Author Guidelines
All manuscripts are to be submitted online according to the instructions specified on the journal website. It would be helpful for you to refer to this page while going through the article submission process.
Should you encounter any inconsistencies in author guidelines between the print and online version, it is advisable that you refer to the online version which is updated more frequently.
Manuscript Format
- Your manuscript should be in MS Word format. You are advised to download the document, Synergy Manuscript Submission Template, as a template or for more details on preparing your submissions for consideration.
- Authors must make sure that the manuscripts are written in clear and comprehensible English. Modern Electronic Technology accept manuscripts written in either American or British English. Non-English words usage must be kept to a minimum and the font must be italicized (except for e.g. and i.e.).
- Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.
Cover letter
All articles that are submitted should attach a cover letter as a separate file. Authors should note that the cover letter is an important document that would provide all the information about the novelty and importance of your findings. It also functions as a proof that the author has approved the submission of the article and that it has not been submitted to more than one journal simultaneously.
Please find below for the completed declarations section required to be include in the manuscript or cover letter.
Conflict of interests: MS is an employee of XXX. BF has received grants from XXX.
Informed consent: Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects before the study.
Ethical approval: The ethics committee of XXXX approved this study (REC number: XXXX).
Trial registration: Name of trial registry: Trial registration number
Contributorship: BF and NP researched literature and conceived the study. MS was involved in protocol development, gaining ethical approval, patient recruitment and data analysis. BF wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors reviewed and edited the manuscript and approved the final version of the manuscript
A well written cover letter would provide an opportunity to convince journal editors to consider the article for publication. The author’s cover letters will only be read by the editors and will be kept strictly confidential. It will not be shared with the reviewers.
Below is an example of all the information that should ideally be included in your cover letter:
- Why is your study important and relevant to the journal that you are submitting it to?
- State the question that leads to the results of your research clearly.
- What are your major experimental results and the overall significant findings?
- Important conclusions that can be drawn from your research
- A self-written statement that the manuscripts have not yet been published in any other journal and also are not under consideration for publication in any journal other than Journal of Autonomous Intelligence.
- Any additional details that you feel would encourage the editor to send your article for review.
Title
Authors should avoid the usage of excessive uncommon jargons that may not be understood by the target audience. Avoid titles that are too long and ensure that it is less than 50 words. Remember to spell out any acronyms first before using it throughout your article as this may help the readers who are not familiar with the meanings of the words. Also avoid irony, puns or humour in the title as it may not be understood by non-native speaking readers and it also tends to be more culture-specific, hence not being suitable for a broad audience.
List of Authors
Authors’ names should be spelled out fully instead of only listing their initials with their respective affiliations included in the footnotes. It must be ensured that the authors of a particular manuscript are listed based on the extent of their contribution and the major contributor should be listed first. Corresponding authors (maximum 2) must be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. Only include the email of one corresponding author for contact purposes in the manuscript. It is compulsory that all authors have viewed and approved the final version of the manuscript before submitting it via the system.
Abstract
Authors should include an abstract which is a concise summary of a research paper that is fully self-contained and makes sense by itself. It should be informative for the readers and include the research purpose and the results achieved that are significant. Please note that the abstract should be the range of 200-250 words, indented and single spaced. Ideally, an abstract should be the last thing that the author writes after completing his manuscript. Authors should also include 5-8 keywords after the abstract and avoid using the words that have already been used in the title of the manuscript.
Section Headings
Authors must ensure that all section headings, subheadings and sub-subheadings are differentiated by font size. The bold font must be used for the major headings and subheadings, and italic font must be used for the sub-subheadings in parenthesis.
Example:
Main Headings: Bold, font size 14
Headings: Bold, font size 12
Sub headings: Bold and Italic, font size 12
Sub-sub headings: Italic, font size 12
Introduction
The introduction of the paper should start with an explanation of why a particular research is being conducted and end with a statement/conclusion of the selected research approach. Authors must ensure that an non-technical reader is able to understand the introduction, including the technical goals and objectives, any technical issues faced and its application in the real world. It would be beneficial for the readers if the authors provided a clear, one sentence purpose statement of the research. It would be advisable to keep the length of the introduction about 1/2 page (1-2 paragraphs).
Materials and Methods
In this section, authors are required to provide a detailed account of the procedure that was followed while conducting the research described in the report. This will help the readers to obtain a clear understanding of the research and also allow them to replicate the study in the future. Authors should ensure that every method used is described and include citations for the procedures that have been described previously. Avoid any kind of discussion in this section regarding the methods or results of any kind.
