Manuscript Submission Process

Please submit your manuscript in Microsoft Word/Apple Pages or a compatible format. Text should be formatted for letter size paper (8.5 x 11 inches) single-spaced at 10 points, Times New Roman, with one inch margins, left justified, and single- column. We follow American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines.

Structure of the manuscript
Title page (containing the title of the manuscript, author contact information, and a short auto-biography for each author)
Title
Abstract
Keywords
Introduction
Body of manuscript
Tables, figures, etc. placed where they belong
Conclusion
Acknowledgments (if applicable)
References (American Psychological Association style)
Appendices (if applicable)

Title Page
The title page should contain the manuscript title and each author name, affiliation, mailing address, and email address with the contact author indicated. The title page should also contain a short auto-biography of no more than 100 words for each author.

Title
The title should be concise, descriptive, and contain the keywords or key phrases. Search engines assume that the title contains all of the important words that describe the topic of the manuscript.

Acronyms
The use of acronyms should be avoided in the title and keywords unless widely recognized and understood.

Abstract
Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. The abstract should contain all the keywords and key phrases at least once and more than once if necessary. Search engines rank manuscripts higher if the keyword or key phrase being searched appears more often in the abstract. However, pointless repetition may result in the page being rejected by a search engine. Since most researchers read an abstract before reading the manuscript, abstracts must be written very well.

Keywords
Select 3 or 4 keywords or key phrases that you would give a search engine if you were searching for your manuscript. Avoid the use of general and plural terms, abbreviations, and non-descript words such as and, of, or, the, and so on.

When selecting keywords, please keep in mind how search engines operate. A search on the key phrase “women’s health” does not yield the same result as separate searches on the words “women’s” and “health”. The ordering of keywords within a key phase is also important if quotation marks are used because you are searching for words in a particular order. For example, a search for “women’s health” is not the same as “health women’s”.

Clute Institute journal manuscripts are downloaded an average of 120,000 times a month. Approximately 70% of these downloads come from Google searches, so the proper use of keywords and key phrases is important. Many universities use journal article citation analysis to evaluate the importance of faculty research. Hence, being quoted by other authors is important.

Headings
Four levels of headings are allowed. The first level should be BOLD ALL CAPS, second level Bold, third level Italics, and fourth Underlined.

Tables & Figures
Use the Microsoft Word table function to create tables, not spreadsheets. Tables and figures should be located in the text and numbered sequentially using Arabic numerals, i.e., Table 1 and Figure 1. We print our journals in black and white; please take this into consideration when using color.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes
Bottom of the page footnotes are preferred to end of the manuscript endnotes.

References
References should be arranged alphabetically and follow American Psychological Association (APA) style. References should not be inserted as footnotes. References in the text should include name and year. For example: “According to Bangs (2012)…”

In print journal article citation:

Bangs, J. (2012). Transforming a business statistics course with just-in-time teaching. American Journal of Business Education, 5(1) 87-94.

Online journal article citation:

Salazar, R.J., & Wang, J. (2013). The evolution of strategies: multinational subsidiaries operating in china. Journal of Applied Business Research, 29(5), 1261-1280. Retrieved from https://www.cluteinstitute.com/ojs/index.php/JABR/article/view/8012/8066

Book citation:

Calfee, R.C., & Valencia, R.R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Editing Support
The Clute Institute recommends that every manuscript be thoroughly reviewed for grammatical and spelling errors prior to submission. Many of our authors choose to have their manuscript proofread by their English department and/or submitted to an English language editing service to increase the quality of the manuscript. The use of these services is not required and does not guarantee acceptance for publication. The Clute Institute has worked with “Editage.com”, “BulletProofOnline.com”, and “EditAvenue.com” although there are many other companies providing this service.

~Revised August 2017