Submissions

Author Guidelines

Publication and Peer-review Processes

MUJOEI aims to provide all authors with an efficient and consistent editorial process. Submitted manuscripts will be assigned to a member of the editorial team who is an expert in the field. The editor will assess the manuscript to determine whether it is within the scope of MUJOEI in terms of the manuscript‘s quality, scope and the standard of presentation before sending it for peer review.

Authors are required to provide the contact details (including email addresses) and area of expertise of three potential independent reviewers. These suggested reviewers should be experts in the field of study relevant to the manuscript and should not be members of the same research or academic institution as the authors. Author suggested reviewers will be considered alongside other potential reviewers identified by their publication record or recommended by editors. However, the final decision on the choice of reviewers rests with the editor without any obligation to contact any of the author-recommended peer reviewers.

The submitted manuscripts will be sent to two reviewers who will be asked to assess whether the manuscript is technically and scientifically sound and coherent and whether the quality of the writing is acceptable. The final editorial decision is made based on the recommendations of the peer reviewers, provided these recommendations are in accordance without any strong dissenting opinions. Where there are dissenting or opposing views, the paper is assessed by a third reviewer who may or may not be a member of the journal's Editorial Board. Once all reviews have been received and considered by the editors, a final decision is made and a letter is drafted to the corresponding author.

Possible decisions include:

• Acceptance without revision
• Acceptance of article to minor revision
• Resubmission for review after major revision
• Declined

Where there are issues with the standard of presentation or clarity of language, the authors will be informed accordingly and provided with suggestions or assistance for rectification.

Responsibility of Reviewers:

• The manuscripts will be reviewed by two or three experts in order to reach the first decision as soon as possible. They are also asked to declare any conflicts of interest.
• Reviewers are not expected to provide a thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but to focus on its scientific quality, as well as for the overall style, which should correspond to the good practices in clear and concise academic writing. If Reviewers recognize that a manuscript requires linguistic edits, they should inform both Authors and the Editor in the report.
• Reviewers are asked to check whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, how interesting it is, and whether the quality of the writing is acceptable.
• In cases of strong disagreement between the reviews or between the Authors and Reviewers, the Editors can judge these according to their expertise or seek advice from a member of the journal's Editorial Board.
• Reviewers are also asked to indicate which articles they consider to be especially interesting or significant. These articles may be given greater prominence and greater external publicity, including press releases addressed to science journalists and mass media.
• During a second review round, the Reviewer may be asked by the Subject Edito to evaluate the revised version of the manuscript with regard to the Reviewer’s recommendations submitted during the first review round.
• Reviewers are asked to be polite and constructive in their reports. Reports that may be insulting or uninformative will be rescinded.
• Reviewers are asked to start their report with a very brief summary of the reviewed paper. This will help the Editors and Authors see whether the reviewer correctly understood the paper or whether a report might be based on a misunderstanding.
• Further, Reviewers are asked to comment on originality, structure and previous research: (1) Is the paper sufficiently novel and does it contribute to a better understanding of the topic under scrutiny? Is the work rather confirmatory and repetitive? (2) Is the introduction clear and concise? Does it place the work into the context that is necessary for a reader to comprehend the aims, hypotheses tested, experimental design or methods? Are Material and Methods clearly described and sufficiently explained? Are reasons given when choosing one method over another one from a set of comparable methods? Are the results clearly but concisely described? Do they relate to the topic outlined in the introduction? Do they follow a logical sequence? Does the discussion place the paper in a scientific context and go a step beyond the current scientific knowledge based on the results? Are competing hypotheses or theories reasonably related to each other and properly discussed? Do conclusions seem reasonable? Is previous research adequately incorporated into the paper? Are references complete, necessary and accurate? Is there any sign that substantial parts of the paper were copies of other works?
• Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
• Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
• Reviewers should also call to the Editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Editorial Policies

All manuscripts submitted to MUJOEI should adhere to editorial policies.

Any manuscript submitted to MUJOEI must not be under consideration by any other journal or already published in any journal or cited elsewhere. All authors must read the submitted manuscript and agree to its content and take responsibility of the findings. Authors should take responsibility of the ethical approval of an appropriate ethical committee. The policy describes the guidelines in the publication process of our journals. Followings are the overview of editorial policy.

