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.

TYPES OF ARTICLES

Original Research Manuscripts

Authors are encouraged to submit high quality, original work that has not appeared in, nor is under consideration by, other journals. Expanded versions of papers which have previously appeared in conference proceedings can be considered; the authors must then clearly state at the time of submission the conference publication and provide a statement of revisions/updates that have been made to the journal paper.

Brief Communications

These articles represent a means for fast publication of new, high-quality ideas in the form of short, critically refereed, technical papers. Submissions are accepted on a continuing basis, and accepted papers will be published immediately online and in the next available print issue.

MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION

Manuscript Submission

Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – at the institute where the work has been carried out. JAST will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Permissions

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 originate from the authors.

Online Submission

Please follow the hyperlink “Submit manuscript” on the right and upload all of your manuscript files following the instructions given on the screen. Please ensure you provide all relevant editable source files. Failing to submit these source files might cause unnecessary delays in the review and production process.

TITLE PAGE

Title Page

The title page should include:

• The name(s) of the author(s) 
• A concise and informative title
• The affiliation(s) and address(es) of the author(s) 
• The e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers of the corresponding author 

Abstract

Please provide an abstract of 100 to 150 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes.

TEXT

For first (initial) submissions, we require a single file containing your manuscript as a minimum (Word or PDF). For revised submissions we strongly recommend to upload the editable source files (Word) together with a PDF of the revised manuscript for reference.

Papers should be formatted with two columns (except the abstract) and single line spaced. The default font for the manuscript is Times New Roman. Please set font size 10pt for the text and 11pt for the headings.

Text Formatting

The submission should include the original source (including all style files and figures) and a PDF version of the compiled output. Word files are also accepted.

Headings

Please use the decimal system of headings with no more than three levels.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes 

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols. Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Acknowledgments 

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

TABLES

• All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Tables should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. 
• 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.
• 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.

ARTWORK AND ILLUSTRATION GUIDELINES

• Supply all figures electronically.
• Indicate what graphics program was used to create the artwork.
• For vector graphics, the preferred format is EPS; for halftones, please use TIFF format. MSOffice files are also acceptable.
• Vector graphics containing fonts must have the fonts embedded in the files.
• Name your figure files with "Fig" and the figure number, e.g., Fig1.eps.

Figure Lettering

• To add lettering, it is best to use Helvetica or Arial (sans serif fonts).
• Keep lettering consistently sized throughout your final-sized artwork, usually about 2–3 mm (8–12 pt).
• Variance of type size within an illustration should be minimal, e.g., do not use 8-pt type on an axis and 20-pt type for the axis label.
• Avoid effects such as shading, outline letters, etc.
• Do not include titles or captions within your illustrations.

Figure Numbering

• All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals.
• Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order.
• Figure parts should be denoted by lowercase letters (a, b, c, etc.).
• If an appendix appears in your article and it contains one or more figures, continue the consecutive numbering of the main text. Do not number the appendix figures,

"A1, A2, A3, etc."

Figure Captions

• Each figure should have a concise caption describing accurately what the figure depicts. Include the captions in the text file of the manuscript, not in the figure file.
• Figure captions begin with the term Fig. in bold type, followed by the figure number, also in bold type.
• No punctuation is to be included after the number, nor is any punctuation 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.

Figure Placement and Size

• Figures should be submitted separately from the text, if possible.
• When preparing your figures, size figures to fit in the column width.
• For large-sized journals the figures should be 84 mm (for double-column text areas), or 174 mm (for single-column text areas) wide and not higher than 234 mm.
• For small-sized journals, the figures should be 119 mm wide and not higher than 195 mm.

Permissions

If you include figures that have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format. Please be aware that some publishers do not grant electronic rights for free and that JAST will not be able to refund any costs that may have occurred to receive these permissions. In such cases, material from other sources should be used.

REFERENCES

References within text

Any references cited within your article should also be present in your reference list and vice versa. Some guidelines:

• References cited in your abstract must be given in full.
• We recommend that you do not include unpublished results and personal communications in your reference list, though you may mention them in the text of your article.
• Any unpublished results and personal communications included in your reference list must follow the standard reference style of the journal. In substitution of the publication date add "unpublished results" or "personal communication."
• References cited as "in press" imply that the item has been accepted for publication.

Linking to cited sources will increase the discoverability of your research.

Before submission, check that all data provided in your reference list are correct, including any references which have been copied. Providing correct reference data allows us to link to abstracting and indexing services such as Scopus, Crossref and PubMed. Any incorrect surnames, journal or book titles, publication years or pagination within your references may prevent link creation.

We encourage the use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as reference links as they provide a permanent link to the electronic article referenced.

Reference format

This journal does not set strict requirements on reference formatting at submission. Some guidelines:

• References can be in any style or format as long as the style is consistent.
• Author names, journal or book titles, chapter or article titles, year of publication, volume numbers, article numbers or pagination must be included, where applicable.
• Use of DOIs is recommended.

