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Author Guidelines
How to submit an article?
International Business Logistics Journal (IBL) is a biannual international peer-reviewed journal which presents a global forum for the dissemination of research articles, case studies and reviews focusing on all aspects of Business Logistics and its role in worldwide business.
The journal aims to present to the international community important results of work in the fields of International Business Logistics research to help researchers, scientists, manufacturers, institutions, world agencies, societies to keep up with new developments in theory and applications. Experimental, computational and theoretical studies are all welcomed to IBL.
Please follow these instructions carefully when preparing your manuscript to ensure that your submission is dealt with speedily.
Types of Manuscripts:
IBL publishes the following types of manuscripts, please choose the best fit:
Original Research
Cover topics of novelty and high impact in relation to business logistics and its related fields. This type includes the construction or testing of a model or framework, action research, testing of data, market research or surveys, empirical and scientific research. Even in cases where research has been conducted carefully and has been appropriately written up, a manuscript may be rejected if it is deemed to be of insufficient interest and quality to attract attention.
Case Studies
Describes actual interventions or experiences within organizations. It can be subjective and doesn’t generally report on research. Also covers a description of a legal case or a hypothetical case study used as a teaching exercise.
Conceptual paper
Focuses on developing hypotheses and is usually discursive. Covers philosophical discussions and comparative studies of other authors’ work and thinking.
Literature review
This category should only be used if the main purpose of the paper is to annotate and/or critique the literature in a particular field. It could be a selective bibliography providing advice on information sources, or the paper may aim to cover the main contributors to the development of a topic and explore their different views.
General review
Provides an overview or historical examination of some concept, technique or phenomenon. Papers are likely to be more descriptive or instructional (‘how to’ papers) than discursive.
IBL will frequently publish other types of papers, including invited editorials and special reviews from conference presentations. These publications will be commissioned and specific instructions will be provided to authors for their preparation.
Manuscript Specifications
It is IBL policy to publish only original and unpublished research work that has not been published previously, accepted for publication or is being considered for publication elsewhere in any form, in print or in electronic media, either in whole or substantial part, in English or in any other language. Special issues may contain papers from a conference where special issues and/or conference proceedings have different peer review procedures involving, for example, guest editors, conference organizers or scientific committees. Authors contributing to these projects may receive full details of the peer review process on request from the editorial office.
Prospective organisers of a Special Issue should initially contact the Editor to agree to the appropriateness of the content, the number and size of papers, the refereeing process (including the names of prospective referees), and the timescale for receipt of final copy after reviewing.
It is helpful for readers if your article is concise, but clarity is essential. Short sentences and paragraphs make reading easier. You should aim for consistency within your article in matters such as hyphenation and spelling.
All acronyms and abbreviations should be clearly explained when they first appear in the text and keep it to a minimum, and all units used should be consistent throughout the article.
Language
Manuscripts must be written in the English language. They should be clear, concise and grammatically correct. Editors reserve the right to modify accepted manuscripts that do not conform to scientific, technical, stylistic or grammatical standards, and minor alterations of this nature may not be seen by authors until the proof stage. Authors for whom English is a second language may wish to consider having their manuscript professionally edited before submission to improve the English. Manuscripts should be carefully prepared, spell checked, grammar checked and submitted in final form.
File Format
All manuscripts should be submitted in Microsoft Word. Documents should not be locked or protected. Manuscripts for review must not be bigger in size than 2 MByte and must consist of no more than two files and should, ideally, be a single editable (word processor) file with figures and tables added at the context.
Submission Length
Articles or Case Studies should be up to a maximum of 10000 words in length. This includes all text, for example, the structured abstract, references, all text in tables, and figures and appendices.
Page Layout
The page is standard A4 page with a minimum margin of 2.5 cm from each side. The text is typed with a minimum of 1.15 spacing with sequential line numbers throughout the entire document.
Page Numbering
Pages must be numbered consecutively including those containing acknowledgements, references, tables and figures.
Font
12-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, the Symbol font (rather than the normal text font) must be used for Greek letters and mathematical symbols. Word Equation Editor/MathType should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using Symbol font.
