Submissions

Author Guidelines

About the Journal

Negotiations is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research.

Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in Urdu, Punjabi, and English.

Negotiations accepts only original articles for publication.

The following ethical guidelines are mandatory for all author(s). Violation of these guidelines may result in the application of penalties by the competent authorities, which will be lead to the suspension or cancellation of publishing rights.

REPORTING STANDARDS:

• Will ensure that the research report and data contains satisfactory detail and references.
• False, knowingly inaccurate, or inappropriate statements are unethical and unacceptable in any way/case.

ORIGINALITY OF RESEARCH AND PLAGIARISM:

• If Plagiarism is found in any of its forms, it sets up unethical publishing manners and leads to the rejection of research.
• Material quoted in the same must be placed in quotation marks.
• The similarity index shouldn’t be more than 20%, As per HEC’s policy.

DECLARATION & CERTIFICATE:

• A declaration certificate will be required that the Article/Research Paper/ manuscript contains only author(s) original work that is not under consideration for publishing in any other journal/proceedings in any form.
• The co-authored paper must be accompanied by an undertaking in order to claim the right to authorship and to ensure that all have agreed to the sequence/order of authorship.

SUBMISSION TO OTHER JOURNALS FOR PUBLICATION:     

• Submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal is unethical and leads to rejection at once.         

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SOURCES IN RESEARCH:

• A paper must contain a proper acknowledgment of the work of others.
• The author(s) must also acknowledge the contributions of people, organizations, and institutes who assisted the process of research or financial funding (in the acknowledgment).
• It is the duty of the author(s) to conduct a literature review and cite the original publications.

RESEARCH WORK AUTHORSHIP CREDIT:

• Authorship of the work will be only credited to those who have made a significant contribution in the presentation of the concept, data analysis, and writing up of the manuscript.
• The corresponding author(s) should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

PRIVACY OF PARTICIPANTS/AUTHOR(S):

• Authors must respect the privacy of the participant(s) of the research.
• Authors must ensure that in examples where the identity of the participant needs to be revealed in the study, obvious and informed consent of the concerned party is obtained.

RESEARCH DATA ACCESS AND PRESERVATION:

• If any question arises about the accuracy or validity of the research work during the review process the author(s) should provide raw data to the Editor.

ALREADY DISCLOSURE AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:

• The potential conflicts of interest of all author(s) must be conveyed to the editor at the earliest possible stage, including but not limited to employment, consultancies, honoraria, etc.
• If necessary for Research, all sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed at the earliest.     

CONDITIONS OF MANUSCRIPT’S ACCEPTANCE AND REJECTION:

• 60 days after submission of the Paper and receiving an acknowledgment letter, the author can ask about the status of his article.
• In case of any recommended and suggested revision, the author(s) will be demanded to revise his research accordingly in the time given by the Editor. Later on, he must provide a description of all corrections made in the manuscript and the revised copy.
• If the author does not satisfy with the decision of rejection, the author can appeal the decision by contacting the Editor.

Peer Review and Ethics

We are committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review. Once your paper has been assessed for suitability by the editor, it will then be double blind peer reviewed by independent, anonymous expert referees.

Preparing Your Paper

Structure

Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).

Word Limits

Please include a word count for your paper.

A typical paper for this journal should be between 5000 and 8000 words .

Style Guidelines

Please refer to the following style guidelines when preparing your paper, rather than any published articles or a sample copy.

Font

Use Times New Roman font in size 12 with double-line spacing.

Margins

Margins should be at least 2.5cm (1 inch).

Title

Use bold for your article title, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

Abstract

Indicate the abstract paragraph with a heading or by reducing the font size. The instructions for authors for each journal will give specific guidelines on what’s required here, including whether it should be a structured abstract or graphical abstract, and any word limits.

Keywords

Keywords help readers find your article, so are vital for discoverability. If the journal instructions for authors don’t give a set number of keywords to provide, aim for five or six.

Headings

Please follow this guide to show the level of the section headings in your article:

1. First-level headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion) should be in bold, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
2. Second-level headings should be in bold italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
3. Third-level headings should be in italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.
4. Fourth-level headings should be in bold italics, at the beginning of a paragraph. The text follows immediately after a full stop (full point) or other punctuation mark.
5. Fifth-level headings should be in italics, at the beginning of a paragraph. The text follows immediately after a full stop (full point) or other punctuation mark.

Tables and figures

Show clearly in the article text where the tables and figures should appear, for example, by writing [Table 1 near here].

Check the instructions for authors to see how you should supply tables and figures, whether at the end of the text or in separate files, and follow any guidance given on the submission system.

It’s very important that you have been given permission to use any tables or figures you are reproducing from another source before you submit.

Data availability statement

If you’re submitting a data availability statement for your article, please include it within the text of your manuscript, before your ‘References’ section. So that readers can easily find it, please give it the heading ‘Data availability statement’.

Spelling and punctuation

Each journal will have a preferred method for spelling and punctuation. Make sure you apply the spelling and punctuation style consistently throughout your article.

