INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WEST ASIAN STUDIES

Guideline for Authors

Scope

International Journal of West Asian Studies is published as an online journal (e-journal), as well as printed copy, focusing on the West Asian region pertaining to politics, economy, science and technology, culture, education, etc. In the journal’s context, West Asia means the region generally known as the Middle East, Arab speaking countries of north Africa, part of central Asia and part of the Indian sub-continent.

Frequency of Publication

The journal is published twice a year, in June and December, by the Institute of West Asian Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Articles, views, book reviews, review articles and short reports on West Asia in particular, and relations of West Asia with Malaysia and ASEAN, in general are welcomed.

Submissions

The journal publishes articles in the Malay, English and Arabic languages. Only original manuscripts, not published elsewhere, or under consideration by any other journals, need to be submitted for consideration for publication.

Length of Article

Length of article manuscript should be about 7,000 words, excluding references.  Review article, views, book reviews and short reports should be around 3,000 words. Submission must be made to the Chief Editor of the journal through online submission. Communication in the first instance, should be addressed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Title of Manuscript

The title of a manuscript should be concise, descriptive and preferably not exceeding 15 words.

Parts of Article

An article should typically contain Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion and Reference. An Abstract should be not more than 200 words, describing its main points, in English. If the manuscript is in Malay or Arabic, please provide an abstract in Malay or Arabic as the case may be, and it should also have an abstract in English. For authors whose manuscript is in English,  and unable to provide the Malay version of the abstract, the editor will provide assistance. The abstract should be followed by five keywords (separated by commas) identifying the manuscript’s content for retrieval systems. Do not use references in abstract. Introduction should provide the overall tone of the article. Methodology describes briefly method for obtaining data and sample used in the study. Results may contain findings of the study and can be presented to include tables and graphs. Discussion should provide further insight and may include implications. Reference at the end of the article must be in Romanised alphabet.

References

References in the text should be denoted by giving the name (s) of the author(s) with the year of publication in parenthesis. All alphabetically ordered references list should be included at the end of the manuscript. All references cited in the text must appear in the reference list. Authors are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of all information in the reference. Manuscripts must adhere to the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual of Style. The references style adopted should be consistent throughout the manuscript. Footnoted  information and appendices should only be used if they are absolutely necessary. The footnote should be placed at the bottom  of the page and appropriately marked in the text.

Copyright and Originality of Article

It is the author’s responsibility to ensure that his or her submitted work does not infringe any existing copyright. Furthermore, the author indemnifies the editors and publisher against any breach of such a warranty. Authors should obtain permission to reproduce or adapt copyrighted materials and provide evidence of approval upon submitting the final version of a manuscript. Submission of manuscript to the journal for consideration of publication signifies that the author or authors jointly agree that the article to be published is original in nature. Submission of an article implies that it has not been simultaneously submitted or previously published elsewhere. Contributors will be asked to assign their copyright, on certain conditions, to the Institute of West Asian Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Review Process

The journal will adopt a blind peer review of two reviewers. Decision regarding the publication of a manuscript will be based on the referees' recommendations. The final decision to accept or reject a manuscript is at the discretion of the Editorial Board. The manuscript will be evaluated based on its appropriateness for the International Journal of West Asian Studies, contribution to the discipline, cogency of analysis, conceptual breadth, clarity of presentation and technical adequacy. Manuscripts submitted by members of the journal’s Editorial Board are subjected to the same review procedure.

Corresponding Author

If there are more than one author, please indicate who is the corresponding author. All communications, by email, will be made with the corresponding author. The corresponding author is responsible to get clearance or permission from the other authors to publish the article.

The corresponding author will receive a final draft at the proof stage for corrections of typographical errors. No rewriting will be allowed in the proof stage. Authors must return by email the material to the editorial office within 72  hours of receipt or approval will be assumed.

Offprints

The journal will not provide off-prints to the authors as it is available online and can be downloaded and printed.

Brief Note of Author (s)

Please provide brief note of author or authors. This should include full name, academic designation, affiliation, research interests, email and telephone contacts.

Non-Conformity of Guideline

The editor may return manuscripts that do not conform to the guideline.

Text

The start of the article and each section should be flush left; other paragraphs should be indented. Block indent long quotations (more than 50 words).

Use Times New Roman, Font 12 throughout article,  unless stated otherwise (see below).

Line spacing 1.0. Justified.

Spelling and Punctuation

Use English (UK) spelling: colour, not color; analyse, not analyze. For quotations, use the final period or comma inside the quotation marks.

Numbers and Dates

Spell out numbers one to nine. For percentiles, use numbers but spell out “percent,” except in tables and parentheses.

