Author Guidelines

Online submission and review of the manuscript is mandatory for all types of papers. Full instructions for online submission can be found here. If you have any queries, please contact editorial office at njst@nast.org.np.  Authors are required to prepare manuscript following the instructions for authors given below. Failure to follow instructions, manuscripts may be returned to authors without a scientific assessment. During online submission, author must declare compliance with Submission Preparation Checklist. The submitted papers will be subjected to pre-review by editors. The papers deemed inappropriate will be rejected without review.

NJST publishes original articles, reviews, short communication and perspective.

Original articles: Papers that present the results of original research. Original articles should not be more than 8000 words. The word count includes all parts of paper except figures and tables. Original articles should be organized as follows: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion and References. The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 200 words. A list of 4-6 keywords, excluding words used in the title, arranged in an alphabetical order and separated by semicolon, should be provided beneath the abstract.

Reviews: Reviews are detailed and up-to-date syntheses of topical themes. They often describe previous works and offer new insights to guide future research works.  Reviews articles are usually up to 12000 words. There is no a specific format for review articles but sections should be broken up “reader friendly” sub-heading at author’s discretion.  The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 200 words. A list of 4-6 keywords, excluding words used in the title, arranged in an alphabetical order and separated by semicolon, should be provided beneath the abstract.

Short communication: Short communication provides a forum to disseminate important scientific finding that are not enough for the original articles. Short communication should be short contributions up to 3500 words.  Manuscript should be organized as follows: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion and References. The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 200 words. A list of 4-6 keywords, excluding words used in the title, arranged in an alphabetical order and separated by semicolon, should be provided beneath the abstract.

Perspectives: It provides a forum to present a viewpoint on an emerging issue of science and technology. They should be of broad interest to general people. Perspectives should be less than 3000 words. There is no a specific format for perspective articles but sections should be broken up “reader friendly” sub-heading at author’s discretion.  The abstract of the manuscript should not exceed 200 words. A list of 4-6 keywords, excluding words used in the title, arranged in an alphabetical order and separated by semicolon, should be provided beneath the abstract.

Perspectives are not open for direct submission. Authors who intend to submit a manuscript are kindly advised to make a pre-submission inquiry with an outline of manuscript at njst@nast.org.np.

Language

Both American and British English are accepted but not of combination of these. Authors for whom English is a second language should have their manuscript corrected carefully prior to the submission.

Manuscript Structure

Manuscript should be prepared meticulously in the journal style (e.g., citation, language, etc.). The manuscript should be arranged in the following order: title page, abstract, keywords, text, acknowledgments, references. Tables and figures should be embedded in the text, not on separate page of the manuscript.

The entire manuscript must be double-spaced with a 12-point font, Times New Roman. Leave a 1 inch (2.54-cm) margin on all sides of each page. Page size should be Letter (8 ½" by 11"). All pages of manuscript should be numbered, and all pages of text should have line numbers.

Title page should include:

1. A concise  title
2. A list of author names, affiliation(s), and e-mail addresses (do not provide position)
3. The name, complete mailing address (including e-mail address, telephone and fax numbers) of the corresponding author
4. A word count of the entire paper, excluding tables and figure legends
5. The number of tables and figures
6. Abstract
7. Keywords

Section number

Authors are advised to number the sections up to five levels. Section should be clearly defined and logically ordered. Subsections should be numbered as 1.1, 1.2… similarly, 1.1.1, 1.1.2. Section numbers can be used to cross-referencing in the manuscript.

The heading and sub-heading of the manuscript vary according to type of articles (e.g., original articles, review etc.). The tentative structure of the manuscript is given below:

Introduction
Provide a detailed background of your research.

Materials and Methods
Sufficiently detail description of methods should be provided to allow the work to be reproduced. When work is followed from the previously published work, it must be referred to proper/original citation.

Results
Results should be clear and concise.

