Guide for Authors

Instructions to Authors

1-SUBMISSION OF PAPER

1-1-Requirements for new submission

Authors may choose to submit the manuscript as a single word file to be used in the refereeing process.

1-2-Requirement of revised submission

Only when the submitted paper is at the revision stage, authors will be requested to put the paper in to a 'correct format' for acceptance and provide the items required for the publication of the manuscript.

1-3- Authorship Guidelines

Authorship credit should be based on: (i) Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, (ii) Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) Final approval of the version to be submitted for publication.  All of these conditions should be met by all authors. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section. All authors must agree on the sequence of authors listed before submitting the article. All authors must agree to designate one author as the corresponding author for the submission. It is the responsibility of corresponding author to arrange the whole manuscript upon the requirements and to dialogue with the co-authors during the peer-reviewing and proofing stages and to also act on behalf.

2-BEFORE YOU BEGIN

2-1- Publishing Ethics

The ethical policy of UASPESJ is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with UASPESJ Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with UASPESJ. The ethical policy of UASPESJ is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published. The publishing decision is based on the suggestion of the journal's reviewers and editorial board members. The ethical policy insisted the Editor-in-Chief, may confer with other editors or reviewers in making the decision. The reviewers are necessary to evaluate the research papers based on the submitted content in confidential manner.  The reviewers also suggest the authors to improve the quality of research paper by their reviewing comments.  Authors should ensure that their submitted research work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions should be followed by the authors.  Any kind of plagiarism constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.  For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines .

2-2-Peer-Review Process

In order to sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others.  When appropriate, authors are obliged to provide retractions and/or corrections of errors to the editors and the Publisher.  All papers submitted to UASPESJ journal will be peer reviewed for at least one round. UASPESJ journal adopts a double-blinded review policy: authors are blind to reviewers, and reviewers are also blind to authors. The peer review process is conducted in the online manuscript submission and peer-review system. After a manuscript is submitted to the online system, the system immediately notifies the editorial office. After passing an initial quality check by the editorial office, the manuscript will be assigned to two or more reviewers.  After receiving reviewers’ comments, the editorial team member makes a decision. Because reviewers sometimes do not agree with each other, the final decision sent to the author may not exactly reflect recommendations by any of the reviewers. The decision after each round of peer review may be one of the following:

Accept without any further changes.

1. Accept with minor revision. The revised manuscript may or may not be sent to the reviewers for another round of comments.
2. Accept with major revision. The revised manuscript sent to the reviewers for another round of comments.
3. Reject. The manuscript is rejected for publication by UASPESJ.
4. Unable to review. The manuscript is reassigning to another reviewers.

2-3-Post-Publication Evaluation

In addition to Peer Review Process, the UASPESJ Journal has Post-Publication Evaluation by the scientific community. Post-Publication Evaluation is concentrated to ensure that the quality of published research, review and case report meets certain standards and the conclusions that are presented are justified. The post-publication evaluation includes online comments and citations on published papers. Authors may respond to the comments of the scientific community and may revise their manuscript. The Post-Publication Evaluation is described in such a way; it is allowing authors to publish quickly about sports sciences concepts. 

3-1- Writing Language

Publications in UASPESJ are in English or Arabic language. Authors whose first language is not English should make sure their manuscript is written in idiomatic English before submission. Please write your text in good English (American or British is accepted). language and copy-editing services are provided by the UASPESJ; hence, authors who feel their manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors are encouraged to obtain such services prior to submission. Authors are responsible for all costs associated with such services. 

3-2- New Submissions

Submission to UASPESJ journal proceeds totally online and authors will be guided stepwise through the creation and uploading of the manuscript files. As part of the manuscript, authors may choose to submit the manuscript as a single file to be used in the refereeing process. This can be a Word document (*.doc or *.docx), that can be used by referees to evaluate the manuscript. All figures and tables encouraged to be embedded and included in the main manuscript file.

3-3-References

References list must be provided according to the UASPESJ references format in a consistent style. Where applicable, author(s) name(s), article title, year of publication, journal full name, article/chapter/book title, volume/issue number and the pagination must be present. Use of DOI is highly encouraged.

