Authors Guideline
The authors submitting and publishing in MSA agree to the copyright policy under creative common license 4.0 (Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 4.0 International). Under this license, the authors published in MSA let others remix, tweak, and build upon their work non-commercially. Yet all the other authors using the content of MSA are required to cite the renowned author(s) and journal in their work. Moreover, it should be mentioned clearly that the submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration. The submission file should be in standard LATEX / Open Office Microsoft Word file format with zero tolerance for Plagiarism.
Language
All manuscripts should be in the English language. Research papers should be thoroughly checked by the author(s) to avoid grammatical, typographical, and syntax errors. If the manuscript is written in a second or third language, it is recommended to first contact a language reviewing paid service to avoid grammar and style mistakes. The MSA provides the paid facility of proofreading/language revision to the authors from the online third party.
Title page
It should include a concise, specific, relevant, and informative title (avoid unnecessary abbreviations in the title). Please indicate the full name of the author(s) clearly. Present the authors' affiliation below the names. Provide the full address of each affiliation, including the country name and correct e-mail address of each author. Please clearly indicate who (corresponding author) is willing to handle correspondence at all stages of peer review, revisions of the manuscript, and publication.
General rules for text
Please use the following rules for the whole text, including abstract, keywords, headings, and references:
Font: Times New Roman; Size: 12
Paragraph Spacing: 6 pt before and 6 pt after
Line Spacing: fixed – Single
Heading: Times New Roman; Size-12; Bold;
A concise and factual abstract is required (maximum length of 200 words) without any headings in Stika Heading in the size of 11. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, data set, methodology, results, major conclusions, and usefulness of the study produced in a continuous paragraph.
Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, authors are requested to provide 4-6 keywords specific to the instant research article.
*MSA Classifications are mandatory
Introduction
This section may cover the overall background and description of the study, narrow down to research objectives, motivation of the topic, importance/significance, proposed tasks, and novelty. Abbreviations should be described in parentheses when the first time they appear in the text.
Literature review
This section may critically describe/evaluate literature relevant to the research problem, establish context, compare and contrast the most recent developments in the literature and trends. Search gaps after concentrating on thought leaders’ work and linking the research with relevant theories. Authors are flexible in writing a literature review even to be part of the introduction section.
Data & Methodology
The sources and types of data should clearly be mentioned in this section. A list of variables description should also be part of this section. This section may describe the statistical and econometric techniques applied to the data sets with the explanation of the construction of hypotheses, equations, statistical tool, and justification in case of quantitative analysis while for qualitative analysis, the methodology should clearly be mentioned.
Results and Discussion
This section may cover in-depth interpretation through applying higher-order thinking skills of analysis and develop novel arguments based on the significance of statistical and econometric relations. Establish interconnections among and within variables. Testing hypotheses and comparing results with literature should be part of this section.
Conclusion and recommendations
It may be broken into meaningful sections without any heading init, i.e. conclusion, theoretical contribution, practical implications, recommendations, future study directions, and limitations.
Figures
Present them in order (suitable heading and specific numbers in numeric values) wherever appropriate in the text. High-resolution graphs must be provided in the main text of the paper.
Tables
The tables should be presented with separate suitable headings in specific numeric numbers at the appropriate place of the article. Use the Table option of Microsoft Word to create tables if possible. Ensure that the data presented in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Refer to table number wherever appropriate in the text of the paper.
Acknowledgments/Contribution of Authors
All types of acknowledgments regarding the contribution of authors and financial aids/sources of funding in case of research projects should be mentioned at the end of the complete article but before the references. The contribution of authors is mandatory to write author-wise only within one sentence in all submissions. This should be written before the References of the article.
References
Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American Mathematical Society (AMS)/APA.
Appendix
Background information, list of respondents, list of countries/companies, or questionnaire may be described in this section if required by the editor/reviewer.
Plagiarism Policy
In accordance with the guidelines of Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Mathematical Sciences and Applications (MSA) observes Zero Tolerance to plagiarism. We use Turnitin for all research papers submitted to detect possible plagiarism. If the total similarity is more than 20% and the single source is more than 5%, the paper will be returned back to the author(s) immediately.
Authors Responsibilities
Authors are expected to act according to the publication ethics international standards for authors developed by COPE during the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity in Singapore in 2010. These are summarized as follows:
- The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
- Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation.
- Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
- Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere.
- Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
- The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.
- Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.
- Authors are obliged to participate in the peer-review process;
- All authors have to contribute significantly to the research addressing a relevant topic in the area of the social sciences research from a multidisciplinary approach.
- All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes;
- Authors are obliged to provide a list of references including the most relevant and current literature.
- Submitted manuscripts should not be under consideration for publication in other journals.
For a detailed account of ethics international standards for authors developed by COPE during the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity in Singapore in 2010, please access the following document: https://publicationethics.org/files/
SUBMISSION OF PAPER
The authors need to submit their papers preferably through Journal's online system by entering their login details. The paper submission can also be made through email at editor_msa@wum.edu.pk; msa@wum.edu.pk
Note: The paper submission will not be considered if a paper is made without reading the author's guidelines in true letter and spirit.