Submissions

Author Guidelines

Authors are invited to make a submission to this journal. All submissions will be assessed by an editor to determine whether they meet the aims and scope of this journal. Those considered to be a good fit will be sent for peer review before determining whether they will be accepted or rejected.

Before making a submission, authors are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any material included with the submission, such as photos, documents and datasets. All authors identified on the submission must consent to be identified as an author. Where appropriate, research should be approved by an appropriate ethics committee in accordance with the legal requirements of the study's country.

An editor may desk reject a submission if it does not meet minimum standards of quality. Before submitting, please ensure that the study design and research argument are structured and articulated properly. The title should be concise, and the abstract should be able to stand on its own. This will increase the likelihood of reviewers agreeing to review the paper. When you're satisfied that your submission meets this standard, please follow the checklist below to prepare your submission.

N.B: Kindly reach out for our assistance if you encounter any technical glitches during submission

Template of a manuscript

Authors are free to submit their manuscripts in any format/structure. However, authors will have to use our template if their papers are accepted for publication.

The paper should be submitted in word documents. The linked <Word template for Anonymized Document> should be used for the preparation of the manuscript for this journal. Using the template file will substantially shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts.

Anonymized document should include a title, abstract, key words, the main body text where personal data excluded in order to ensure author anonymity and references. The personal information will be included in the accepted manuscript after peer-review process.

General guidelines

Only English language articles are accepted. Authors are responsible for the language quality in their article and is strongly recommended to have your manuscript checked by a native speaker or an English language specialist before submission, to ensure that the language is acceptable. Authors may also use free tools like Paperpal, Grammarly, QuillBot, GrammarCheck etc. to check for grammar correctness.

Authors should provide the following information:

• Full name
• Affiliation (where the author was positioned when the research was undertaken – if authors change affiliation before publishing this should be given as a footnote)
• Address
• Email address
• ORCiD, this is not mandatory, but highly recommended for the benefit of authors: unique author identifier that ensures that all your works are correctly attributed to you – see https://orcid.org
• Clear identification of the corresponding author (who will be responsible for ensuring that the correct version is submitted and that all authors agree to publication and approve any corrections during peer review and after acceptance).

Each article must comprise:

• An informative title: ensure that it clearly explains what the article is about (not exceed 20 words)
• An abstract:  The abstract should be a total of about 200 words maximum. The abstract should be a single paragraph and should follow the style of structured abstracts, but without headings: 1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; 2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied. Include any relevant preregistration numbers, and sample characteristics of any population used; 3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and 4) Conclusion: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. The abstract should be an objective representation of the article: it must not contain results which are not presented and substantiated in the main text and should not exaggerate the main conclusions.
• Between 6–10 keywords. We recommend that the keywords are specific to the article, yet reasonably common within the subject discipline.
• The main body of text should not exceed 6000–8000 words and should comprise:
• An introduction: The introduction should briefly place the study in a broad context and highlight why it is important. It should define the purpose of the work and its significance, including specific hypotheses being tested. The current state of the research field should be reviewed carefully, and key publications cited. Please highlight controversial and diverging hypotheses when necessary. Finally, briefly mention the main aim of the work and highlight the main conclusions. Keep the introduction comprehensible to scientists working outside the topic of the paper.
• Literature review (optional)
• Methodology and/or theoretical framework: They should be described with sufficient detail to allow others to replicate and build on published results. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited. Give the name and version of any software used and make clear whether computer code used is available. Include any pre-registration codes.
• Results of the research: Provide a concise and precise description of the experimental results, their interpretation as well as the experimental conclusions that can be drawn.
• Discussion and interpretation of results obtained: Authors should discuss the results and how they can be interpreted in perspective of previous studies and of the working hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results.
• Conclusions: This section is not mandatory but can be added to the manuscript if the discussion is unusually long or complex.
• References: The Journal uses the 7th edition of the APA Style (author-date method) short reference system for citations in the text with an alphabetical list at the end of the paper. Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also in the reference list and vice versa. Please check if all names and surnames of the authors and the details (title, year, volume, pages, etc.) in the list of references are correct. We recommend preparing the references with a bibliography software package like Mendeley or Zotero to avoid typing mistakes and duplicated references.

  In the text, use the following style examples:

  • This was discussed by Smart (2016)…" – single author item
  • This was discussed in full (Smart, 2016)" – single author item
  • This was discussed in full (Smart & Burkart, 2016) – two authors 
  • This was discussed in full (Smart et al., 2016)…" – 3 or more authors
  • This was discussed in full (P. Smart, 2016; S. Smart, 2017)…" where items have similar author names
  • This was discussed in full (Smart, 2016a, 2016b)…" where two or more items are published in the same year

Text sections may be numbered sequentially for clarity. Introduction, Conclusions, and References are not numbered.

Authors must adhere to SI units. Units are not italicised. When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trademark, authors must use the symbol ® or TM

Equations

Formulas, equations and their components presented in the text must be written in Equation Editor. The size of basic symbols in equations should correspond to the letter size of the main text – 10 pt; indexes should be in 7 pt, sub-indexes – 6 pt. For more details see the Template of the Manuscript.

Tables

Tables should be supplied within the text file at submission.

Tables should be created in Word or Excel and should be designed so that they easily fit a regular journal page. Each table should be numbered sequentially throughout the article and mentioned in the main text.

Each table must have an informative caption to describe the table. They may have footnotes if explanations of abbreviations, etc., are required.

Figures

Figures should be supplied within the text file at submission.

Each figure should be numbered sequentially throughout the article and mentioned in the main text. Each figure must have an informative caption to describe the figure.

Please be sure that all figures are at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour.

Diagrams, charts and schemes: font – Times New Roman from 5 to 8 pt, line thickness – from 0.3 to 2 pt, file formats – *.pdf, *.eps, *.cdr, *.xls, *.xlsx, *.dwg.

Corrections after publication

If any errors are discovered after publication, the journal editors, in partnership with the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, University of Ilorin, and the authors, will determine the right method of correction.