Sultan Qaboos University Journal for Science (SQUJS) is an international peer-reviewed journal that publishes original basic and applied research articles in the fields of science such as with mathematics, statistics, chemistry, physics, biology, biotechnology, environmental, earth sciences, and computer sciences as well as related disciplines. All issues of the SQU Journal for Science are freely available online and do not carry any publication charges.

Manuscripts should be submitted online via the Editorial Manager system at https://journals.squ.edu.om/index.php/squjs/login    

Types of manuscript published

Manuscripts submitted for publication in the SQU Journal for Science must be based on original work and have not been published, accepted, or submitted for publication elsewhere. The journal accepts the following types of manuscripts:

1. Editorials (by invitation from the Editorial Board, or papers received of exceptional merit)
2. Review papers
3. Research papers
4. Short communications/Notes
5. Perspectives
6. Case studies

Confidentiality

SQUJS editors and publication staff keep all information about a submitted manuscript confidential and limited to those involved in the evaluation, review and publication process. Only the Editor-in-Chief, the Editor, the Managing and Assistant Editors and the allocated Associate Editors are aware of the names of manuscript authors and their affiliations. SQUJS has a double-blind review process so that authors’ names and affiliations are not revealed to reviewers nor are reviewers’ names revealed to authors. Only information on accepted articles is archived for future reference. 

Authorship

Authorship must be based on all of the following criteria: (1) substantial contribution to the conception and design of the study, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically and; (3) final approval of the version of the manuscript to be published. Contributors who do not meet all 3 of these criteria should be listed in the acknowledge­ments section of the manuscript. The corresponding author is re­sponsible for taking all necessary coordinating actions for revising the manuscript, receiving authorization from other authors, etc.

Conflict of Interest

Trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depends partly on the handling of conflict of interest issues in the writing, peer review and editorial decision-making process. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his/her actions. These people must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Authors need to complete the Conflict of Interest section in the standard SQUJS Covering Letter. The editors may use this information as a basis for editorial decisions and may publish it in the Journal. Peer-reviewers are requested to declare any conflict of interest. SQUJS Subject Editors have to declare any conflict of interest before taking responsibility for a manuscript.

Copyright

Copyright of the accepted manuscripts will transfer from the authors to the Journal (for full details see the Copyright Transfer Section in the standard SQUJS Covering Letter).

Copyright covers all publication forms and media, now or hereafter known, and is effective as soon as a manuscript is accepted for publication in SQUJS. The authors retain the following nonexclusive copyrights, to be exercised only after the manuscript has been published in online format on the SQUJS website:

1. Reprint the manuscript in print collections of the author’s own writing.
2. Present the manuscript orally in its entirety.
3. Use the manuscript in theses and/or dissertations.
4. Reproduce the manuscript for use in courses the author is teaching. (If the author is employed by an academic institution, that institution may also reproduce the manuscript for course teaching.)
5. Distribute photocopies of the manuscript to colleagues, but only for non-commercial purposes.
6. Reuse figures and tables created by the author in future manuscripts the author writes.
7. Post a copy of the manuscript on the author’s personal website, departmental website, and/or the university’s intranet, provided a hyperlink to the manuscript on the SQUJS website is included.

In all the above instances, the author shall give proper credit to the original publication in SQUJS as follows:

This research was originally published in SQUJS. Author(s). Title. SQUJ Science, Year;vol:pp-pp. © by Sultan Qaboos University Journal of Science.

User Right

Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles under the following conditions: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The details of which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/legalcodee

Scientific misconduct

According to standard practices in scientific journals, SQU Journal For Science follows the recommendations of the Council of Science Editors (www.councilscienceeditors.org) and defines misconduct as:

1. Data Corruption: falsifying data, inventing data, ignoring part of the data purposefully, or any form of omission, suppression, or distortion of data.
2. Plagiarism: using published or unpublished texts, ideas, or thoughts of another writer without acknowledgements and presenting them as one’s own. Plagiarism includes duplicate publications or submissions in the same or in another language. The journal will follow COPE guidelines to identify and manage cases of plagiarism or text recycling.
3. Authorship misconduct: Exclusion of involved researchers, or inclusion of researchers who have not contributed significantly to the work (see the section on authors), or publication without the consent of all authors.
4. Ethical misconducts: Failure to follow legal requirements in acquiring the necessary permission to sample, collect, export, or import specimens, collect data, use chemicals or obtain ethical permits in the country of the author’s institution.

