Guide for Authors
The International Journal of Public Sector Decision-Making
Ethics in Publishing
For information
on Ethics in Publishing and Ethical guidelines for journal publication see
http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and
http://www.elsevier.com/ethicalguidelines.
Policy and ethics
The
work described in your article must have been carried out in accordance with
The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association
(Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm;
EC Directive 86/609/EEC
for animal experiments http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm;
Uniform Requirements
for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals http://www.icmje.org. This must be stated at an appropriate point
in the article.
Conflict of interest
All authors are requested to disclose
any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations
within three years of beginning the submitted work that could inappropriately influence, or be perceived to influence, their work. See
also
http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest.
Submission declaration
Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract
or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication
is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted,
it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.
Contributors
Each author is required to declare his or her individual contribution to the article: all authors
must have materially participated in the research and/or article preparation, so roles for all authors should be described. The statement
that all authors have approved the final article should be true and included in the disclosure.
Copyright
Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (for more
information on this and copyright see
http://www.elsevier.com/copyright). Acceptance of the agreement will ensure the widest
possible dissemination of information. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together
with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement.
Subscribers may reproduce tables of
contents or prepare lists of articles including abstracts for internal circulation within their institutions. Permission of the Publisher
is required for resale or distribution outside the institution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations
(please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions). If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s)
must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article. Elsevier has preprinted forms for use
by authors in these cases: please consult
http://www.elsevier.com/permissions.
Retained author rights
As an author you (or your employer or institution) retain certain rights; for details you are referred
to:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights.
Role of the funding source
You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article
and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data;
in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement
then this should be stated. Please see
http://www.elsevier.com/funding.
Funding body agreements and policies
Elsevier has established agreements and developed policies to allow authors whose
articles appear in journals published by Elsevier, to comply with potential manuscript archiving requirements as specified as conditions
of their grant awards. To learn more about existing agreements and policies please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/fundingbodies.
Language and language services
Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted,
but not a mixture of these). Authors who require information about language editing and copyediting services pre- and post-submission
please visit
http://www.elsevier.com/languagepolishing or our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com
for more information. Please note Elsevier neither endorses nor takes responsibility for any products, goods or services offered by outside
vendors through our services or in any advertising. For more information please refer to our Terms & Conditions:
http://www.elsevier.com/termsandconditions.
Submission
Manuscripts for publication should be addressed to:
Dr Barnett R. Parker
Parker
Associates
3001 Wild Meadow Drive
Durham, NC 27705
USA
Only papers not previously published will be accepted, and authors
must agree not to publish elsewhere a paper submitted to and accepted by the journal.
The original manuscript and diagrams will be
discarded 1 month after publication unless the publisher is requested to return original material to the author.
Figures will be photo-reproduced,
and authors are required to furnish camera-ready artwork or glossy prints. Photocopies or carbon copies are not adequate as they will
not reproduce clearly.
Submission
Authors may submit their articles electronically
to this journal. The system automatically converts source files to a single PDF file of the article, which is used in the peer-review
process. Please note that even though manuscript source files are converted to a PDF file at submission for the review process, these
source files are needed for further processing after acceptance. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision
and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail, removing the need for a paper trail.
Note that contributions may be either submitted
online or sent by mail. Please do NOT submit via both routes. This will cause confusion and may lead to your article being reviewed and
published twice!
Use of wordprocessing software
It is important that the file be saved in the native format of the wordprocessor used.
The text should be in single-column format. Keep the layout of the text as simple as possible. Most formatting codes will be removed
and replaced on processing the article. In particular, do not use the wordprocessor's options to justify text or to hyphenate words.
However, do use bold face, italics, subscripts, superscripts etc. Do not embed "graphically designed" equations or tables, but prepare
these using the wordprocessor's facility. When preparing tables, if you are using a table grid, use only one grid for each individual
table and not a grid for each row. If no grid is used, use tabs, not spaces, to align columns. The electronic text should be prepared
in a way very similar to that of conventional manuscripts (see also the Guide to Publishing with Elsevier:
http://www.elsevier.com/guidepublication).