Managing Editor
Managing Editor reviews the title and article quality for review and gives final decision for the publication of the submitted manuscript.

Responsibility of Managing Editor

• Leading the Journal team
• Ensure the content and objective of the manuscript
• Ensure the manuscript quality and correct usage of grammar and punctuation
• Contributing to the editorial writing 
• Ensure the final draft is complete

Editors
Editorial decisions should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Decisions to edit and publish should not be determined by the policies of governments or other agencies outside of the journal itself.

Responsibility of Editors

• Editors in MUJOEI carry the main responsibility for the scientific quality of the published papers and base their decisions solely on the paper's importance, originality, clarity and relevance to the publication's scope.
• Subject Editor takes the final decision on a manuscript’s acceptance or rejection and his/her name is listed as "Academic Editor" in the header of each article.
• The Subject Editors are not expected to provide a thorough linguistic editing or copyediting of a manuscript, but to focus on its scientific quality, as well as the overall style, which should correspond to the good practices in clear and concise academic writing.
• Editors are expected to spot small errors in orthography or stylistics during the editing process and correct them.
• Editors should always consider the needs of the Authors and the Readers when attempting to improve the publication.
• Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
• Editors should preserve the anonymity of Reviewers unless they later decide to disclose their identities.
• Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accept ethical guidelines.
• Editors should act if they suspect misconduct and make all reasonable attempts to obtain a resolution to the problem.
• Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
• Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between Authors, Reviewers and Board Members.

Authorship
An author in MUJOEI is an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of a manuscript. Authorship in MUJOEI is based on substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Acknowledgement
Individuals who participated in the development of a manuscript but do not qualify as an author should be acknowledged. Organizations that provide support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged. Corresponding author should take complete responsibility during the publication process.

Change in Authorship
Whenever there is a need to make changes in the authorship of a manuscript or a published article, the changes will be implemented upon the request and justification for the changes. Only corresponding authors can make a request for a change in authorship to the editor.

Submission of Manuscript
Authors should read the “Instructionfor Authors” on the journal before making a submission.

Conflicts of Interest
During the editorial process, the noticeable relationships between editors and authors are considered conflicts of interest: Therefore, the authors are kindly advised to identify possible conflicts of interest with the journal editors during submission. After manuscripts are assigned to the handling editor, individual editors are required to inform the Editor-in-Chief of any possible conflicts of interest with the authors.

Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript remains confidential. The submitted manuscript will only be disclosed among the individuals who take part in the processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication among the editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors only after its acceptance.

Misconduct
Misconduct constitutes a violation of this editorial policy, journal policies, publication ethics or any applicable guidelines/polices specified by MULOEI. Any other activities that threaten/compromise the integrity of the research/publication process are potential misconduct.

Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication Policy
Research Ethics
Authors should depoliticize their studies by avoiding provoking remarks, disputable geopolitical statements and controversial map designations. In case this is unavoidable, the journal reserves the right to mark such at least as disputable at or after publication, to publish the editor's notes or to reject/retract the papers.

Submission Process
Submissions from around the world are encouraged. All manuscripts must be submitted in English. At submission, authors will be requested to assign their manuscripts based on the scope of the journal. The corresponding author must set up an account to submit their manuscript. This will ensure that all authors get up-to-date information from MUJOEI including when their manuscript is first published.

Cover Letter:
All manuscripts submitted to MUJOEI must be accompanied by a digitally signed cover letter declaring that this manuscript is original, is not published, in press, or submitted elsewhere in English or any other language, and is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.

Authors should suggest three potential unbiased reviewers (with email addresses and affiliations) who are qualified to review their manuscript.

The submitted cover letter should declare that all authors have seen and approved the content of the manuscript and have contributed significantly to the work.

Organization of the Manuscript
Articles should be typed double-spaced using twelve-point Times New Roman font, black font color, Continuous line numbering, margin 1 inch to 1.5 inch should be used throughout the manuscript text.

Non-essential formatting such as page headers, footers, and various "embellishments" should be avoided.

