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Author Guidelines

The International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches (MRA) invites submission of original manuscripts within its Aims and Scope. Criteria for selection for publication include academic merit, individuality and integrity. Submissions should be concise, relevant and informative papers of interest to readers of the Journal.

MRA's two issues per year offer contributors the advantages of:

Timely double blind peer review and publication;
High calibre global editorial board;
Professional publishing services offering high circulation due to qualified marketing;
A forum for discussion of philosophical issues, practical problems and benefits associated with multiple, hybrid, synergistic, integrated and cultural approaches including theoretical frameworks, methodologies, data collection, management and analytic methods and the different forms of transformation and representation;
An avenue for discussion and dissemination of: Literature reviews - including those from theses - on methodological trends; Articles on methodology education, technologies and learning techniques; Practitioner perspectives, experiences from the field and case applications of methodologies and results.

Authors are generally restricted to one article per volume, unless multiple authorship is involved. Upon publication, the Publisher provides authors with an electronic copy in PDF format of the published article and discounts for requested print copies. There are no monetary payments for contributors.

Submissions

The manuscript may be a research note, theoretical/empirical research article, a literature review, with a focus on issues of research design, analysis or data presentation, case application or methodology education within the aims and scope of the journal and should be approximately:

up to 4000 words in length for a research note
up to 6000 for an article
up to 8000 for a literature review.

All exclusive of References, Appendices, Tables and Figures. However, shorter or longer articles of exceptional quality may be accepted by the Editor.

It is preferred that authors are consistent in whichever style they select. They are advised to consult the Style Guide below and those needing direction should view the APA Journal Guidelines 5^th edn or view the journal website for sample articles, summaries, key words, reference lists, tables and figures.

The publisher, eContent Management Pty Ltd, uses a semi-automated manuscript tracking system to receive and accept reviews of research articles, case studies and literature reviews. Manuscripts submitted for publication are subject to a peer review process.

To ensure prompt review of your manuscript, and to preserve anonymity in the review process, please observe the instructions on-screen and take note that:

Manuscripts should be saved as a Microsoft or Open Office Word files. These should contain: title of the manuscript, key words, article text, references, figures, and tables in that order, as one document.
A 100-150-word abstract is loaded into a form on a following page. You should copy/paste it from a existing document.
Do not include any author information or acknowledgements in the manuscript or abstract. In Microsoft Word, please check the box 'Remove personal information from file properties on save' under Tools/Options/Security. Open Office users should consult this online help wiki for removing personal user data.
Your manuscript will be forwarded directly to reviewers and should not contain any identifying information.
Other information such as manuscript title, author postal and email contact details are added on the next page. All correspondence will be sent to the the first listed author.
Please list all authors in the order they are to appear on the title page.
Acknowledgements are added to the manuscript by the author following peer review and acceptance to publish.

These requirements apply to authors submitting revised versions of manuscripts before they are accepted. .It is important that authors re-submitting revised manuscripts indicate how they have addressed the referees' comments, in summary form, at the head of their revised manuscript document to assist further assessment by the original reviewers before the manuscript can proceed to publication.

These requirements also apply to authors returning revised versions of manuscripts which have been accepted with minor revision.

Style Guide

Your attention to the conventions described in this guide will be greatly appreciated, will increase the likelihood of favorable review, and will ease the work of everyone involved - you, your reviewers, your editors and your readers. Submissions failing to comply with these standards may be returned to authors.

General Document Guidelines

Accepted articles will be formatted to the Journal standard by eContent Management prior to publication. Authors are asked to observe the following minimum formatting for submissions:

Margins	Minimum of 3cm (top, bottom, left, right)
Font Size and Type:	12-pt font (Times Roman or Arial are acceptable typefaces)
Spacing:	Minimum 1.5 line spacing throughout
Alignment:	Flush left (creating uneven right margin)
Order of Material:	Title page (including paper title, author(s), author affiliation(s) Abstract (100-150 word summary of most important elements of paper) Key Words (minimum of 6 key indexing words) Introduction Article body Acknowledgements References; Appendices; Footnotes Tables; Figures (with location indicated within the text) Photos (location indicated in text).

Ethical clearance must be shown. Ethical processes followed should be included in the body of the article.

Acknowledgements should be included in the covering email, to preserve anonymity during the review process. They will be removed from the manuscript body during review and reinserted prior to publication.

Citations and References should be accurate, timely and consistent throughout. MRA uses an adaptation of Harvard Referencing Style as outlined below. Please ensure that in-text citations appear in References, and vice-versa as appropriate. The accuracy and format of reference citations is the authors' responsibility (see also Copyright below).