Figure Formats
Figures inside the text should be professional in appearance and have clean, crisp lines. Hand drawings and hand lettering are not acceptable. Figures and their legends should be grouped together as a list at the end of the paper, before the appendices (if present). It should be numbered consecutively. If figures have been supplied as a list at the end of the text file (as recommended), they should appear above their respective legend. The word figures should be abbreviated in the text (e.g. Fig. 1; Figs. 2 and 3), except when starting a sentence. Photographic illustrations should also be referred to as Figures. Labels should be proportionate with the size of the figures on the journal page. All figures should be supplied at the highest resolution/quality possible with numbers and text clearly legible. Electronic figures created in other applications should be supplied in their original formats and should also be either copied and pasted into a blank MS Word document or submitted as a PDF file.
Figures format as a supplementary material
If the figures are submitted separately as supplementary material, then figure files should be supplied as follows:
Photographic figures should be saved in tif format at 300 d.p.i. (or failing that in jpg format with low compression).
Line figures should be saved as vector graphics (i.e. composed of lines, curves, points and fonts; not pixels) in pdf, eps, ai, svg or wmf format, or embedded as such in Word, as this gives the best possible online publication quality.
Combination figures: (those composed of vector and pixel/raster elements) should also be saved in pdf, eps, ai, svg or wmf format where possible (or embedded as such in Word).
If line figures and combination figures cannot be saved in vector graphics format, they should be saved in tif format at high resolution (i.e. 600 d.p.i.) (do not save them in jpg format as this will cause blurring). Note that line and combination figures supplied in tif format are down sampled for online publication, authors should therefore preferentially opt for vector graphic formats for these figure types (note, however, that for print publication full resolution files will be used).
Tables
When tabular material is necessary, it should not present the same data in both figure and table form or repeat large numbers of values from Tables in the text. Tables should be provided in an editable format (rather than as embedded images or separate PDF files), it should be formatted using the table function of the word-processing program rather than by aligning columns in text with tabs and spaces or using text boxes. Give each table a brief title. Ensure that any superscripts or asterisks are shown next to the relevant items and have explanations displayed.
Manuscripts structure
Manuscripts should be organized as follows:
Separate title page
This should contain:
Title of the article
A concise and informative title (as short as possible). Please avoid the use of long systemic names and non-standard abbreviations, acronyms or symbols.
Author/s name/s and affiliations
Please list the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author, then institutional affiliation addresses immediately after the author's name, and provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author. You can use superscript numeric identifiers to link an author with an address where necessary. Please clearly indicate the Corresponding author who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author.
Abstract
Your abstract should give readers concise information about the content of your article. It should be informative, accessible and not only indicate the general scope of the article but also state the main results obtained and conclusions drawn using simple, factual, numbered statements. It should be suitable for direct inclusion in abstracting services and should not exceed 300 words. The structured abstract should consist of the following sections and each section of the abstract is limited to no more than 100 words:
Purpose
Design/ methodology/ approach
Findings
Research implications/ limitations
Practical implications/ limitations
Originality
Keywords
A list in alphabetical order not exceeding ten words or short phrases, excluding words used in the title.
Introduction
This should be concise and describe the nature of the problem under investigation, outline the essential background, and the reasons for carrying out the work. It should also set your work in the context of previous research, citing relevant references. Introductions should expand on highly specialized terms and abbreviations used in the article to make it accessible for readers.
Methods
Provide sufficient details of the experiment, simulation, statistical test or analysis carried out to generate the results to enable the work to be repeated.
Results
You should detail the main findings and outcomes of your study, draw attention in the text to important details shown in tables and figures.
Discussion
Point out the significance of the results in relation to the reasons for doing the work, and place them in the context of other work.
Conclusion
Highlight the novelty and significance of the work and any plans for future relevant work.
Acknowledgments
Identify the source(s) of funding for the research. It should acknowledge any research assistants or others who provided help during the research (e.g., carrying out the literature review; producing, computerizing and analysing the data; or providing language help, writing assistance or proof-reading the article, etc.) but who are not included among the authors. It should state where and when any earlier versions of the paper were presented (e.g. at a seminar or conference). Lastly, it should acknowledge the help of all individuals who have made a significant contribution to improving the paper (e.g. by offering comments or suggestions).