Original Articles: An original article should be at least 2500 words long excluding references and a title page. The manuscript should be organized in the following sections: Title page, Structured Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgments, Authors’ contributions, References (not to exceed 40), then separate files for Figures and Tables and captions.

Brief Original Articles: The text for Brief Articles should not exceed a total of 2100 words, including an abstract (see below), references (not to exceed 25), figures (not more than 3), and tables (not to exceed 3).

Reviews: These are summaries of developments in areas related to science, health and technology in national and international levels which are of broad interest to the target audience. Authors identifying a need and wishing to submit a review article are welcome to contact the Editorial Office. Review should not exceed the number of 60 references. Authors are advised to contact the Editorial Office before the commencement of writing to ensure that a similar topic has not already been commissioned to another reviewer.

Layout of Manuscript
Title Page
The title page should include the title of the manuscript as well as the full name, and address, phone number and email address and lift justified. The corresponding author should also be indicated.

The title should contain no more than 125 characters (including spaces) and should be specific to the study. It should be comprehensible to a broad spectrum of readers.

Authors and Affiliations
This section should include the full names, and affiliations and country for all authors. One of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author. Full contact details including postal address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address for the corresponding author must be provided.

Keywords
The authors must provide 3 to 4 keywords.

Abstract
A structured abstract not exceeding 3000 words must be provided for Original Articles. Abstract should be divided into the following sections: Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Conclusions. Abstract for articles belonging to other sections may not be structured, while the word limit should never be exceeded. Citations, tables and abbreviations should be avoided inthe abstract.

Introduction
The introduction should provide the background of the manuscript and allow readers outside the field to understand the purpose and significance of the study. Relevant controversies or disagreements in the field should be mentioned. The key aspects of the literature should be reviewed to indicate why the study was necessary and what it would contribute to the field of study. The introduction should conclude with a brief statement of the overall aim of the work.

Methodology
This section should provide enough detail to design of the study, the setting, the type of participants or materials involved, as well as a description of all interventions and comparisons. The authors should also describe the type of statistical analysis used. Well-established methodologies should simply be mentioned and referenced appropriately. For experiments reporting results on animal or human subject research, an ethics approval statement should be included in this section

Results
The results section should be written in the past tense and should provide details of the findings that are required to support the conclusions made in the manuscript. To enhance clarity, the section may be divided into subsections, each with a concise subheading. Where appropriate, results of statistical analysis should include analysis of relative/absolute risks and confidence analysis. Large datasets, including raw data, maybe submitted as supporting files for publication as supplementary appendices. This section maybe divided by subheadings. Footnotes should not be used and must be transferred to the main text.

Discussion
The discussion should clearly identify the main conclusions of the study. Discussions should cover the key findings of the study: discuss any prior research related to the subject to place the novelty of the discovery in the appropriate context, discuss the potential shortcomings and limitations on their interpretations, discuss their integration into the current understanding of the problem and how this advances the current views, speculate on the future direction of the research, and freely postulate theories that could be tested in the future.

Acknowledgements
Those who have made substantial contributions to the study in terms of design, execution, analysis or manuscript drafting/revision but do not fit the criteria for authorship should be mentioned in this section. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that those being acknowledged have agreed to be named in such a capacity. The source of funding for the study should be stated in this section. Should the content of the manuscript have previously appeared online, such as in a thesis or preprint, this should be mentioned here, in addition to listing the source within the reference list.

Authors Contributions
In the manuscript, authors will be required to briefly summarize in 200 words on individual author’s manuscript contribution. This should be written avoiding any technical language or non- standard acronyms. The aim should be to convey the meaning and importance of this research to a non-expert.

Abbreviations
Abbreviations must be defined when they are used in thetext.

References
MUJOEI uses the American Psychological Association (IEEE) citation method.

Cover Letter
All submitted manuscripts should be accompanied by a cover letter that explains why the manuscript is suitable for publication in MUJOEI.

Submission of Manuscript
Submission to the MUJOEI is free and open to everyone. The Corresponding Author should register on this site, and enroll as Author, before you can be author of a submission

Contact Us:
Journal Unit,
Editorial Board
MU Journal of Engineering (MUOJEI)
Graduate School of Engineering
Mid-West University, Surkhet, Nepal
Email: mujoe@mu.edu.np