Author Guidelines

Submission Preparation Checklist for MJICTSP

 Mature Journal of International Institute of Christian Theologians, Scholars, and Professionals (MJIICTSP) is a peer-reviewed international, interdenominational and multidisciplinary Christian theological journal that publishes quarterly by the Chosen Life Christian University. MATURE JOURNAL publishes articles on diverse areas of theological education and studies, Biblical education, Biblical Research, and studies, Christian education, Christian ministry, Christian leadership, philosophy, religion, children, youth and young adult ministry, pastoral ministry, Christian counseling, marriage and family, Christian music, Christian business, management and administration, marketing, accounting, economics and finance, and allied fields.  It is all-encompassing theologically. It is dedicated to providing the most updated, original, well-designed, spiritually, theologically, and scientifically discussed, and well-interpreted research information in the field of Christian education/ministry (i.e. all things that fall within the purview of Christian activities).

Types of Articles Invited

The MJIICTSP invites authors to write any type of article below:

1. Research Articles
2. Review Articles
3. Opinion/Perspective Articles
4. Case Studies
5. Theoretical Articles
6. Comparative Articles
7. Information Articles
8. Inspirational/Innovative Articles
9. Short reports or Letters Methodologies or
   Methods  
10. Book Review

 MAJOR CATEGORIES OF RESEARCH WORK

 Note that all articles MUST follow the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) format of citations and/or references

Articles

Articles are evaluated by the Lead editor and then sent for peer review. The peer review is double-blinded. This means that both the author and the persons who carry it out — at least two persons — are anonymous to each other. The authors must avoid writing their submissions (including notes) in a way that discloses their identity because the review process is anonymous.

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.

1. Electronic submission is preferred, and research works may be sent as email attachments to: editor.mature@gmail.com. Submission should be in Word format is preferred. 
2. We do not accept articles that are longer than 7,000 words, nor discussions that are longer than 2,500 words, including footnotes and references. Your research article should be between 3,000 and 7,000 words
3. We don’t accept articles or discussions of articles originally published in other Journals because we believe so much in originality.
4. Submissions should include an abstract not greater than 250 words, 3 to 5 keywords, and a note of the word count. The content should in most cases be accessible to readers with a general spiritual background. Footnotes should be brief, and be limited as far as possible to providing bibliographic details.
5. Articles must be submitted in a form suitable for blind refereeing; personal acknowledgements should be removed. PDF submissions should include the author’s details in a separate document.
6. The journal processes submitted articles anonymously: referees do not know the identity of authors; authors do not know the identity of referees; the Editors do not know the identity of authors until after the final decision on publication has been made.
7. To avoid unduly protracted decision processes, it is the journal’s policy to request no more than one round of revisions after initial submission. Beyond that point, any submission will normally be either accepted or rejected outright.
8. When submitting papers, authors should specify whether they are male, female, or other – please specify, or else state that they prefer not to supply this information. The information is for equal-opportunities monitoring only and, like all other author details, is not visible to anyone involved at any stage of the refereeing process. Editors will not be made aware of an author’s identity until after a final decision about publication has been made. Referees are not provided with any information about authors at any stage.
9. We aim to provide authors with a timely response to submissions. As a result, and given the increasing number of submissions, it is not always possible to provide authors with referee reports. Accepted papers are usually published online within a few months and appear in hard copy within about a year.

10. Before submitting your article, please ensure that it is prepared in accordance with the Author’s Guidelines below.
11. Ensure that 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).
12. For now, we can accept more than one submission from any author in a particular issue and no more than two submissions. These submissions only include individual and not shared authorship. You can have up to five shared authorship ONLY for this edition. Also, if you have had a submission rejected, you cannot be an author on another paper for that same issue.
13. Once an article has been rejected, an author cannot resubmit either an amendment to this article or another article for this issue of the journal.

Article Structure

Articles should be submitted through the online submission form in Microsoft Word format.

Contributors are expected to submit the initial draft of their paper in the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Handbook of Style, second edition (Recommended).  If accepted for publication, the paper’s style will likely be slightly modified to provide consistency across papers. There may also be minor editorial edits to ensure the academic rigour of the language, grammar, and spelling. British and American English are both acceptable, but spelling and punctuation conventions should be consistent with the form of English used.

 

Only papers that demonstrate the following attributes will be accepted:

1. Written in correct and fluent English at a high academic standard;

1. Sufficient reference to the current, worldwide, mainstream literature (usually within the last 5 years, and scholarly references;
2. Showing sufficient evidence of research (as a research article or comprehensive review);
3. Applicable to the topics covered by the journal. The well-written manuscript should address critical issues, current trends, and research in Christianity. This would include exploring significant themes, exceptional programmes, and promising practices in the field of education, and educational policy.
4. Contributors whose command of English is not at the level outlined above are responsible for having their manuscript corrected by a native-level, English-speaking academic prior to submitting their paper for publication. These standards are non-negotiable and strictly enforced by the Lead Editor and Editors of the MJCTSP.

Title

The title of the paper should not be more than 15 words.

Abstract

A concise and factual abstract is required (maximum length of 250 words). As far as possible, the abstract should state briefly the context of the research, the purpose of the research study, the methodology, the principal results and major conclusions and significance. It is understood that opinion articles, literature review articles and other non-empirical forms of study may necessitate slight changes in the abstract structure. 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 five keywords, all of which should be in lowercase and separated by commas, except words like God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.