Discussion
Discussion should explore the significance of the results of the work without repeating them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate.

Conclusions
State main conclusions of the study. Conclusion may be standalone or form a subsection of a Discussion section.

Table and Figure

Each table, artwork and figure should have a clear and succinct caption (<30 words). Maps and artworks should be numbered as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, and Fig. 3 (Fig. 1 Hazard maps of Kathmandu valley).  Please make sure that figures and tables are included in the single file of manuscript and are placed next to the most appropriate text in the manuscript.

Table
Tables should be submitted as editable text without vertical rules.  Number tables consecutively in accordance with their position in the manuscript. Put footnote in the last row of the table if required.

Preparing Figures
Make sure that figure files are in an acceptable format (e.g., TIFF, JPEG, EPS, MS Office files) and with the good resolution (>150 dpi).  Texts in figures should be of uniform lettering and sizing. Arial is a preferred font.

References
Please make ensure that all references cited in the text are included in the reference list. Citation of a reference as 'in press' implies that the work has been accepted for publication.  Unpublished works and personal communications can be mentioned in the text, but should not be listed in the reference list.  References should be listed in an alphabetical order.

Citation in text

1. If there is one author, include the author's last name and date of publication.
2. If there are two authors, include both authors' last names and date of publication.
3. If there are three or more authors, include the last name of the first author followed by et al. and date of publication

Examples

Paudel and Heinen (2015) have argued that increasing heterogeneity in the reserve may amplify biodiversity because of an increment in habitats.

Heterogeneity-based reserve selection is a novel approach that could assist in making a rapid conservation decisions (Paudel and Heinen 2015).

Citations in the references

Journal articles
Crowley, T. J. 2000. Causes of climate change over the past 1000 years. Science 289:270–277.

Liczner, A. R., and C. J. Lortie. 2014. A global meta-analytic contrast of cushion-plant effects on plants and on arthropods. PeerJ 2:e265.

Paudel, P. K., and J. T. Heinen. 2015. Conservation planning in the Nepal Himalayas: Effectively (re)designing reserves for heterogeneous landscapes. Applied Geography 56:127–134.

Rozema, J., L. O. Björn, J. F. Bornman, A. Gaberščik, D.-P. Häder, T. Trošt, M. Germ, M. Klisch, A. Gröniger, R. P. Sinha, M. Lebert, Y.-Y. He, R. Buffoni-Hall, N. V. J. de Bakker, J. van de Staaij, and B. B. Meijkamp. 2002. The role of UV-B radiation in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems-an experimental and functional analysis of the evolution of UV-absorbing compounds. Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B: Biology 66:2–12.
 
Book
Sokal, R. R., and F. J. Rohlf. 1995. Biometry: the principles and practice of statistics in biological research. Third edition. W. H. Freeman, New York, New York, USA.

Book Chapter
Feeny, P. 1975. Biochemical coevolution between plants and their insect herbivores. Pages 3–19 in L. E. Gilbert and P. H. Raven, editors. Coevolution of animals and plants. University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, USA.

Proceeding
Maiya, A. S., and T. Y. Berger-Wolf. 2010. Online sampling of high centrality individuals in social networks. Pages 91–98 in M. J. Zaki, J. X. Yu, B. Ravindran, and V. Pudi, editors. Proceedings, Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Part I. 14th Pacific-Asia Conference, 21–24 June 2010, Hyderabat, India. Springer, Berlin, Germany.

Thesis
LeCraw, R. 2014. The causes and consequences of functional diversity in a tropical aquatic insect community. PhD Dissertation. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Copyright
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Competing Interests
Require submitting Authors to file a Competing Interest (CI) statement with their submission.

Author Contribution
Require submitting authors to state author’s contribution.

Template for submitting author’s contribution

Conceived and designed the experiments: GB, PKP, RCP. Performed the experiments: PKP. Analyzed the data: PKP, CCP. Wrote the paper: GB, PKP, RCP.