Tables, Figures, and Images

Tables, figures, and images must be cited in the text, for example (see Table 1). They should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals, captioned, and appear as a unit at the end of the article.  Use of photograph will be at the editor’s discretion. All images should be submitted in electronic format.

Copyediting of Manuscript

The editor  reserves the right to copyedit manuscripts to conform to the journal’s style.

Format and Style

Paper

A4 size

Margin

Margin of paper should all be 2.5 cm (top, bottom, left and right)

Numbering of Heading and Sub-heading of article

Headings and Sub-headings should be numbered as the following:

Title of paper

Use caps and lower case in the title, Bold, Font 14.

Example of title:

An Assessment Of ESL Learners Proficiency: A Case Study

Name of author(s)

Centre

Name (italics)- Maslida Yusof

E-mail address (italics) (Type the e-mail address and press ‘enter’. A blue line should apper).

Institution (italics)

Times New Roman Font 11

*Note: The first author is the corresponding author.

Abstract (in English), Abstrak (in Malay), Abstract (in Arabic)

Times New Roman Font 12, Bold

For article in English  -  abstract in English should come first, followed by Malay

For article in Malay – abstrak in Malay should come first, followed by abstract in English

For article in Arabic – abstract in Arabic should come first, followed by English

Keywords, KataKunci

Keywords in English, Malay and Arabic – Maximum of five keywords

Heading of paper (equivalent to 1.0)

Times New Roman Font 12, Drop caps, bold

Sub-heading of paper (equivalent to 1.1)

Times New Roman Font 12, Sentence Case, bold

Example of sentence case – Conclusion and implication

Sub-sub-heading of paper (equivalent to 1.1.1)

Times New Roman Font 12, Sentence Case, do not bold

References

Only references cited in the article be listed in the Reference at the end of the article. The Reference should be presented in a consolidated form, alphabetically and not to divide into categories. Authors are not to use Bibliography.

The first reference

First row          -         No indent

Second row       -       Hanging indent – Press on the ‘space bar’ 12 times.

A book

Bennet, C. D. (1975). Spatial and temporal uses of English prepositions: An essay in stratificational semantics.  London: Longman Group Ltd.

A book (Malay writer)

Asmah Haji Omar (2004). Penyelidikan, pengajaran dan pemupukan bahasa. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

Thesis

Byong-Seon Yang. (1994). Morphosyntactic phenomena of Korean in role and reference grammar: Psych-verb constructions, inflectional verb morphemes, complex sentences, and relative clauses. Unpublished Ph.D thesis. New York: State University of New York at Buffalo.

Chapter in a book (in Malay)

Maslida Yusof  (2007). Struktur semantik Preposisi ‘Bertujuan’: Satu analisis berdasarkan korpus. In Nor Hashimah Jalaluddin, Imran Ho Abdullah & Idris Aman (Eds.), Linguistik: Teori dan aplikasi (pp. 152-166). Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.

Chapter in a book (in English)

Grossman, P., Wilson, S., & Shulman, L. (1989). Teachers of substance: The subject matter knowledge of teachers. In M. Reynolds (Ed.), The Knowledge Base for Beginning Teachers (pp. 23-36). New York: Pergamon.

Journal article

Celce-Murcia, M., Dornyei Z., & Thurrell, S. (1997). Direct approaches in L2 instruction: A turning point in communicative language teaching? TESOL Quarterly, 31: 141-152.

Online papers/ information

Jabatan Hal Ehwal Orang Asli. (2009). Orang Bateq. (Online) Retrieved 14 July 2009, from http://www.jheoa.gov.my.

Website

World Atlas.

Retrieved 7 October 2008,  from

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/mylarge.htm

DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

Please include DOI reference if an article referred to is listed in DOI or Crossref.

Tables

The title of the table is centred - above the Table

e.g. Table 1: Assessment of …………………….

Jadual 1: Penempatan pelajar…..

Figures

The title is centred - below the Figure.

e.g. Figure 1: Students’ participation…….

Rajah 1:  Gender pelajar ……..

Appendix

Times New Roman Font 12

e.g. Appendix A: Assessment of….

About the authors (for papers in English)

Insert a short biodata of authors in English according to names that appear accordingly after the title of paper (a maximum of 50 words for each author).

e.g. Mansor Ahmad (Ph.D)…….

Mengenai Penulis (for papers in Malay)

Insert a short biodata of authors in Malay according to names that appear accordingly after the title of paper (a maximum of 50 words for each author)

e.g. Zaidah Ali (Ph.D)…….

**** Download the current issue to see an example of paper.