Introduction

Present the purposes of the study and provide background for your work. The introduction should contain a clear statement of what the manuscript is about, why it is relevant, the purposes, the background of the study, and the general organisation of the remainder of the paper.

Literature Review

Include a pertinent literature review with explicit international connections for relevant ideas. Discuss the findings of published papers in the related field and highlight your contribution.

Methodology/ Methods

Writing should provide sufficient detail for readers to understand how you engaged in your inquiry. The type of research should be clearly stated and should have a source citation to give it validity. Research questions should be unmistakably stated. Clear descriptions of your participants, along with strategies used to collect and analyse data, should be described. There should also be a reference to ethics approval.

Discussions

This section should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. Combining your results and discussion into a single section may be suitable. Returning to relevant literature from the introduction should show how your work connects with or interrupts already published literature.

Authors should note that, unless the manuscript is an opinion paper, they should refrain from trying to convince the reader of anything. Rather, the discussion should share what has been found, observed, or learned. Opinion words and intensifiers should not be used. The reader should be able to make decisions based on the quality of the study and writing as to whether the information is worthwhile. Please avoid one-sentence paragraphs.

Findings/Results

Findings should be linked to the research questions. Correct terminology should be used when discussing findings or results. The findings or results may benefit from a table or figure, but these should be used sparingly and should not repeat findings already explained in the text. Findings or results should be unbiased.

 

Recommendations

This section should outline any recommendations coming out of the research. These recommendations may include changes in the research methodology, future research in the area, the adoption of particular practices, or policy change. There should be justification for each recommendation. Recommendations should be presented in paragraph form rather than as a bulleted list.

Conclusions

The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a Conclusions section, which can include the main findings, implications, and limitations.

Appendices

If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, and so on. No appendix should contain data from the study or any other material relied on in the article for findings and results.

Acknowledgement

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not 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 proofreading the article).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Insert them using Word’s footnote function, ensuring that they are numbered consecutively throughout the article in superscript Arabic numerals. Please do not insert footnotes manually.

References

• Citation in text: Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice versa).
• Reference style: All referencing (both in-text citations and the reference list) should follow the referencing style used by the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL).  
• Full DOI’s need to be added, where available, to the referenced work. Please note: It is not the responsibility of the editor to add DOIs for an author.

MJICTSP Summary Style Specifications

• SBL Referencing Style.
• 12-point Times New Roman font.
• The title should not be more than 15 words.
• All paragraphs and body text are justified and single-spaced.
• Please avoid one-sentence paragraphs.
• One line should separate paragraphs or sections. Do not indent paragraphs.
• Set page size to A4.
• Margins: Microsoft Word “Normal” (2.54 cm).
• Contributions should be between 3,000 and 7,000 words in length (including references, but excluding the abstract).
• Main headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings: No more than three levels of headings should be included.
• All figures must be inserted in a JPEG/PNG image format, within the page margins. Left justify images. Do not insert loose objects such as arrows, lines, or text boxes. Number and caption above the figure like the following:
  Figure 1
  Caption Information Here (Left justified, italics, title case)
• Tables should be created within the Microsoft Word document, should fit onto one A4 page, and should be numbered and captioned above the table, centre aligned.
• Bold any section/paragraph headers and left align, first-word capitalisation, not bold. The table should be in a simple box format.
• Do not use any page headers, footers, or page numbers (footers are acceptable if they contain footnotes).
• Use only a portrait layout. Do not include any pages in the landscape layout.
• The corresponding author’s contact email address should be added to the end of the paper after references. MJICTSP is not responsible for unsolicited emails received.
• Optional: Acknowledgements (max. 150 words) to be included as the last section before the reference list.
• References are to be single-spaced (indented after the first line of reference).
• Title page information to include:

•  

• • • Title of the paper.
    • Author names and affiliations: Provide authors’ affiliation details (where the work was done) including full institution name and country.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Rights and Fees

1. All articles are published open access (CC BY-NC-ND).
2. The author retains the copyright.
3. MJCTSP has the right to distribute articles or parts of articles for as long as the journal exists.
4. The articles will be published in the journal’s online and open-access issue.
5. By special request, the article can be printed as a hard copy in a journal/book.
6. If the author publishes an article or parts thereof in another journal or medium, it should include a statement that the article first appeared in
7. MJCTSP maintains an affordable publication fee (APC) of $27 per manuscript. However, this is automatically discounted for any student publication, which pays only $10 and no publication fee for the registered members in this Journal issue. There are no further fees charged. The publication fee should be paid through the publisher’s account (Chosen Life Christian University)–ICTPS Corporate Account in favour of:  

Account Name:Chosen Life.

Account Number: 0990047992.

Bank: Econbank

 

Publication Ethics

1. All authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research (as stated in the Vancouver Convention).
2. We publish original work. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
3. Both plagiarism and self-plagiarism are inadmissible. The work of others and previous works by the author must be appropriately cited or quoted.
4. The Editorial Team is responsible for making a decision of accepting or rejecting a manuscript and will ensure a fair peer-review process by qualified reviewers.
5. The Editorial Team does not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, or other editorial advisers.
   See also our full publication ethics and policy.

Privacy Statement

The names, phone number,s 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.

Submission of Your Article

Submit your research paper in MS Word format for FAST PUBLICATION. If you have any problems submitting your paper via the form, please send it through our email address: editor.mature@gmail.com

 

Mature Journal SBL Format Here: