Guidelines for Author

Submission Process
Articles submitted to ‘BUJHSS’ can be in areas of Humanities and Social Sciences mentioned in Aims and scope of BUJHSS  both theoretical, applied manuscripts in English and should be electronically submitted at http://bujhss.bahria.edu.pk/index.php/ojs
Manuscripts should be submitted as a single ‘Word File’ including all materials. Information about the author should be submitted as separate MSWord file including name, designation, affiliation, email and contact number of all the authors.

The opinions expressed in articles are only those of authors and not those of the editors or publisher. Authors are personally responsible to obtain permission for reprint of previously published material in other sources. Further details related to call for papers and previous issues of journal are available at Bahria University Website BUJHSS under Bahria University Karachi Campus.

Article Structure

  • The main text;  Arial 10 normal, 1.5 line-spacing
  • Paper Title – Arial 12 Bold, 1.5 line-spacing
  • Headings – Arial 10 Bold, 1.5 line-spacing numbered as 1, 2, 3;
  • Subheadings – Arial 10 pts Bold, numbered as 1.1, 1.2, 1.3;

General Style:

  • The suggested limit for the paper is 5000 to 8000 words.
  • Figures and tables should be captioned and numbered clearly.
  • Font style and size should be Arial 10.
  • Please be sure that your paper is 1.5 line-spacing including references and uses 1-inch margins on all sides.
  • Your text including title of the sections must be justified, start a new paragraph by indenting it from the left margin; for the figures and tables, use Arial 9 bold with single line spacing.
  • Some flexibility in the presentation will be allowed but authors are urged to arrange the subject matter clearly under such headings as:
    • Introduction
    • Purpose and Scope
    • Research Methodology
    • Discussions
    • Conclusions
    • Recommendations.
  • Illustrations must be placed as close as possible to where they are mentioned in the main text. They must be numbered consecutively (e.g. Fig.1. Fig.2….) Bold, centered with a caption on top, and the source should be placed below the figure.
  • Tables must be numbered consecutively (e.g. Table. 1). Table headings should be placed above the table.
  • Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, …), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to ‘the text’. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its separate line.

A typical article might include the following: -

Abstract

The abstract section is the mandatory part for all articles. An abstract is a concise summary of the whole paper, not just the conclusions. It should state the purpose of the study, hypothesis, method, analysis, main findings and conclusions.

A factual abstract is required consisting of 150-250 words.  An abstract is often presented separately from the article so it must be able to stand alone. Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Keywords
Immediately after the abstract, provide a minimum of 5 keywords, using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, ‘and’, ‘of’). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Introduction

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or summary of the results. The introduction should also justify why the topic of the paper is important and that the content is original. The summary of results should have been dealt with in the abstract.

Literature Review (if applicable):
This section should extend (but not repeat) the background to the article already dealt with in the introduction and lay the foundation for the work being reported. It should identify the most relevant previous literature on the topic (but not in excessive detail) to position the paper and demonstrate how it will make a significant contribution. It (or a separate section) should set out (and justify) the theoretical or conceptual framework adopted in the paper. It may identify several hypotheses to be tested. In short, this section (or sections) should explain what the motivation for the paper is and why its contribution is original and significant.

Research Methodology
This section should include the design of the study, a description of the study sample, assessment protocols, ethical considerations (if applicable), and the procedure of data collection. Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described. The reader needs to know that the empirical data and/or other material are relevant, reliable, and capable of supporting robust conclusions and that the methodology is appropriate, systematic, and rigorous.

Results
Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion
This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussions section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conclusions and Recommendations
The main conclusions of the study are presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section. This section should also make clear what is the original contribution of the paper, discuss the policy or management implications of the findings, provide a critical assessment of the limitations of the study, and outline possible fruitful lines for further research.

Article length

The standard length of articles for BUJHSS is between 5000 to 8000 words including footnotes/intext citations, and other intext material and References. However special cases may be considered after prior permission from the editor by writing a letter describing valid reasons for variance in length.

Essential Title Page Information

  • Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information- retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
  • Author names and affiliations. Where the family name may be ambiguous (e.g., a double name), please indicate this. Present the authors’ affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author’s name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, the e-mail address of each other.
  • Corresponding author. Indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that contact numbers and fax numbers (with country and area code) are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
  • Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a ‘Present address’ (or ‘Permanent address’) may be indicated as a footnote to that author’s name. The address at which the author did the work must retain as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
  • a Maximum number of authors for a paper is three.

Abbreviations
Any word or words to be abbreviated should be written in full when first mentioned followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis.

Tables and Supplementary Material
Data must be kept to a minimum. Tables should be numbered and headed with short titles. As with illustrations, they should not be inserted in the manuscript but supplied either after the main body of the text or uploaded as separate files.

References
References to the literature should be mentioned in the main text by writing the author and year in brackets. List these at the very end of your paper (under the heading ‘References’); the references should follow the APA- style also you can find details in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association)

Copyright
Submission of a paper to BUJHSS will be taken to imply that it presents original unpublished work in any form, not under consideration elsewhere. Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources. Authors are responsible to ensures academic integrity. The copyright form should be submitted with the Manuscript. Click to download it here

Authorship of the Paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Plagiarism Policy:

BUJHSS has zero tolerance for plagiarism and follows the guidelines given by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan. Each submitted manuscript will be evaluated for plagiarism using Turnitin, plagiarism detecting software (https://www.turnitin.com/). The journal only accepts papers that have a similarity index score of less than 19%. Moreover, no single source should have a matching similarity index score of greater than 5%. It is expected that the submitted manuscript is not under review by any other journal or has not been published before. BU is following the HEC Plagiarism Policy, the details of the same can be found on the given link: https://hec.gov.pk/english/services/faculty/Plagiarism/Pages/default.aspx

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed

Sources of Funding: 

BUJHSS has no funding agency or sponsor, neither does it charge APC . All cost of publishing the journal is beared by Bahria University. 

Article Processing Fee

BUJHSS does not charge APCs, submission charges, or other fees.

All processes of article publication are free of charge till Jan- Jun 23 issue. 

However, from the next issue (July - Dec 23) BUJHSS  will start charging some modest article processing fees (announced later) for all future issues. As after HEC recognition we are moving towards broadneing the scope of indexing/abstracting bodies inorder to meet international standards of publication.