General information
Advances in Sciences and Arts is dedicated to publishing thought-provoking evidence-based research results that foster progressive conceptual and pedagogical approaches to Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics.
The journal is owned and published by Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST).
The journal is financially supported by Malawi University of Science and Technology.
Advances in Sciences and Arts publishes original papers that have not been published previously. The Journal publishes scientific articles, reviews, communications, letters, and conference papers. ASA is an open access journal that doesn’t charge any fees either to readers to read, nor to authors to publish. Contributions to the journal shall be submitted in English. The journal is open to all researchers globally, regardless of gender, career stage or ethnic and religious affiliation. The Journal is issued two times a year.
Editorial Board
The Editorial Board include:
- Editor-in-Chief: oversees the functions of all other segments and is the primary decision-maker for all manuscripts. The editor-in-chief approves or rejects the decision of the Editors. She/he can re-assign this role to designated Editors. In addition, the editor-in-chief assigns roles to members of the editorial board and is able to execute changes in the journal sections without the need for approval.
- Section editors: direct managers of journal sections; they put a preliminary decision on papers assigned to them by the editor-in-chief, oversee the assignment and review process, and serve as reviewers in some cases.
- Editors: they constitute editors that are not assigned to any of the above categories; essentially, editors form the editorial board. They contribute by publishing and/or recruiting contributors (publications, reviewers…) to the journal, review manuscripts on the request of the editor-in-chief or section editors, and give their opinions on assigned tasks.
- Reviewers: reviewers receive manuscripts to evaluate and give their opinions. They play a critical role in manuscript appraisal and the subsequent decision.
Editorial responsibilities
Editorial operations related to content and peer review are independent and free from the influence of the entities that support the journal. The Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to ASA will be published.
The Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
The Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects.
The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within from the date of the manuscript submission.
The Editors must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Editor-in-Chief.
The Section Editor shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias. The Editor and the Editorial Staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.
Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.
Authors’ responsibilities
Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Advances in Sciences and Arts.
Please note that posting of preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior publication.
Authors should disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication. If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome.
This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers. In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in a footnote / Acknowledgements. It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to Journal’s title are written with ethical standards in mind. (If necessary, cite the relevant codes of conduct.)
Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.
Reporting Standards
Advances in Sciences and Arts is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it - e.g. provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.
Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public.
Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data. Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.