SQU Journal for Science takes all forms of misconduct very seriously. It follows the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) recommendations and guidelines (publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines). Final decisions regarding scientific misconduct are taken by the Editor-in-Chief.

Open access

SQUJS is an Open Access Journal. This means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles under the following conditions: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). This is also in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.

Archiving

SQUJS utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the online version of Journal issues for the purposes of preservation and restoration.

Preparing the Manuscript

A. Types of articles

The journal accepts several types of articles and recommends the following submission length and subsections:

1. Editorials (by invitation only)

       Editorials should not exceed 2000 words and a maximum of 25 ref­erences.

2. Reviews

Reviews should not exceed 6000 words and 14 pages and approximately 100 references. Authors who would like to submit a review are requested to send to the Editor-in-Chief (squjs@squ.edu.om) a one-page pre-proposal outlining the focus and scope of the projected review before submitting their review online. The abstract of a review paper, although structured, does not have to follow the “5 section template”.

3. Research Articles (original research not exceeding 6000 words)

Research papers should not exceed 6000 words or 14 pages and 50 references. They should be divided into the following 6 sections: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and References. Additional sections such as Acknowledgements, Conclusions, or Recommendations can also be included. Although merging results and discussion is possible, it is not a structure encouraged by the editorial board.

4. Communications/Notes (original research not exceeding 6 printed pages)

 Communications/Notes are short original research articles. They should not exceed 3000 words and 30 references or 6 printed pages. They should have the same overall structure as Research Articles including a struc­tured abstract.

5. Perspectives (short papers, not exceeding 3000 words)

Perspective papers are short papers that present an opinion or novel interpretation of existing ideas or data. They may also present a historical perspective on one of the themes of the journal. These manuscripts should follow a structure and a logical sequence of sections related to the content and purpose of the paper.

B: Journal language and translation

The Journal publishes papers in English, with the title, author names, abstracts, and keywords published in Arabic and English. Where none of the authors are Arabic speaking, an abstract translation service is provided. British English spelling, usage, and punctuation are used throughout the journal.

Editing

Papers accepted for publication will be edited by the Journal editorial office for conciseness, clarity, grammar, spelling, and style. Should the editing be extensive and possibly alter the intended meaning of the author(s), queries will be sent by email to the corresponding author requesting clarifications. 

Style

The Journal follows the overall evolution of the scientific language. When preparing manuscripts please avoid jargon and long or complex sentences but aim at clear, concise, and simple grammatical structures. The editorial board encourages the use of the active voice when it is appropriate.

Abstract

The Editorial Board strongly suggests the use of a “structured ab­stract” not exceeding 300 words. These abstracts, although composed of a single paragraph, include 5 sections that summarize the content of the paper: introduction, experimental/methodology, results, discussion, and conclusion. Each section is introduced by a heading followed by a colon and a series of sentences.

Preparation of the manuscript 

All papers will be typeset by the editorial team of the journal at publication time. Therefore, the editorial board requests the authors to follow a clear and simple format for their manuscript thereby facilitating the reviewing and editorial process. Templates for Microsoft Word™ and Latex are provided to assist au­thors in preparing their manuscripts.

The editorial board recommends the use of a classic typeface (Times, with 12-point size and at least 14-16 points leading (line spacing) for the text of the manuscript with minimum formatting as most of the layout and ty­pographical formats will be applied at the typesetting stage. The manuscript page size should be A4 and the editorial board recommends that a margin of at least 3 cm be included on all sides of the paper.

To facilitate the reviewing process, the text of the submission should have line numbers in the left-hand margin restarting at 1 on each page and a page number in the footer of the document. Use standard typographic conventions for the text presentation: italic typeface for species names (not underline), boldface for vectors, true superscript, and subscripts when necessary. Emphasis is better marked through italic rather than boldface.

