Introduction

Business Education Journal (BEJ) publishes several article formats, as highlighted above. Authors are welcome to structure articles in a manner they need to best convey their research. Manuscripts are accepted in British English and author(s) should prepare the manuscript according to the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual current version). This Guide for Authors contains information on suggested article structures and lengths, and authors are required to adhere to these guidelines”.

1. Submission declaration and verification

   Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all the 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and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically, without the written consent of the copyright holder. To verify compliance, your article may be checked by originality or duplicate checking software.

2. Disclosure and conflicts of interest

   Corresponding authors, on behalf of all the authors of a submission, must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations and grants or other funding. All the authors, including those without competing interests to declare, should provide the relevant information to the corresponding author (which, where relevant, may specify they have nothing to declare).

3. Changes to authorship

   Authors must carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal Editor-in-Chief. To request such a change, the Editor-in-Chief must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in author list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all the authors that they agree with the addition, removal, or authorial rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances will the Editor-in-Chief consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been accepted. In such cases, manuscript publishing will be halted until after the Editor-in-Chief had reviewed the request. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor-in-Chief will result in a corrigendum.

4. Role of the funding source

   The authors must identify those who provided financial support for conducting of the research and/or preparation of the article and to describe briefly 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 article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, it is recommended to state this.

5. Open access

   All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute, for example, under Creative Commons, which allows re-users to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon material in any medium or format, as long as attribution is given to the creator, and for commercial use.

   1. Data access and retention

      Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data.

6. Copyright

   Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete an ‘Author Publishing Agreement’ (see Appendix I). An email will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript along with an ‘Author Publishing Agreement’ form. The agreement incorporates the Creative Commons license of the author’s choice, which will dictate what others can do with the article once it has been published.

   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. 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.

7. Submission

   Our online submission system guides will guide authors stepwise through the process of entering their respective article’s details and uploading of their files. The system converts their article files to a single PDF file used in the peer-review process. Editable files (e.g., Word, LaTeX) will be required for typesetting the article for final publication. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision is sent by e-mail.

8. Suggesting reviewers

   The authors will need to include the names and email addresses of three to five reviewers from their respective areas of expertise. Recommendations for reviewers from among the co-authors are not acceptable. Reviewers who could have conflicting interests with the writers are not invited by the editors. If possible, authors can recommend a wide pool of prospective reviewers that reside in various nations or regions from the author group to ensure scientific rigour and give a comprehensive and fair appraisal of the work. They also need to consider other diverse factors as well, such as gender, colour and ethnicity, career stage, etc. Finally, the suggestions must exclude current members of the editorial team. Significantly, it is the discretion of the editor to invite or decline the proposed reviewers. Reviewers will be asked to provide comments on the manuscript at least 30 days from the date of submission.

9. Disclosure instructions

   Authors must disclose the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process by adding a statement at the end of their manuscript in the core manuscript file, before the References list. The statement should be placed in a new section entitled ‘Declaration of Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process’.

   Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

   This declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools for checking grammar, spelling, references etc. If there is nothing to disclose, there is no need to add a statement.

Preparing the Manuscript

All the manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to convey the manuscript, for example, the Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions, Artwork and Tables with Captions. Authors should use a double-space and 12-point font size, Times New Roman font, and should use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages and additional headings (if any) for appendices, acknowledgments, conflicting interests, or notes. Length of the submissions will depend on article type (please see sub-sections 3.1.1 and 3.1.2 for additional details). Authors are not encouraged to use page breaks.

1. Title

   1. Essential title page information

      • Title: The title should be concise and informative, no more than 20 words. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems, and without abbreviations and formulae where possible.
      • Author names and affiliations: Please clearly indicate the first/given name(s) and surname(s) of each author and ensure that all the names are accurately spelled out. You can add your name between parentheses in your own script behind the English transliteration. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all the institutional 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 author.
      • Corresponding author: Clearly indicate who will manage the editorial correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about Methodology and Materials. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are 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 be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.
      • Example title: Often, it may be helpful to split this into a short main title, followed (after a colon or a 'dash') by a subtitle: for example, 'Profiting from technological innovation: Implications for integration, collaboration, licensing and public policy’.

2. Abstract

   Citations should not be included in the Abstract. Structured abstracts of 200-250 words are required for all the manuscripts submitted and should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references. It should include the aim of the study, its scope, research methods, findings, results implication and original value briefly and clearly. A sample is provided here for clarification:

   Abstract

   Background: Structured abstracts were introduced into medical research journals in the mid-1980s. Since then they have been widely used in this and other contexts.