3-4-Formatting requirements

There are no strict formatting requirements but all manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to convey your manuscript, for example, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgement, Conflict of Interest and References. Please ensure all figures and tables should be embedded and included in the main manuscript file. for download Arabic template click here.

3-5-Revised Submissions

Regardless of the file format of the original submission, at revision the authors are instructed to submit their manuscript with UASPESJ format at Word document (*.doc or *.docx). Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. To avoid unnecessary errors the authors are strongly advised to use the 'spell-check' and 'grammar-check' for the submitted manuscript. At this level the author(s) name and affiliation should be inserted.

3-6- Manuscript Submission and Declaration

While submitting a manuscript to UASPESJ, all contributing author(s) must verify that the manuscript represents authentic and valid work and that neither this manuscript nor one with significantly similar content under their authorship has been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere including electronically in the same form, in English. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the primary correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.

3-7- Manuscript Submission and Verification

Manuscripts are assumed not to be published previously in print or electronic version and are not under consideration by another publication. Copies of related or possibly duplicated materials (including those containing significantly similar content or using same data) that have been published previously or are under consideration for another publication must be provided at the time of online submission.

4-MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE

Manuscript literature and tenses must be structured as: Title; Abstract; Keywords; Introduction; Materials and Methods; Results and Discussion; Conclusion; Acknowledgements and References submitted in a file with limited size. The text should not exceed 25 double spaced type written or printed A4 pages with 25 mm margins and should be printed on one side only and all pages should be numbered. A covering letter signed by Author should be sent with the manuscript. Each manuscript component should begin on a new page.

4-1-Title Page

The first page of the manuscript includes the title (capitalize only the first letter) of the article, followed by one-line space and the names of all authors (no degrees) and their addresses for correspondence, including the e-mail address of the corresponding author. The first letter of each name and main word should be capitalized. The title, author's name and affiliation should be centered on the width of the typing area.

4-2-Manuscript Title

Title of up to 17 words should not contain the name of locations, countries or cities of the research as well as abbreviations. Avoid complicated and technical expressions and do not use vague expressions.

4-3-Abstract

In English and Arabic the abstract of 150 to 250 words that sketches the purpose of the study; basic procedures; main findings its novelty; discussions and the principal conclusions, should not contain any undefined abbreviations or references.

4-4-Keywords

In Arabic an English. Provide 3 to 5 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes. Keywords should not repeat the words of the manuscript title or contain abbreviations and shall be written in alphabetical order as separated by a semicolon. Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter through the text.

4-5-Highlights

Highlights are mandatory for UASPESJ journal. A highlight is a concise, short phraseو conveying the core findings of your research. Please use 'Highlights' in the file name and include 3 to 4 items. The approximate length of a highlighted item may be within one to one and a half lines.

4-6-Introduction

Describes briefly the background of the investigation with updated information and states the aim of the study.

4-7-Materials and Methods

Provide sufficient details to enable the experiments to be reproduced. Support the techniques and methods used with references. Metric and standard international units should be used in this section and throughout the manuscript. Specify the computer software used for statistical analysis and define statistical terms, abbreviations, and symbols applied.

4-8-Results

Present the results and their significance clearly. Graphs and tables should be self-explanatory. Do not repeat in figures or in the text the data presented in tables. Tables and figures should be numbered in the order of their mention in the text.

4-9-Discussion

Deals with critical review and interpretations of the results, and supported by relevant updated references. Repetition of data should be avoided. It should end with brief conclusions. In Short Communications, Results and Discussion may be combined.

4-10-Conclusion

This section should highlight the major, firm discoveries, and state what the added value of the main finding is, without literature references.

4-11-Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full. Financial support affiliation of the study, if exists, must be mentioned in this section. Thereby, the Grant number of financial supports must be included.

4-12- Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest statement must be placed at the manuscript as below: "The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest regarding the publication of this manuscript".

4-13-References

 References listed consecutively in the order in which they are first mentioned in the text using Arabic numbers. These references should appear in a numbered list on a separate page at the end of the paper, and writing with (APA) system in the list of references.

They should contain the following elements of information as appropriate names (s) of the author (s), the title of paper or book, name of  Journal, year, Volume number, page range [for book name of the publisher (commercial or institutional) and place of publication (city and country ).