Typography

The journal uses standard typographic conventions throughout. The editorial board recommends that you follow these in the prepara­tion of the manuscript.

Italic should be used throughout for the Latin name of species (please do not use underlined text). Emphasis can be placed on some elements of text using boldface.

Abbreviations: Avoid non-standard abbreviations whenever possible, particularly in headings and subheadings. If, for the sake of conciseness, the author wishes to use abbreviations, define each abbreviation when they first appear in each section of the man­uscript. Standard abbreviations such as RNA, DNA, ATP, ADP, EDTA… do not need to be defined as most readers will be familiar with them. Others such as PAH (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon) or ICP (Inductively Coupled Plasma) should be defined as the most reader may not be familiar with their meaning.

Units: Always use the International System of Units (SI) for all units. For large or small units use the standard multiplier prefix for the units (k for 1000, M for 1000000, m for 1/1000, and μ for 10-6). Prefer whenever possible negative exponents to slash: kg·m-2 rather than kg/m2. To separate units, use either a mid-line point (· =ASCII code 183 – Unicode U+00B7) or a non-breaking space. The abbreviated symbols (k, kg, s, P, W, etc.) should be used whenever possible and combined with Arabic numbers (5 kg, 2 m2, 5.2 MP, 6.78 MW·h). The only exception is when a number is grammatical­ly placed at the beginning of the sentence. A non-breaking space (Unicode U+00A0 ) should be used between the number and its units to insure that they stay together in the final document. The SI unit of time is s (second), h stands for hora, min for minuta, d for dies (day), and a for annum (year).

When necessary, non-SI units can be added between parenthesis to allow comparison with older literature or traditional systems of measurements. This includes usual units, such as surface of farming units (faddan, acres, hectares), or traditional depth units (fathoms, brasses, Ba’,…) or distance (nautical miles, miles) or other non SI units (gallons, inch, foot, bushels, etc. ).

Illustrations

Illustrations should be numbered consecutively and submitted as individual files, not embedded in the article file. To insure com­patibility, the journal accepts the following file format: JPEG, TIFF, PNG, PDF, EPS and SVG. Although the journal is normally pub­lished in black and white, color illustrations can be used when color is clearly necessary to convey the intended message. Although the authors can suggest the inclusion of color figures in the paper, the final decision to include them or not is left to the editorial board. The editorial team will strive to provide the best possible graph­ic output from the material submitted by the authors and may in some cases decide to redraw some figures to improve readability. They may also request better quality photographs or color figures if necessary. Typically black and white line figures should have a res­olution of at least 600 dpi (at the final printed size) and color figures or photographs 300 dpi (at the final printed size) but should not exceed 10 MB. For line graphics, vector based file formats (SVG, PDF, EPS) are preferred as they are resolution independent.

Each illustration should have at the bottom of the page a brief iden­tifier such as the name of the first author, the word Figure and the sequential number of the figure. (Al-Oufi, Figure 7 for instance). The full captions of all figures should be presented in numerical order on a separate page at the end of the text manuscript.

In the figure use Helvetica as the standard typeface for all text (axis, legend, axis legend, equations, labels, etc.) and ensure that all text remain legible even after size reduction for final printing. Figures will be printed either as a single column (7 cm wide) or double column (14 cm) figure.

Macro-photographs, micro-photograhs, SEM photographs, an­atomical drawings, morphological illustrations, should have an appropriately labeled scale bar. Avoid multiplication factors (x100, x10000) as these will change with the rescaling of the figure when printed.

Tables

Tables should be presented in a clear manner and designed to fit on the width of a page. Exceptionally wide tables may be typeset, side­ways, along the height of a printed page. All unnecessary decimals should be removed. Tables should be included at the end of the manuscript on separate pages and the legend/caption of each table should be placed on the same page and above the table.

Equations and numbers

Equations should be placed on separate lines and numbered se­quentially at the end of the line. They should be typeset using an equation editor. If this is not possible, scan or photograph a clear handwritten version of the equation, which will be typeset by the editorial assistant.