Headings and Sections: MRA uses only three levels of headings (see examples below). Use boldface for all three, eg:

METHODS
Data and Sample Measures
Qualitative data

Artwork Presentation

If supplying images as part of research, text analysis or of data analyzed, the final published dimensions will be 200mm x 145mm, placed portrait or landscape. Artwork must be suitable for immediate BLACK and WHITE reproduction (do not use similar colors), because it will not be redrawn.

Low resolution (under 150 dpi) JPEGs or GIFs are NOT suitable for printing. Repeat-saved JPEGs automatically compress with each save, thereby losing detail each time. Electronic black and white (grayscale) TIFFs of high resolution (300 dpi minimum) are preferred, around 300 KB in size.

Tables, Figure graphics, artwork and research derived photos: Each should have a sentence in text that introduces it. Tables, Figures and other forms of representation should not duplicate the text or each other. Carefully consider what each adds to your work.

Figures and Tables etc. should be placed at the END of your text file (following references) with desired locations cross-referenced within the text, as follows:

[Insert Table 1/Figure 2/Photo 3/Pastiche 2 here]

They should be centered and numbered consecutively (one sequence for Tables, one for Figures, one for photos, and one for other forms of representation) using Arabic numerals (eg Table 1, Figure 2, Photo/pastiche 3) and have self-explanatory captions, in bold, title-style, left-aligned, above the figure or table, eg Pastiche 2: Participants views of solar devices

Important: Artwork labels (such as axes labels or legends, etc) are to use minimal capitalization, and appear using only bold, roman or italic Helvetica, Arial or Times New Roman fonts; otherwise distortion occurs.

Use more than one page if needed for Tables etc to achieve a neat, readable presentation. Do not use code names or abbreviations.

Each table should report one type of analysis (identified by its title), and each column and row should contain only one type of data. Report only two decimal places for statistics. Place correlation coefficients in the lower-left corner. For general footnotes to tables, use superscript small letters. For 'p' footnotes, use asterisks. These go under the general table footnotes. Always use a single asterisk for the .05 level. Example: *p<.05; **p<.01

Language

'English' or 'American' spellings are acceptable, provided they are used consistently. Translation of articles from other languages into English is encouraged and must be provided by professional translators.

Technical terms: To ensure your work is accessible to MRA's wide-ranging readership, define key technical terms.

Abbreviations: Avoid using abbreviations for the names of concepts. Use ordinary words. Names of organizations and research instruments may be abbreviated, but give the full name (with abbreviation in brackets) the first time it is mentioned.

Reporting mathematics. Do not 'talk in maths language' in regular text. Use words. For instance: 'We surveyed 1000 students' not 'We surveyed n=100' and 'We used a chi-square test to evaluate fit' not 'We used a c2 test'. Do use mathematical symbols and numbers to provide illustrative results and formulas. In both, italicize letters that are customarily italicized, such as p, r, F, and Z. Use boldface italic for vectors. Put spaces around equals signs and other operators.

Illustrative results go in parentheses. The text introducing them should be a complete sentence. Example: One coefficient for the interaction was significant (model 3: b=0.06, p=.05; model 5: b=1.06, n.s.)

Equations: Depending on their role and content, equations are either part of your regular text (run in) or displayed in full. Example: Run-in equation - We used Condon's (1996: 20) formula (a=xyz).

Sexist or biased language: Avoid language that might be interpreted as denigrating to ethnic or other groups. Do not use 'he' as a generic pronoun to avoid implying gender-based discrimination. Using plural pronouns - changing 'the manager . . . he' to 'managers . . . they' - usually helps.

Active voice and first person: Put sentences in the active voice ('I did it'; 'We did it') instead of the passive voice ('It was done') to make it easy for readers to see who did what.

Footnotes should be used sparingly, and not used to cite references. Place at the bottom of the page to which it pertains.

Hypotheses should be fully and separately stated, with a distinct number (Hypothesis 1) or number-letter (Hypothesis 1a) label. Display hypotheses in indented blocks, in italic type, as follows:
Hypothesis 1a. Concise writing has a positive relationship to publication.
Hypothesis 1b. Following MRA's 'Style Guide for Authors' has a positive relationship to publication.

Appendixes: Present long but essential methodological details, such as explanations of the processes of thematic and other forms of analysis, calculation of measures etc., in an appendix or appendixes. Be concise. Label multiple appendixes 'APPENDIX A,' 'B,' and so forth, followed by a substantive title, such as 'Items in Scales'. Label tables within appendixes 'TABLE A1,' 'B1,' and so forth.

Journal Referencing Style

Citations

These are your in-text, in parentheses, identifications of publications. Every work that has a citation needs to have a corresponding reference at the end of your paper (see 'References' below).