Do not import the figures into the text file but, instead, indicate their approximate locations directly in the electronic text and on
the manuscript. See also the section on Electronic illustrations.
To avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to use the
"spell-check" and "grammar-check" functions of your wordprocessor.
Manuscripts
should be typed double-spaced, on one side of the page only, with wide margins. Four hard/paper copies and two disk copies of the manuscript
must be submitted. All authors should supply a c.v. (i.e. resumé, bio data) as well as a brief biography, including current position,
details of degrees, research interests, books published, journals in which previous work has appeared and relevant awards and affiliations.
(The biography is printed in the journal issue within which an author publishes.) A short abstract must appear at the beginning of the
manuscript. The paper should be accompanied by a title page which includes the manuscript's title, the name or names of the authors and
their affiliations, and the month and the year of submission to the journal. In the case of co-authors, it should be clearly indicated
which author is to receive correspondence and proofs for correction. Where possible, the
Fax number of the corresponding author
should be supplied with the manuscript, for use by the publisher. Mathematical expressions should be carefully inserted keeping in mind
typographical difficulty. Authors should indicate in the margin the names of Greek letters or other unusual symbols when they first occur
and clarify any other possible sources of ambiguity: for example, between "zero" and the letter "o", the numeral "one" and the letter
"1", capital and small letters, etc.
Article structure
Subdivision - numbered sections
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 own separate line.
Introduction
State the objectives of the
work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
Material and methods
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.
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 Discussion section is often
appropriate. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
Conclusions
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of
a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.
Appendices
If there
is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering:
Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on.
Vitae
Include in the manuscript a short (maximum 100 words) biography of each author.
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 clearly. 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, if available,
the e-mail address of each author.
•
Corresponding author.
Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at
all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication.
Ensure that telephone and fax numbers (with country and area code)
are provided in addition to the e-mail address and the complete postal address.
•
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 actually did the work must be retained
as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
Abstract
A concise and factual abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the
principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone.
For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). 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 maximum of 6 keywords, using either British or American
spelling, but be consistent, 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.
Abbreviations
Define abbreviations that are not standard in this field in a footnote to be placed on the
first page of the article. Such abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there, as well
as in the footnote. Ensure consistency of abbreviations throughout the article.
Acknowledgements
Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include
them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g.,
providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).
Artwork
Color artwork
Submit color illustrations as original photographs,
high-quality computer prints or transparencies, close to the size expected in publication, or as 35 mm slides. Please make sure that
artwork files are in an acceptable format (TIFF, EPS or MS Office files) and with the correct resolution. If, together with your accepted
article, you submit usable color figures then Elsevier will ensure, at no additional charge, that these figures will appear in color
on the Web (e.g., ScienceDirect and other sites) regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in color in the printed
version.
For color reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Elsevier after receipt of your accepted
article. Please indicate your preference for color in print or on the Web only. For further information on the preparation of electronic
artwork, please see
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Please note: Because of technical complications which
can arise by converting color figures to 'gray scale'(for the printed version should you not opt for color in print) please submit in
addition usable black and white versions of all the color illustrations.
Figure
captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption
should comprise a brief title (
not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations
themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.
Tables
Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text. Place footnotes to tables below the table body and
indicate them with superscript lowercase letters. Avoid vertical rules. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented
in tables do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article.
References
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the
text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa). Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished
results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references
are included in the reference list they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include a substitution of
the publication date with either "Unpublished results" or "Personal communication" Citation of a reference as "in press" implies that
the item has been accepted for publication.
Web references
As a minimum,
the full URL should be given. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.),
should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) under a different heading if desired,
or can be included in the reference list.
References in a special issue
Please ensure that the words 'this issue' are added to any references in the list (and any citations in the text) to other articles
in the same Special Issue.
Reference style
Text: Indicate
references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s)
must always be given.
List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they appear
in the text.
Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
[1] Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art
of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2000;163:51-9.
Reference to a book:
[2] Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of
style. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan; 1979.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an
electronic version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age, New York: E-Publishing Inc;
1999, p. 281-304.