Ethics
Ethics information, including IACUC permit numbers and/or IRB name, if applicable. This information should be included in a subheading labeled "Ethics Statement" in the "Methods" section of your manuscript file, in as much detail as possible.
Results
This section can be divided into subheadings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.
Discussion
In this section, authors should state their interpretations and explain the implications of their results and make suggestions for future research. The discussion should be kept as short as possible while clearly and fully stating, supporting, explaining, and defending the author’s answers and discussing other important and directly relevant issues. Authors should avoid discussing side issues as it may obscure the message.
Conclusion
Authors should note that the conclusion is extremely important as it provides a closure for their paper. An effective conclusion would leave the reader feeling satisfied that the concepts have been fully explained. The conclusion should start with a clear statement of principal findings that also has to be concise. It would help to set the paper in the context of previous work as this will show the readers how significant or worthy your research is. Please restrain from rewriting the abstract and recommendations for further research can be included in this section.
Funding
It is the authors’ responsibility to declare all financial and non-financial support that may be considered as a source of competing interest in relation to their submitted manuscript in this section. Any grants, royalties, consulting fees are considered as financial supports and must be declared. Other forms of non-financial support that must also be declared are externally-supplied equipment/biological sources, writing assistance, administrative support, contributions from non-authors etc.
Appendix
Any technical details that are necessary to include, but that interrupts the flow of the article, can be attached in the appendix section. Any appendices should be included at the end of the main text of the paper, after the acknowledgments section (if any) but before the reference list. For supplementary figures, authors are advised to include it in the ‘Supplementary figures’ section.
Text
The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word or Latex. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.
Figures
Authors should include all figures into the manuscript and submit it as 1 file in the OJS system. Figures include photographs, scanned images, graphs, charts and schematic diagrams. Figures submitted should avoid unnecessary decorative effects (e.g. 3D graphs) as well as be minimally processed (e.g. changes in brightness and contrast applied uniformly for the entire figure). It should also be set against a white background.
Please remember to label all figures (e.g. axis etc.) and add in captions (below the figure) as required. These captions should be numbered (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.) in boldface. All figures must have a brief title (also known as caption) that describes the entire figure without citing specific panels, followed by a legend defined as description of each panel. Please identify each panel with uppercase letters in parenthesis (e.g. A, B, C, etc.)
The preferred file formats for any separately submitted figure(s) are TIFF or JPEG. All figures should be legible in print form and of optimal resolution. Optimal resolutions preferred are 300 dots per inch for RGB colored, 600 dots per inch for grey-scale and 1200 dots per inch for line art. Although there are no file size limitation imposed, authors are highly encouraged to compress their figures to an ideal size without unduly affecting legibility and resolution of figures. This will also speed up the process of uploading in the submission system if necessary.
The Editor-in-Chief and Publisher reserve the right to request from author(s) the high-resolution files and unprocessed data and metadata files should the need arise at any point after manuscript submission for reasons such as production, evaluation or other purposes. The file name should allow for ease in identifying the associated manuscript submitted.
Tables, lists and equations
Tables, lists and equations must be submitted together with the manuscript. Likewise, lists and equations should be properly aligned and its meaning clear to readers. Tables created using Microsoft Word table function are preferred. Place each table in your manuscript file right after the paragraph in which it is first cited.
Do not submit your tables in separate files. The tables should include a concise but sufficiently explanatory title at the top. Vertical lines should not be used to separate columns. Leave some extra space between the columns instead. All tables should be based on three horizontal lines to separate the caption, header and body. A few additional horizontal lines MAY be included as needed (example below). Any explanations essential to the understanding of the table should be given in footnotes at the bottom of the table. SI units should be used.
Supplementary information
This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. This information is relevant to the manuscript but remains non-essential to readers’ understanding of the manuscript’s main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain ‘suppl. info’.
In-text citations
Reference citations in the text should be numbered consecutively in superscript square brackets. Some examples:
- Negotiation research spans many disciplines[3,4].
- This result was later contradicted by Becker and Seligman[5].
- This effect has been widely studied[1-5,7].
Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. They should also be easily identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications and the word ‘Unpublished’ in parenthesis, E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished).
References
Click here to view/download the complete Synergy Reference Guideline.