If the author does not verify the original, it should be given in the list of references by “cites by …” and the paper in which it was referred to.

4-14- Examples of References

Wissam,S.A., & Samer,Y.M. (2013). Motor Learning and its Applications in Physical Education and Sports (1th ed., p. 79). Dar Al-Kutub Al-Ilmiyah.

Manaf,M.H. (2011) The effect of using three methods in learning the movement of the front hands jump on the jump table device in men's artistic gymnastics[Monograph]. Diyala Journal of Human Research, 48, p. 351. https://www.iasj.net/iasj/article/17873 

4-15-Tables

Do not submit tables and graphs as a photograph. Tables should be set within the text. Do not use internal horizontal and vertical rules. Tables should be set within the text and should have a clear and rational structure along with consecutive numerical order. All tables should be numbered (1, 2, 3, etc.). Give enough information in subtitles so that each table is understandable without reference to the text. For each table, please supply a table caption (title) explaining the components of the table. Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption. Tables should be with the captions placed above in limited numbers. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body, authors have the sole responsibility for securing the necessary permission.

4-16-Figures

Figures/ illustrations should be in high quality art work, within 200-300 dpi. Ensure that figures are clear, labeled, and of a size that can be reproduced legibly in the journal. Figures should be set within the text. Following remarks should be applied to the figures:

-Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text of the manuscript.

-Figure captions begin with the term Figures. Figures should be with the captions placed below in limited numbers.

-No punctuation is to be placed at the end of the caption.

-Identify all elements found in the figure in the figure caption; and use boxes, circles, etc., as coordinate points in graphs.

-Identify previously published material by giving the original source in the form of a reference citation at the end of the figure caption.

5-AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

All contributing authors should qualify for authorship. The order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Sufficient participation in the work is of utmost importance.

Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of data. All authors should be involved in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and approve of its submission to this journal.

6-COPYRIGHT

Journals should make clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published.  Upon submission of manuscript, authors should attach a complete Journal Publishing Agreement.

6-1-Permission required

Permission should be sought from the publisher to reproduce any substantial part of a copyrighted work that depends on both the significance of the material and the quantity of material used. This includes any text, illustrations, charts, tables, photographs, or other material from previously published sources used.  If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners (publisher) and credit the source(s) in the manuscript.

6-2-Permission not required

Copyright protects only original (i.e. creative) material. As such it protects only the particular form of expression of a work, and not the ideas or facts contained in it. Public domain works are not protected by copyright and may be reproduced without permission. Permission would however be required to re-use the final formatted, edited, published version of the work in certain cases, as it is owned by the publisher.

7-OPEN ACCESS PUBLICATION

UASPESJ publishes the research work, covering a wide range of agricultural Sciences. All papers published in UASPESJ are open access and distributed under the open access license agreement. Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.

8-AUTHOR AGREEMENT

In order to disseminate the authors’ research work, the publishers need publishing rights. For open access articles the publisher uses an exclusive licensing agreement in which authors retain copyright in their manuscript.

8-1-User License Agreement

UASPESJ provides access to archived material through UASPESJ archives.  Manuscripts are the parts of an open archive are made freely available from UASPESJ website after a certain period, which begins from the final publication date of the manuscript.  Users or readers of the authors’ manuscript also need to be clear about how they can use the manuscript. All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by Creative Commons user license called "Creative Common Attribution". In addition, University of Anbar Sport and Physical Education Science Journal retains the copyright of published articles, which is released under a “Creative Commons Attribution License for CC-BY-4.0” enabling the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited

9-CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Authors have requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist. If an organization encompasses any financial interest in the outcome of the study, the authors are appealed to provide a declaration that has full access to all the data in the study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. All studies (if necessary, based on the type and subject), must be approved by the relevant Ethics Committee/ Institution review board of the respective institutions. Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to be originated by the authors. A copyright transfer agreement is signed by the corresponding author, upon the acceptance of the manuscript, on behalf of all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy. Authors will be notified as soon as possible of decisions concerning the suitability of their manuscripts for publication in the journal. Once the article has been accepted for publication, it will be copy edited and typeset, after which the corresponding author will be sent information on accessing page proofs to correct. Other than the correction of typographical errors, alterations cannot be made at this stage. Please note that there are no page charges to publish in UASPESJ. The submitted materials may be considered for inclusion but cannot be returned and Editors of the Journal reserve the right to accept or reject any article in any stage, if necessary. To download Conflict of Interest Form, click this link.