References:
In text references:
References to other publications in your text should be written as follows:
Single author: (Last name, year)
Two authors: (Last name and Last name, year)
Three or more authors: (Last name et al., 2006) Please note, ‘et al' should always be written in italics.
List of references (Bibliography)
At the end of your paper, please supply a reference list in alphabetical order. Where applicable, author(s) name(s), journal title/book title, chapter title/article title, year of publication, volume number/book chapter and the pagination must be present. The use of DOI is highly encouraged. Where a DOI is available, this should be included at the end of the reference.
Reference citations should be styled according to Harvard Referencing Style. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of cited references and these should be checked before the manuscript is submitted. Make sure that all references mentioned in the reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa. Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Please note that if references are not cited in order the manuscript may be returned for amendment before it is passed on to the editor for review.
IBL highly recommends that all authors depend on one of the citation management software such as Mendeley, Endnote, or Zotero
Citation examples:
Journal article citation
Bostanci, E. et al. (2017) ‘Opportunities and Challenges of Switched Reluctance Motor Drives for Electric Propulsion: A Comparative Study’, IEEE Transactions on Transportation Electrification, 3(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/TTE.2017.2649883.
Book citation
George, M.W. (2008) The elements of library research: What every student needs to know, The Elements of Library Research: What Every Student Needs to Know. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-4758.
Book chapter citation
Aswathanarayana, U. (2010) ‘Renewable energy policies’, in Green Energy: Technology, Economics and Policy. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1201/b10163.
Conference paper citation
Saleh, C. et al. (2019) ‘Profit Optimization Through the Application of Theory of Constraints (TOC): A Case Study in Printing Company’, in IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/530/1/012045.
Thesis
Taye, A.T. (2013) An Empirical Analysis of Stakeholders’ Perspectives and Policy Support for Distributed Renewal Energy Adoption in California’s Association of Bay Area Governments, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
Report/web resources citation
Niklas Höhne et al. (2019) A possible 2050 climate target for the EU. Cologne: NewClimate Institute. Available at: https://newclimate.org/sites/default/files/2019/09/EU2050_Target_Adequacy.pdf.
Manuscript Submission:
IBL uses a fully web-based system for manuscript submission and peer review processes and submission must be made using our online service, and the journal does not accept mailed, faxed, or e-mailed submissions.
Before submitting your work, it is your responsibility to check that the manuscript is complete, grammatically correct, and without spelling or typographical errors. A few other important points:
Give the journal aims and scope a final read. Is your manuscript definitely a good fit? If it is not, the editor may decline it without peer review.
Does your manuscript comply with our research and publishing ethics guidelines?
Have you cleared any necessary publishing permissions?
Have you followed all the formatting requirements laid out in these author guidelines?
Does the manuscript contain any information that might help the reviewer identify you? This could compromise the blind peer review process. A few tips:
If you need to refer to your own work, use wording such as ‘previous research has demonstrated’ not ‘our previous research has demonstrated’.
If you need to refer to your own, currently unpublished work, don’t include this work in the reference list.
Any acknowledgments or author biographies should be uploaded as separate files.
Carry out a final check to ensure that no author names appear anywhere in the manuscript. This includes figures or captions.
Manuscripts must reach certain standards before referees are asked to consider them: submissions that are not in the correct format, or which cannot be downloaded and printed reliably may therefore be returned to authors without review. Authors should retain their electronic manuscript file in case of any difficulties arising during online submission.
When submitting a manuscript, authors should make a full statement to the Editors that their manuscript is completely original and unpublished. If the redundant or duplicate publication is attempted or occurs authors should expect prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript. Also, authors should make a full statement that all necessary acknowledgements have been made and the manuscript is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and all persons entitled to authorship have been so included. They should also state that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronic publication, without the written consent of the editor of the IBL.
License to Publish:
Authors of accepted manuscripts will be asked to sign an agreement which allows IBL to hold the commercial rights. Papers will not be published until a signed form is received.
Although authors will transfer the commercial rights to the publisher, they retain the right to use and share their own published articles (for personal use, internal institutional use and scholarly sharing purposes), retain patent, trademark and other intellectual property rights (including raw research data), and proper attribution and credit for the published work.