Special characters

If you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps:

• European accents (Greek, Hebrew, or Cyrillic letters, or phonetic symbols): choose Times New Roman font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
• Asian languages (such as Sanskrit, Korean, Chinese, or Japanese): choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.
• Transliterated Arabic: choose either Times New Roman or Arial Unicode (unless the instructions for authors specify a particular font). For ayns and hamzas, choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window. Type the Unicode hexes directly into the “Character code” box, using 02BF for ayn, and 02BE for hamza.

Running heads and received dates

These aren’t required when submitting a manuscript for review. They will be added during the production process if your article is accepted for publication.

Any spelling style is acceptable so long as it is consistent within the manuscript.

Please use double quotation marks, except where “a quotation is ‘within’ a quotation”. Please note that long quotations should be indented without quotation marks.

Where abbreviation is appropriate, use the standard abbreviations for books of the Bible and other ancient documents. If these are not available to you, write out full titles and the editors will abbreviate. Please do not abbreviate titles of journals or books in your text or notes; rather, provide full titles. Transliterations must be used for Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, etc. Include accents only where absolutely necessary. Conform Greek and Hebrew transliterations to the style used in the Chicago Manual of Style. For Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, please use the format found in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. When any foreign language is used, provide English translation set within parentheses after the foreign word or clause, except for commonly known words. Italicize all foreign words or phrases.

References

• (i) References should be made as Footnotes.
• (ii) While giving references, Chicago 16th Manual Style should be adopted.

Ibn Kathīr, ‘Imād Al-Dīn Ab ū al-Fidā Ismā‘īl bin ‘Umar, Tafsīr Al-Qur’ān al-‘Aẓīm (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1354 A.H.), 2:312.

• (i) For similar references at multiple locations, traditional style of abbreviations may be used.

Qureshi, The Messenger of God and the Law of Blasphemy in Islam, 89.

• (iii) Qur’ānic Ᾱyāt, Biblical verses and Ᾱhādīth also will be mentioned in inverted commas.

The Method of revealed books citation would be as below:

Al-Qur’ān 2:184

Genesis 5:6,

Mathew 3:15

• (iv) All Ᾱḥādīth should be briefly interpreted and they also should be authentic.

Example for this format is as under:

Muḥammad b. Ismā‘īl al-Bukhārī, al-jāmi‘ al-Ṣaḥīḥ (Lahore: Dār as-Salām, 2005), 2:13.

• (v) Research paper’s article will be cited as: Jacques Warrdensburg, “Religious Pluralism and Citizenship,” The Encounters 4 no.1(1998):126.
• (vi) Published books will be cited as mentioned below: Michael, H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History (New York: Kensington Publishing Corporation, 1992), 3.
• (vii) All Quotations shorter than three lines should be in inverted commas as:

 “All praises to Almighty Allah the Most Merciful the Most Beneficent”

• (viii) Website references will be cited as below:

"Influence of Western Civilization on Islam," http://westernizationandislam.weebly.com, accessed on 27 June, 2018.

• (ix) Online published books or papers will be cited as under:

Alī Marzūī, “Islamic and Western Values”, Foreign Affairs 76, no. 5 (1997):

118-132; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1997-09-01, accessed on 27 June, 2018.

• (x) Reports will be cited as below: United Nation’s General Assembly Report on Freedom of Assembly and Association, (Washington: Human Rights Council, 2012), 5, www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/A-HRC-20-27, accessed on 27 June, 2018.
• (xi) Theses references will be given below:

Riaz Ahmad Saeed, "Freedom of Expression in Islamic and Contemporary Western Thought: A Comparative Study" (doctorate thesis, University of the Punjab, Lahore, 2017), 118.

• (xii) All personalities, terms and places mentioned in the article must be briefly introduced and references from books should also be quoted in footnote of the paper.
• (xiii) Interview will be cited as below:

               John Smith, Interview by author, Tape recording. New York City, March 5, 2019.

• All un-known personalities, terms and places mentioned in the article must be briefly introduced and references from books should also be quoted in the footnote section of the paper.
• The journal has right to amend, transliterate and format miner things according to his editorial need and requirement without changing major theme.

Checklist: What to Include

1. Author details. All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCiDs and social media handles (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn). One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF (depending on the journal) and the online article. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted. 
2. Should contain an unstructured abstract of 200 words.
3. Between 5 and 7 keywords.
4. Funding details. Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
   For single agency grants
   This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].
   For multiple agency grants
   This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].
5. Disclosure statement. This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. 
6. Supplemental online material. Supplemental material can be a video, dataset, fileset, sound file or anything which supports (and is pertinent to) your paper. We publish supplemental material online via Figshare.
7. Figures. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: EPS, PS, JPEG, TIFF, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) files are acceptable for figures that have been drawn in Word. For information relating to other file types.
8. Tables. Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.
9. Equations. If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that equations are editable.
10. Units. Please use SI units (non-italicized).

Using Third-Party Material in your Paper

You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Publication Charges

There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.

My Authored Works

On publication, you will be able to view, download and check your article’s metrics (downloads, citations and Altmetric data).