Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

General Requirements

Submissions must be original, within scope, written in clear English and not under consideration by another journal. Manuscripts should present a defined problem, an explicit technical or scholarly contribution, an appropriate design and evaluation, transparent analysis and conclusions proportionate to the evidence. Authors are responsible for licences and permission to reproduce code, datasets, interfaces, figures, screenshots, standards or other third-party material.

Submission Files

Authors should provide:

• a title page containing the article title, author names, affiliations, ORCID iDs where available, corresponding-author details, acknowledgements, funding, competing interests and author-contribution statement;
• an anonymised manuscript without identifying information;
• editable tables and publication-quality figure files;
• source code, pseudocode, models, configuration files, datasets, instruments, protocols or technical appendices where relevant;
• ethics approval, consent, data-protection and responsible-disclosure information where applicable; and
• a cover letter explaining the manuscript’s fit and contribution and confirming compliance with journal policies.

Manuscript Structure

Original Research Articles should normally include:

1. concise and informative title;
2. structured abstract of 200-300 words covering background or purpose, methods, results and conclusion;
3. four to seven keywords;
4. introduction establishing the problem, gap, contribution and research objective;
5. related work and the theoretical, technical or conceptual foundation;
6. methodology or system design, including data, architecture, algorithms, implementation, experimental setup, baselines, metrics, hardware and software environment and ethical safeguards;
7. results, including error analysis, uncertainty, sensitivity, ablation, scalability, security or robustness evaluation where appropriate;
8. discussion comparing findings with prior work and explaining practical significance, trade-offs, limitations, threats to validity and generalisability;
9. conclusion stating the contribution, implications and priorities for future research;
10. required declarations; and
11. references and any supplementary code, data, models, protocols or documentation.

Alternative structures are acceptable for mathematical, theoretical, design-science, qualitative, legal and standards-oriented research when they fit disciplinary conventions and support a clear contribution.

Style and Technical Presentation

• Use British English consistently, except in quotations, official titles and code identifiers.
• Prepare text in an editable Word-compatible format, with continuous page and line numbering.
• Define abbreviations, variables and symbols at first use and maintain consistent notation.
• Number equations, algorithms, tables and figures in the order cited; define all notation and provide informative captions.
• Report dataset versions, collection dates, licences, splits, exclusions, preprocessing and known limitations.
• Identify software, libraries, models, APIs, hardware, operating systems and versions needed to understand or reproduce the work.
• For machine-learning studies, state hyperparameters, random seeds, training procedure, validation strategy, stopping criteria and computational resources.
• Report appropriate baselines, uncertainty, effect sizes, confidence intervals and exact probability values where relevant.
• Distinguish training, validation and test data and guard against data leakage, benchmark contamination and unacknowledged reuse.
• Use architecture diagrams, pseudocode and examples where they materially improve reproducibility; ensure figures remain legible and accessible.
• Avoid unsupported claims of novelty, state-of-the-art performance, intelligence, fairness, security, scalability or real-world readiness.
• Use inclusive, respectful and non-stigmatising language.

Referencing

SIJCICT uses APA Style, 7th edition, with conventional adaptations for technical standards, software, datasets and conference proceedings. Authors must ensure that every in-text citation appears in the reference list and every listed reference is cited. Include DOIs or other persistent identifiers as links where available. Software, datasets, models and standards should be cited by creator, title, version, year and repository or publisher. References must be accurate and should prioritise original and archival sources. Fabricated, irrelevant or citation-manipulated references constitute misconduct.

Required Declarations for Published Articles

Every article should carry the following headings, using “Not applicable” or “None declared” where appropriate:

• Ethics approval and consent to participate
• Consent for publication
• Competing interests
• Funding
• Author contributions
• Acknowledgements
• Data availability
• Materials and code availability
• Preregistration or protocol registration
• Use of artificial intelligence tools

Submission Checklist

Before submitting, the corresponding author should confirm that:

1. the manuscript is original, within scope and not under consideration elsewhere;
2. all authors qualify for authorship, approved the manuscript and agreed to submission;
3. the review manuscript is anonymised and the title page is separate;
4. the abstract, keywords, main text, references, tables, figures and declarations are complete;
5. methods, ethics, consent and reporting-guideline requirements have been addressed;
6. data, code and materials are deposited or restrictions are explained in a Data Availability Statement;
7. funding, competing interests, related works, preprints and AI use are disclosed;
8. every citation and reference has been checked for accuracy and relevance;
9. permission has been obtained for third-party copyrighted material; and
10. all files are readable, editable where required and free of identifying metadata in the anonymised version.