The Journal uses the modern scientific number styles recommend­ed by the Council of Science Editors. This styles uses digit numbers (1, 2,4.5, 7, etc.) for all numeric representations, even single digit ones. The main exceptions are when a digit starts a sentence, or when the single digit number is part of an idiomatic expression such as in “one or both”, a “zero-tolerance policy”, a “one-to-one interview”, “one has to agree that”…

In-text citations 

Please cite references in the text by number only enclosed in parentheses. Citations of unpublished work are listed in parentheses in the text only as follows: …by J.A. Smith (personal communication); …(J.A. Smith, personal communication); …according to J.A. Smith (unpublished data); or …(J.A. Smith, unpublished data). If the cited individual is not mentioned elsewhere in the references, the individual’s full name and address should be provided in a footnote.  

End of text references  

The bibliographic information for all cited references in the articles are listed at the end of the papers under the heading “References”. Arrange the cited references in the order they appear in the text in sequential numerical order. References should be in full and should provide the reader with needed information to retrieve and examine the cited reference. Please follow the examples shown below, including punctuation. The Journal names follow a “Title case” capitalization - all words are capitalized except for articles (a, an, the); for prepositions (against, of, in, to), for conjunctions (and, for, not, or)—and should NOT be abbreviated. Titles of articles, books, on the other hand follow a sentence case capitalization (i.e. words are capitalized according to the grammar of the language of publication): the first word, the first word that follow a colon or a semi colon, names of geographic lo­cations, or proper nouns, etc. For articles published in non-English languages, provide the original title if the language uses roman characters or a translation of the title for other languages (Arabic for instance) and add the name of language between 2 periods at the end of the reference.

For online references, follow the overall same standard as for print publication, but include a date of access and a DOI num­ber, if possible. Unpublished results and personal communication 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.

Volume and issues, if available, follow directly the Title of the Journal with the issue number between parenthesis. Page num­bers follow a colon and are separated by a hyphen. For books, the total page number is used with the abbreviation “pp.” whereas for chapter/section of books, the abbreviation is “p.” followed by the range of pages of the section (p. 25-44). All references end with a period.

Following are some examples of common references: 

Single authored paper: Yallaoui, B. Filter representation of normal lattices. Sultan Qaboos University Journal for Scientific Research - Science and Technology, 1997, 1, 63-67.

Multi authored paper: Al-Rumhy, M., Al-Bimani, A. and Boukadi, F. Effect of compositional grading on reservoir performance. Sultan Qaboos University Journal for Scientific Research - Science and Technology, 1997, 1, 37-45.

Book: Steel, R.G. and Torrie, J.H. Principles and Procedures of Statistics:  A Biometrical Approach (2nd Edition) McGraw-Hill Publishing Co., New York, 1980.

Chapter in a book: Apel, M. and Turkay, M. The Intertidal Crabs and Hermit Crabs (Crustacea: Decapoda: Brachyura: Paguridae) in the Study Area and their Condition After the Oil Spill. In Establishment of Marine Habitat and Wildlife Sanctuary for the Gulf Region. Eds. Feltkamp, E.  and Krupp, F.  Jubail and Frankfurt, 1992.

Bulletin: Page, C.H. and Vigoureaux, P. (Eds). The International System of Units (SI). National Bureau of Standards Special Publication No. 330 (rev.), U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1986.

Conference proceedings: Stirm M., Oceanographic conditions and pelagic biological processes in Omani waters. Proceedings of FAO Workshop “Mesopelagic Fish Stocks of NW Indian Ocean”, 29-31 October 1994, Muscat, Oman.

Conference presentation: Elbualy, M.S. Sero-prevalence of Rubella, Cytomegalovirus, Measles and Toxoplasmosis among Pregnant Women in Oman. 7th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, 12-30 March, 1995, Vienna, Austria.

C: Supplementary material

Definition: Supporting files that are not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript, but would nevertheless benefit the reader. It should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Examples would be more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, tables, additional figures or video/audio clips.

