Manuscript Submission Guidelines

Journal for Service Quality Enhancement (JSQE) serves as a venue for the dissemination of high-quality research, scholarship, and practices. Our publishing program is committed to diversity and inclusion. We welcome submissions from a wide variety of authors from around the world.

Pre-submission: helping readers find your article

Before submitting the manuscript, give your title, keywords, and abstract a good look-over. These elements ensure that your article can be found on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). A simple way to raise the visibility of your article is to include a cross-link that will ensure proper indexing and ranking and providing full names for all authors.

Submitting your article

JSQE has its own editorial office and guidelines for authors. To submit an article, visit the JSQE website. There you will find our general guidelines for authors. Follow the journal's guidelines, as each issue will have its specific requirements, and direct all submission queries to the editorial office.

Editorial policies

Peer review policy

As standard practice, JSQE does not employ author-recommended reviewers. When nominating an expert to review your manuscript, it is imperative that the reviewer be an expert in the field and provide an unbiased review. When recommending reviewers, exercise due caution regarding conflicts of interest. Examples of conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

The reviewer should have no prior knowledge of your submission.
Reviewers shouldn't have worked with the authors recently.
A reviewer from the same institution as the authors is prohibited.

Note that, there is no obligation for journal editors to pick your published manuscript for review by any recommended or opposing reviewers.

Authorship
All authors whose work contributed to the paper should be credited. Contributors who have provided sufficient information should also be listed as authors of the article. Principal authorship, order of authorship, and all other publication credits are proportional to the relative contributions of each individual involved, regardless of their status.

All those who have a legitimate claim must be included in the list of authors. This includes individuals who:

Significantly contributed to the design of the work; and/or acquired, interpreted, or analyzed data.
Reviewed or drafted the article for essential intellectual content.
Approved the version to be published.
Assures that the work is reviewed and investigated thoroughly in case a question about its accuracy arises.

Authors must meet all of the conditions outlined above. Each author must have made a significant contribution to the content so that they can take public liability for relevant portions.

In large multicenter studies, it is up to the group to identify who will be responsible for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the authorship criterion.

Corresponding author
The corresponding author is the individual who acts as the journal’s primary point of contact during the manuscript submission, review process, and publication process, and guarantees that the journal adheres to its administrative requirements. These include, but are not limited to, providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, and collecting conflict of interest forms and statements. Also, they should make sure that these tasks are carried out correctly. However, if the need arises, they can delegate these duties to one or more co-authors.

The corresponding author is responsible for signing the publishing contract on behalf of all of the authors and is the one whose contact details appear on the article.

After publication, authors must immediately respond to any criticism of the paper from the journal editors and also cooperate if JSQE requests further data or information.

Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input.
Identify any entities that paid for this assistance.
Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, JSQE reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorized representative.

Publishing Policies

Publication ethics
JSQE is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record.

Plagiarism

JSQE takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

Previous distribution and/or publication

The author should disclose any prior distribution and/or publication of any portion of the material, including where the article has been shared as a preprint, to the Editor for the Editor’s consideration and ensure that appropriate attribution to the prior distribution and/or publication of the material is included. Note that some journals will not consider submissions that have been previously shared as a preprint. Additionally, for journals using a double-anonymized peer review process, if your submission has been shared, the submission and its author list may be discovered by reviewers.

Contributor’s publishing agreement

Before publication, JSQE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. JSQE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement for traditional subscription journals is an exclusive license agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants JSQE the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright.

Permissions

Authors and researchers are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.

Preparing your manuscript

Where a journal uses double-blind peer review, authors are required to submit a fully anonymized manuscript with a separate title page.

Formatting your article
When formatting your references, please ensure you check the reference style followed by the APA reference style.

Microsoft Word guidelines
You need to follow a few specific guidelines when formatting your article. They are;

Times New Roman is our preferred font.
The font assize should be 12.
All standard paragraph should be justified.
Please ensure your heading levels are clear.
The sections are clearly defined.

Format: TIFF, JPEG: Common format for pictures (containing no text or graphs).
Placement: Figures/charts and tables created in MS Word should be included in the main text rather than at the end of the document.
Figures and other files created outside Word (i.e. Excel, PowerPoint, JPG, TIFF and EPS) should be submitted separately. Please add a placeholder note in the running text (i.e. “[insert Figure 1.]")

Color: Please note that images supplied in color will be published in color online and black and white in print (unless otherwise arranged). Therefore, it is important that you supply images that are comprehensible in black and white as well (i.e. by using color with a distinctive pattern or dotted lines). The captions should reflect this by not using words indicating color.

Dimension: Check that the artworks supplied match or exceed the dimensions of the journal. Images cannot be scaled up after origination

Image Integrity

Figures should be minimally processed and should reflect the integrity of the original data in the image. Adjustments to images in brightness, contrast, or color balance should be applied equally to the entire image, provided they do not distort any data in the figure, including the background. Selective adjustments and touch-up tools used on portions of a figure are not appropriate. Images should not be layered or combined into a single image unless it is stated that the figure is a product of time-averaged data. All adjustments to image date should be clearly disclosed in the figure legend. Images may be additionally screened to confirm faithfulness to the original data. Authors should be able to supply raw image data upon request. Authors should also list tools and software used to collect image data and should document settings and manipulations in the Methods section.

JSQE Author Services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation with editing, or figure and manuscript formatting, to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using JSQE Author Services. To avail of those services, you are requested to communicate with our editorial office.

Submitting your manuscript

How to submit your manuscript

Researchers and authors are requested to submit their article by email to [email protected]
The articles should be addressed to Editorial Office.

Please note the following:

Times New Roman is our preferred font
The font size should be 12
All standard paragraphs should be justified
Please ensure your heading levels are clear
The sections are clearly defined
Line Space 1.5
Maximum word is 3000
Maximum 20 pages with index and references.

On acceptance and publication

JSQE Production
Your JSQE Editorial Office will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly.

Access to your published article
JSQE provides authors with online access to their final article.