   Aim: The aim of this paper is to summarize the main findings from research on structured abstracts and to discuss the limitations of some aspects of this research.

   Method: A narrative literature review of all of the relevant papers known to the author was conducted.

   Results: Structured abstracts are typically longer than traditional ones, but they are also judged to be more informative and accessible. Authors and readers also judge them to be more useful than traditional abstracts. However, not all studies use “real-life” published examples from different authors in their work, and more work needs to be done in some cases.

   Conclusions: The findings generally support the notion that structured abstracts can be profitably introduced into research journals. Some arguments for this, however, have more research support than others.

3. Keywords

   Each manuscript should have 4 - 6 keywords for indexing purposes. Avoid general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of').

4. Introduction

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

5. Literature review, conceptual framework, hypotheses etc.

   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 can point out several theories that need to be investigated or research questions that need to be answered. In short, this part (or sections) should provide an explanation of the article's purpose and the reasons for its unique and noteworthy contribution.

6. Material and methods

   Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced by an independent researcher. Methods that are already published should be summarised with an in-text and reference citation. If quoting directly from a previously published method, use quotation marks and cite the source; otherwise paraphrase the original words and phrasing. Any modifications to the existing methods should also be accordingly described. The reader needs to know that the empirical data and/or other material are relevant, dependable and capable of supporting robust conclusions, and that the methodology is appropriate, systematic and rigorous.

7. Results

   Results should be clear and concise. Paragraphs in manuscripts should be no longer than 15 lines (125-200 words).

8. 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.

9. Conclusions

   The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a sub-section of a Discussion or Results and Discussion section.

10. Figures

    Ensure that each illustration has a caption. 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.

11. Tables

    Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end. Tables should be numbered sequentially according to where they occur in the text, and any annotations should be placed beneath the table content. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules and shading in table cells.

References

1. Citation in text

   Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and vice-versa). It is also advisable to use an APA citation generator to ensure a match between in-text and reference citations. 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. At least 50 percent of the citations in the submitted manuscript must be less than five years old.

2. Reference links

   Increased discoverability of research and high-quality peer review are ensured by online links to the sources cited. To allow us to create links to abstracting and indexing services, such as Scopus, Web of Science and PubMed, please ensure that data provided in the references are correct. Please note that incorrect surnames, journal/book titles, publication year and pagination may prevent link creation. When copying references, please be careful as they may already contain errors. Use of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is highly encouraged.

3. Referencing style

   Reference examples

   In the reference list at the end of the article, the references should be listed in alphabetical order by author (and chronologically for work by the same author, with the letters "a", "b" etc. being used if that author has published more than one article each year).

   Reference to a journal article

   Michael, M. M., Cedric, M., Montero, G., Musira, C., &Abdallah, S. (2022). Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction in Tanzanian Higher Education. Global Business Review, 8(3): 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185

   • Parenthetical citation: (Michael et al., 2022)
   • Narrative citation: Michael et al. (2022)

   Reference to a book

   Peterson, L. M. (2021). The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000

   • Parenthetical citations: (Peterson, 2021)
   • Narrative citations: Peterson (2021)

   Reference to a chapter in an edited book

   Hassan, J. P. (2022). Currents in the study of persuasion. In M. B. Edward, A. A. Rodney, & J. Huffman (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (4th ed., pp. 115–129). Routledge.

   • Parenthetical citations: (Hassan, 2022)
   • Narrative citations: Hassan (2022)

   Reference to a conference proceeding

   Author, A., & Author, B. (Year, Month date). Title of session [Paper presentation]. In A. Editor, & B. Editor. Title of Published Proceedings. Title of Conference: Subtitle of Conference, Location (inclusive page numbers). Publisher.

   Reference to a dissertation or thesis

   Author, A.A. (Year). Title (Publication No. if present) [Doctoral dissertation/Doctoral thesis/Master's dissertation/Master's thesis, Institution Name].

   NB: Please refer to the APA referencing style for other sources not listed here.

After Acceptance

1. Proofreading

   The publication process of an article requires authors to provide proof corrections within two days. These corrections are crucial for checking typesetting, editing, completeness, and correctness of the text, tables, and figures. Significant changes to the article will only be considered with permission from the Editor-in-Chief. All corrections should be sent back in one communication, and careful checking is necessary before replying. The author’s responsibility is proofreading, and they must provide the ORCID ID. After the Managing Editor receives the proofread document from the author, s/he will double-check the quality of the proofreading by sending it to another proofreader appointed by the College.

2. Publication and submission fee

   BEJ is an open access journal that publishes articles twice per annum (March and September). Accepted articles are published in the volume and issue determined by the Editorial Board. There are no article processing charges.