Examples

Single author:

Name-year citation - Several studies (Arnold 1997; Bernard 1989, 1992; Condon 2000a, 2000b) support this conclusion. Group names in alphabetical order. Note: 2 or more works published in the same year by one author (or by an identical group of authors) are designated by 'a,' 'b,' and so forth, after the year.

Year-only citation - But James and Smith (2007) presented conflicting evidence.

Multiple authors: If a work has two authors, give both names every time you cite it. For three through six identical authors, give all names the first time, then use 'et al.', eg:

First citation - Few field studies use random assignment (Foster, Whittington, Tucker, Horner, Hubbard & Grimm 2000).
Subsequent citations - ...even when random assignment is not possible (Foster et al. 2000).
For seven or more authors, use 'et al.' even for the first citation. (NOTE: the corresponding reference at the end of the paper should list all authors.)
Second-level citation: (Anderson & Adams (1992) in Border and Chism (1992)) - see Referencing format.

Quotations: Cite page numbers for direct quotations, eg:

Short quotation - 'Smithson has said that using multiple approaches is highly beneficial' (1998: 3).
Put long quotations (five lines or more) in indented blocks, in Italics, without quotation marks.
No author? Cite the periodical or organization.
Periodical as author - Reviews have indicated...'(Journal of Education).
Corporate author - Reviews predict in the (World Statistcs WHO 2006). Such sources can also be identified informally. No corresponding reference will then be needed, eg: Informal citation - According to the 2006 WHO global statistics published by the World Health Organisation...'

Electronic sources: Use a regular citation (author, year) if you can identify a human, periodical, or corporate author. If not, give the Web address that was your source in parentheses. In the latter case only, no corresponding reference need be provided.

Reference List

A list headed 'References' and comprising full details of all sources should be provided at the end of your article. The list should contain only work you have cited in-text and should be in alphabetical order by first author's surname. For corporate authors and periodicals, alphabetize by the first substantive word (not by 'the').

List the earliest work by an author first. Differentiate works by the same author(s) from the same year by adding 'a', 'b', etc after the years. Repeat the author's name for each entry.

Journal articles and Periodicals:

Each Journal reference must include author surname(s) and initials, year of publication, full title of article, full name of journal, volume and (optional) issue numbers, and page range (in full) of the article. eg the following are hypothetical examples:

James SE and Smith RS (1995) Problem in using multiple methods, in Mainstream MR and Ponti LW (Eds) Annual Review of Sociology, pp.237-264.

Smith P (1995) The role of reserachers in cultural research, Anthropology 20: 936-960.

Tre S (2010) Issues in mixing theoretical frameworks, Journal of Mixed Methods Research 20(4): 557-574.

If an article has no author, the periodical is the author:

Health Sociology (1998) Combining methods. October 19: 86-94.

Lancet (2003) What constitutes research? 81(4): 3.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

Author Warranties:
The authors warrant that the material has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
By submission of material to the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, all authors warrant that the material is their own, original material or that copyright clearance has been acquired to reproduce other material from employers, third parties or attributed to third parties. It is the responsibility of the authors to secure the release of any copyright material and to provide written evidence to this effect to eContent Management Pty Ltd. It is also the authors' responsibility to obtain clearance for reproduction from the organisation which commissioned the work if applicable.
Submission of material to the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches implies all authors' consent to assignment of the material's copyright to eContent Management Pty Ltd when that material is accepted for publication in the journal, for the full legal term of copyright and any renewals thereof throughout the world in all formats and in any medium of communication (see Copyright section).
By submitting material to the International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, all authors of the material agree to indemnify eContent Management Pty Ltd, and its heirs and assigns in business, against any litigation or claims that may arise from the content of or opinions in the material provided. On acceptance for publication, an agreement specifying these terms will be sent to the corresponding author for signature by all authors of that manuscript.
(Note: On acceptance for publication, an agreement specifying the terms noted here and above will be sent to the corresponding author for signature by all authors of that manuscript. No printers proof will be sent to the author. The copy provided by the author on acceptance is the version used for typesetting. The publisher reserves the right to make editing corrections.)
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
You have created a title-page file from your original manuscript and removed all identifying information from the text and document properties. Note: the submission process requires the abstract and keywords to be copied into the submission form.
All citations refer to a publication listed in the References section of the manuscript and all references have been cited in the text.

Copyright Notice

Copyright of published articles is held by eContent Management Pty Ltd. No limitation will be placed on the personal freedom of authors to copy or to use in subsequent work, material contained in their papers. Please contact the Publisher for clarification if you are unsure of the use of copyright material. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of research and private study, or criticism and or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 of Australia, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the Publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Agency Limited:

Level 19, 157 Liverpool Street, Sydney NSW 2000, Australia
Tel: +61 (0)2 9394 7600, Fax: +61 (0)2 9394 7601
www.copyright.com.au

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International Journal of Multiple Research Approache

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