Our journal reference style will be applied to your article after acceptance, at proof stage. If required, at this stage we will ask you to correct or supply any missing reference data.

Reference style

Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American Psychological Association (APA). You are referred to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition (2020) ISBN 978-1-4338-3215-4.

The reference list should be arranged alphabetically and then chronologically. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Van der Geer, J., Handgraaf T., & Lupton, R. A. (2020). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sc.2020.00372.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number:  

Van der Geer, J., Handgraaf, T., & Lupton, R. A. (2022). The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon, 19, Article e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e00205.

Reference to a book:

Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style (4th ed.). Longman (Chapter 4).

Reference to a chapter in a book:

Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2020). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). E-Publishing Inc.

Reference to a website:

Powertech Systems. (2022). Lithium-ion vs lead-acid cost analysis. Retrieved from http://www.powertechsystems.eu/home/tech-corner/lithium-ion-vs-lead-acid-cost-analysis/. Accessed January 6, 2022.

Reference to a dataset:

Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., & Nakashizuka, T. (2015). Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions [dataset]. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Reference to a conference paper or poster presentation:

Engle, E.K., Cash, T.F., & Jarry, J.L. (2019, November). The Body Image Behaviours Inventory-3: Development and validation of the Body Image Compulsive Actions and Body Image Avoidance Scales. Poster session presentation at the meeting of the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, New York, NY.

Reference to software:

Coon, E., Berndt, M., Jan, A., Svyatsky, D., Atchley, A., Kikinzon, E., Harp, D., Manzini, G., Shelef, E., Lipnikov, K., Garimella, R., Xu, C., Moulton, D., Karra, S., Painter, S., Jafarov, E., & Molins, S. (2020). Advanced Terrestrial Simulator (ATS) (Version 0.88) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3727209.

Web references

When listing web references, as a minimum you should provide the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed. Additional information (e.g. DOI, author names, dates or reference to a source publication) should also be provided, if known.

You can list web references separately under a new heading directly after your reference list or include them in your reference list.

Data references

We encourage you to cite underlying or relevant datasets within article text and to list data references in the reference list.

When citing data references, you should include:

• author name(s)
• dataset title
• data repository
• version (where available)
• year
• global persistent identifier

Add [dataset] immediately before your reference. This will help us to properly identify the dataset. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Preprint references

We ask you to mark preprints clearly. You should include the word "preprint" or the name of the preprint server as part of your reference and provide the preprint DOI.

Where a preprint has subsequently become available as a peer-reviewed publication, use the formal publication as your reference.

If there are preprints that are central to your work or that cover crucial developments in the topic, but they are not yet formally published, you may reference the preprint.

Reference management software

JAST welcomes all most popular reference management software products such as Mendeley and Zotero, but we prefer EndNote.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

JAST accepts electronic multimedia files (animations, movies, audio, etc.) and other supplementary files to be published online along with an article. This feature can add dimension to the author's article, as certain information cannot be printed or is more convenient in electronic form.

Submission

• Supply all supplementary material in standard file formats.
• Please include in each file the following information: article title, journal name, author names; affiliation and e-mail address of the corresponding author.
• To accommodate user downloads, please keep in mind that larger-sized files may require very long download times and that some users may experience other problems during downloading.

Text and Presentations

• Submit your material in PDF format; .doc or .ppt files are not suitable for long-term viability.
• A collection of figures may also be combined in a PDF file.

Spreadsheets

• Spreadsheets should be submitted as .csv or .xlsx files (MS Excel).

Collecting Multiple Files

• It is possible to collect multiple files in a .zip file.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITING

For editors and reviewers to accurately assess the work presented in your manuscript you need to ensure the English language is of sufficient quality to be understood. If you need help with writing in English you should consider: 

• Getting a fast, free online grammar check.
• Asking a colleague who is proficient in English to review your manuscript for clarity.
• Visiting the English language tutorial which covers the common mistakes when writing in English.
• Using a professional language editing service where editors will improve the English to ensure that your meaning is clear and identify problems that require your review.

Please note that the use of a language editing service is not a requirement for publication in this journal and does not imply or guarantee that the article will be selected for peer review or accepted. If your manuscript is accepted it will be checked by our copyeditors for spelling and formal style before publication.

AFTER ACCEPTANCE

Article publishing agreement

Depending on the ownership of the journal and its policies, you will either grant JAST an exclusive licence to publish the article or will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the JAST.

Offprints

Offprints can be ordered by the corresponding author.

Proof reading

The purpose of the proof is to check for typesetting or conversion errors and the completeness and accuracy of the text, tables and figures. Substantial changes in content, e.g., new results, corrected values, title and authorship, are not allowed without the approval of the Editor.

After online publication, further changes can only be made in the form of an Erratum, which will be hyperlinked to the article.

Online First

The article will be published online after receipt of the corrected proofs. After release of the printed version, the paper can also be cited by issue and page numbers.