Process: All material to be considered as Supplementary files must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer-review. Please select the material intended as Supplementary material during online submission by uploading it under the correct file type (Supplementary). Also ensure that the Supplementary material is referred to in the main manuscript at an appropriate point in the text. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication. Please ensure to submit Supplementary material online in its final form.

Please note that Supplementary material will not be edited, so ensure that it is clearly and succinctly presented and that the style of terms conforms to the rest of the manuscript. Also please ensure that the uploaded Supplementary files are blinded (does NOT contain identifying author details). The Supplementary material will be presented as a separate file once the accepted articles are published online.

Acceptable formats: A maximum of 6 files is acceptable to make up the Supplementary material unit for the article. The maximum size per file should not exceed 10 Mbytes (except for video clips which can be a maximum of 50 Mbytes), and files must be as small as possible, so that they can be downloaded quickly. Please provide the Supplementary files in one of the following formats:

• Provide text files in PDF (.pdf) or MS Word (.doc) format.
• Provide spreadsheet files in MS Excel (.xls) format.
• Provide image files in .tif, .gif or .jpg format.
• Provide audio clips in .mp3 format.
• Provide video clips in .mp4 format.

D: Formatting

All manuscripts must be submitted in Microsoft Word. Use 12 point Times New Roman font for the entire manuscript. In addition, all manuscripts should have 1.5 spacing between the lines and have continuous line-numbering for the entire manuscript to facilitate the review and revision process. Use minimum formatting, restricting formatting to superscripts and subscripts and what is absolutely essential to reveal various heading levels, since most formatting will be removed before typesetting. Use true superscripts and subscripts and not “raised/lowered” characters. For symbols, use the standard symbol fonts on Windows or Macintosh. Using strange symbol fonts may give unpredictable results in print, even if the fonts are supplied by the author. Put exactly one space between words and after any punctuation. Put one blank line between paragraphs and do not use indents to indicate new paragraphs. Ensure that the text of the entire manuscript is in uniform black font color, unless you need to indicate changes to your article made during a request for revision. Please do not insert page borders.

E: Proofs

The galley proof of an accepted article in emailed in PDF format to the corresponding author for typographical checking only. It should be returned within 72 hours of receipt.

F: Review Process

The Editorial Office of the Journal and the SQUJS Subject Editors check each submitted manuscript for general quality, suitability and whether it conforms to accepted formatting requirements. All manuscripts are also checked for plagiarism; if discovered, immediate strong action is taken. If found prima facie acceptable, the manuscript will be sent out for double-blind international review. All reviewers treat the manuscript with the strictest confidentiality and must declare any conflict of interests. Comments and suggestions from the reviewers are conveyed to the authors via the online system. Revised manuscripts are subject to further review by the original reviewers and the responsible Subject Editors. The final decision as to acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor-in-Chief, with advice from the SQUJS Editorial Board and Sultan Qaboos University’s Academic Publications Board.

Submission checklist for Authors

1. The current submission has not been previously published nor is it currently submitted to another journal for consideration.
2. The submission text files are in Microsoft Office (.doc, .docx), OpenOffice (.odt), RTF (rtf) or Apple Pages (.pages) document file format.
3. The text of the document uses a 12-point standard font with a 14-16 point leading (space between lines) on A4 or US-Letter format pages with page numbers and line numbers. Manuscript conforms to the journal recommended styles, length and number of sections.
4. The Abstract of the paper follows the structured format described in the guide for authors and includes a single paragraph (<300 words) with 5 inline headings (Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions) and keywords for the manuscript are provided.
5. Photography (or photographic plates) are submitted in the jpeg (.jpg) file format at 300 dots per inch (dpi) with 80% compression quality or better. Line drawings and other figures should be preferably submitted as vector graphics such as pdf, eps or svg files. Alternatively, high resolution (600dpi) image format are acceptable (PNG, TIFF, GIF).
6. All tables including (legend, description and footnotes) and all figure captions are part of the submission main text file.
7. The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in this document which can also be found in the Journal web site.
8. The manuscript has been “spell-checked” and “grammar-checked”.

Manuscripts should be submitted online via the Editorial Manager system at https://journals.squ.edu.om/index.php/squjs/login