The author must ensure that:
The work does not include libellous, defamatory or unlawful statements.
Authorship has been agreed prior to submission and no one has been ‘gifted’ authorship or denied credit as an author (ghost authorship).
that the work is not in infringement of any existing copyright
Plagiarism:
In publishing only original research, IBL is committed to deterring plagiarism, including self- plagiarism. Problematic manuscripts will be returned to the authors without peer review. IBL implements iThenticate Software for plagiarism detection.
AI tools as author
IBL is committed to COPE, WAME and the JAMA Network declaration to state that AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper. AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work.
Authors who submitted articles for publishing in IBL are committed to the following:
Any article submitted to IBL that includes ChatGPT or any other AI tools as a co-author will be rejected immediately.
If the submitted article included a citation to a document that was authored by ChatGPT or any other AI tools as a co-author will be rejected immediately.
Permissions:
If you are using any materials
Figures / tables / illustrations
Photos
Artwork
Maps
Extensive quotations / excerpts
Song lyrics and poetry
Screenshots
Computer programmes / software
Logos / trademarks
That have already been published elsewhere, you must obtain permission to reuse them from the copyright holder (this may be the publisher rather than the author) and include any required permission statements in the figure legends. This includes your own previously published material, if you are not the copyright holder. It is the author’s responsibility to secure all permissions prior to publication.
In order to include re-use material in your work, you must clear the following rights:
Non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material
Print and electronic rights
Worldwide English language rights
To use the material for the life of the work. That means there should be no time restrictions on its reuse, for example a one-year license.
Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) encourage authors to use the following guidelines:
Cite and fully reference all data, program code, and other methods in your article.
Include persistent identifiers, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), in references for datasets and program codes. Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a piece of text or datasets. Persistent identifiers are assigned to datasets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).
Follow appropriate international and national procedures with respect to data protection, rights to privacy and other ethical considerations, whenever you cite data.
Publication Charges:
IBL is an open access journal and freely available to all readers, it does not charge authors for article processing fees or submission fees.
Manuscript Submission Checklist
Files must be prepared using Microsoft Word and submitted electronically.
Length of abstract and manuscript do not exceed the word limits set out in the Author Guidelines
The title page, abstract, manuscript body, and references must be included in the manuscript file.
Title page includes full name of each contributing author, institutional affiliation, full postal address of each affiliation, the e-mail address of each author, and Name and email address of the corresponding author.
Structured abstract formatted according to the Author Guidelines.
A maximum of ten keywords.
References must be included at the end of the manuscript file and must be alphabetical in order.
The manuscript must make reference to each figure and table, and cite them in alphabetical order.
Tables provided in editable format, formatted using the table function of the word- processing program, and on a separate page, numbered and accompanied by a legend at the top.
Figures formatted in high quality, legible, numbered consecutively, and grouped together as a list at the end of the paper.
Permission to reproduce published material, or material that is not the original work of the listed authors, is required.
Revised papers
When authors make revisions to their article in response to reviewer comments, they are asked to submit a list of changes and any comments for transmission to the reviewers. The revised version is usually returned to the original reviewer if possible, who is then asked to affirm whether the revisions have been carried out satisfactorily.
Submission Preparation Checklist
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in single blind review has been followed, which is a conventional method of peer review where the authors do not know who the reviewers are. However, the reviewers know who the authors are.
Author(s) have all rights to use author copy in his/her educational activities, own websites, institutional and/or funder’s web sites by providing a full citation to the final version published in IBL.
Author(s) have the right to transmit, print and share the first submitted copies with colleagues.
Author(s) can use the final published article for his/her own professional positions, career or qualifications by citing the IBL publication.
All accepted authors are sent an email with a link to a licence form. This should be checked for accuracy, for example, whether contact and affiliation details are up to date and your name is spelled correctly, and then returned to us electronically. If there is a reason why you can’t assign copyright to us, you should discuss this with your journal content editor.
For Readers:
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
As long as you follow the license terms.
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.
International Business Logistics E-ISSN: 2735-5969 P-ISSN: 2735-5950
Published by: Academy Publishing Center (APC) Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) Alexandria, Egypt ibl@aast.edu
