.

Copy editing queries (content related, subject specific, or related to other aspects of manuscript) will be sent to the author for any clarifications that we may require ('Authors Query'). It may be noted that this is the only stage to make any change in the text. It would be not be possible to accept any change to the manuscript after this stage. will get an opportunity to carry out only minor factual corrections to the text at later stages.

Authors will convey the responses in .doc version by using Comment tab in Review menu. In case the author is agreement with copy editor on change of text, no action is required. Otherwise, alternative text be provied in as Comments.

Review time: one week.

Stage 3: Typesetting

The copyedited version is typeset as per the journal specifications (layout, font, font size, page size, margins, line spacing, and format). Author will receive this version as a PDF document. Only minor changes can be accomodated at this stage. Editing tools such as 'Insert text at cursor', 'Add note to replace text', etc may be used for this purpose.

Review time: three days.

Stage 4: Proof Reading

It is a preliminary version of the publication meant for proofreading by the author for identification of typos, and production errors, if any. At this stage the author can only indicate essential corrections and avoid any changes that are only desirable or could be called mere improvements. Upon hearing from Author, the manuscript is checked internally for the final check, before sending it for preparing the print copies. This stage may be merged with Stage 3 by the editorial team.

Review time: three days

Stage 5: Publication

Once the online publication is released, all authors will be informed.