10-ROLE OF FUNDING SOURCE

Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the article and briefly describe the role of the funder/sponsor in any part of the work including design and conduct of the study, data collection, data management, data analysis and interpretation, preparation, review and approval of the manuscript. The following rules should be followed:

The sentence should begin with: ‘This work was supported by …’.

1. The sentence should begin with: ‘This work was supported by …’.
2. The full official funding agency name should be given in an expandable form not in an abbreviated form.
3. Grant numbers should be complete and accurate and provided in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number ABX CDXXXXXX]’.
4. Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers ABX CDXXXXXX, EFX GHXXXXXX]’.
5. Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency).

11-ERRORS IN PUBLISHED PAPERS

When an author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript.  Finally, the corresponding author should be ensured that all appropriate co-authors included on the paper have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

12-PLAGIARISM PREVENTION AND VIOLATION OF PUBLICATION ETHICS

All manuscripts under review or published with UASPESJ are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software called iThenticate. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. Other violations include duplicate publication, data fabrication and falsification, and improper credit of author contribution.  Thus, the Plagiarism or Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior are unacceptable and submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. It is necessary to mention that UASPESJ Journal may ignore a duplicated manuscript up to 20%.

The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. CrossCheck is powered by the iThenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of iThenticate.  For a searchable list of all journals in the CrossCheck database, please visit: iThenticate

All new submissions to many UASPESJ journal are automatically screened using CrossCheck within the editorial Board. Editorial Board Member may also choose to run a similarity report at any other point during the review process or post-publication. The default similarity report view gives the percentage of the text of the manuscript which has overlap with one or more published articles. Figures and equations cannot be checked at present. Note that a high similarity score does not necessarily indicate plagiarized text. A similarity score of 30% could mean 30% text in common with one source but could equally mean 1% text in common with 30 different sources. Re-used text that has been legitimately cited the Bibliography may all contribute to the similarity score. The subject knowledge of an editorial expert is vital in order to interpret the CrossCheck report and determine whether there are any grounds for concern.(Plagiarism)

13- SUBMISSION FINAL CHECKLIST

1. Read the Journal’s Guide for Authors and make sure that the manuscript (text, tables and figures) meets Journal requirements.
2. The manuscript contains the main sections outlined in Journal’s Guide for Authors.
3. Spell-check the manuscript.
4.  All authors must read the Ethics in publishing, Plagiarism prevention, Violation of publication ethics and Handling cases of misconduct before being submitted to the UASPESJ.
5. The Manuscript has been read and approved by all listed authors.
6. Not only the Corresponding Author, but also the whole contributors of the manuscript are advised to be registered at the journal website in order to keep their names in the manuscript bio-sketches.
7. A conflict of interest disclosure form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.

14-USE OF THE DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes, i.e., When the authors use a DOI to create links to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.

15-CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION

Permit others distribute and copy the manuscript, to create extracts, abstracts, and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from manuscript (such as a translation), to include in a collective work, to text or data mine the article, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, and do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author's honor or reputation.  Further details found at: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)  In addition, UASPESJ retain the copyright of published articles, which is released under a “Creative Commons Attribution License for CC-BY-4.0” enabling the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

16-ARTICLE PUBLICATION FEES

Open access publishing proposes a relatively new model for scholarly journal publishing that provides worldwide, barrier-free access to the full-text of all published articles. Open access allows all interested readers to view, download, print, and redistribute any article without a subscription, enabling far greater distribution of an author's work than the traditional subscription-based publishing model.

In an open access model, the publication costs of an article is paid from an author's research budget, or by their supporting institution. Anbar Journal of Agricultural Sciences (UASPESJ) is an Open Access journal; therefore, publishing an article in this journal requires a payment of 100 US$ for an accepted manuscript to be published. There is no submission fee required.