Note shortened form for last page number. e.g., 51-9, and that for more than 6 authors the first 6 should be listed
followed by "et al." For further details you are referred to "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals"
(J Am Med Assoc 1997;277:927-934) (see also
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html).
Supplementary material
Elsevier accepts electronic supplementary material to support and enhance your scientific
research. Supplementary files offer the author additional possibilities to publish supporting applications, movies, animation sequences,
high-resolution images, background datasets, sound clips and more. Supplementary files supplied will be published online alongside the
electronic version of your article in Elsevier Web products, including ScienceDirect:
http://www.sciencedirect.com. In order
to ensure that your submitted material is directly usable, please ensure that data are provided in one of our recommended file formats.
Authors should submit the material in electronic format together with the article and supply a concise and descriptive caption for each
file. Video files: please supply 'stills' with your files: you can choose any frame from the video or make a separate image. These will
be used instead of standard icons and will personalize the link to your supplementary information. For more detailed instructions please
visit our artwork instruction pages at
http://www.elsevier.com/artworkinstructions.
Files can be stored on diskette,
ZIP-disk or CD (either MS-DOS or Macintosh).
Submission checklist
It is
hoped that this list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal's Editor for review. Please
consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.
Ensure that the following items are present:
One Author
designated as corresponding Author:
• E-mail address
• Full postal address
• Telephone and fax numbers
All
necessary files have been uploaded
• Keywords
• All figure captions
• All tables (including title, description,
footnotes)
Further considerations
• Manuscript has been "spellchecked" and "grammar-checked"
• References are in
the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
•
Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Web)
• Color figures are clearly
marked as being intended for color reproduction on the Web (free of charge) and in print or to be reproduced in color on the Web (free
of charge) and in black-and-white in print
• If only color on the Web is required, black and white versions of the figures are
also supplied for printing purposes
For any further information please visit our customer support site at
http://epsupport.elsevier.com.
Use of the Digital Object Identifier
The
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character
string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore,
it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic
information. The correct format for citing a DOI is shown as follows (example taken from a document in the journal
Physics Letters
B):
doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2003.10.071
When you use the DOI to create URL hyperlinks to documents on the web, they are guaranteed
never to change.
Proofs
One set of page proofs (as PDF files) will be
sent by e-mail to the corresponding author (if we do not have an e-mail address then paper proofs will be sent by post) or, a link will
be provided in the e-mail so that authors can download the files themselves. Elsevier now provides authors with PDF proofs which can
be annotated; for this you will need to download Adobe Reader version 7 (or higher) available free from
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Instructions on how to annotate PDF files will accompany the proofs (also given online). The exact system requirements are given at the
Adobe site:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/acrrsystemreqs.html#70win.
If you do not wish to use the PDF annotations
function, you may list the corrections (including replies to the Query Form) and return them to Elsevier in an e-mail. Please list your
corrections quoting line number. If, for any reason, this is not possible, then mark the corrections and any other comments (including
replies to the Query Form) on a printout of your proof and return by fax, or scan the pages and e-mail, or by post. Please use this proof
only for checking the typesetting, editing, completeness and correctness of the text, tables and figures. Significant changes to the
article as accepted for publication will only be considered at this stage with permission from the Editor. We will do everything possible
to get your article published quickly and accurately. Therefore, it is important to ensure that all of your corrections are sent back
to us in one communication: please check carefully before replying, as inclusion of any subsequent corrections cannot be guaranteed.
Proofreading is solely your responsibility. Note that Elsevier may proceed with the publication of your article if no response is received.
Offprints
The corresponding author, at no cost, will be provided with a PDF file of the article via e-mail
or, alternatively, 25 free paper offprints. The PDF file is a watermarked version of the published article and includes a cover sheet
with the journal cover image and a disclaimer outlining the terms and conditions of use.
For inquiries relating to the submission of articles (including electronic submission where available)
please visit this journal's homepage. You can track accepted articles at
http://www.elsevier.com/trackarticle and set
up e-mail alerts to inform you of when an article's status has changed. Also accessible from here is information on copyright, frequently
asked questions and more. Contact details for questions arising after acceptance of an article, especially those relating to proofs,
will be provided by the publisher.
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