Instruction to the Author

General: Authors should submit only their original work that has neither appeared elsewhere for publication nor which is under review for another refereed publication. Informatics Studies welcomes the submission of manuscripts that meets the general criteria of significance and scientific excellence. Papers will be published approximately two months after acceptance.

Authorship: Authorship credit should be based on a substantial intellectual contribution in regard to conception and design or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data as well as the final approval of the version of the paper to be published. It is assumed that all authors have had a significant role in the creation of a manuscript that bears their names. Therefore, the list of authors on an article serves multiple purposes; it indicates who is responsible for the work and to whom questions regarding the work should be addressed. Moreover, the credit implied by authorship is often used as a measure of the contributors' productivity when they are evaluated for employment, promotions, grants, and awards.

Submission of Manuscripts: The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other co-authors. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the concerned institution. Only acknowledgment e-mail from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt.

Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the corresponding author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition for submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability. All enquiries concerning the submission of manuscript(s) should be addressed to edtor@informaticsstudies.org

Electronic version of manuscripts should be submitted to the editor as MS Word file attach? with first author's surname plus year as filename (e.g.: hussain2012). The text, tables, photographs and figures should be included in a single MS Word file (preferably in Times New Roman font) with text double spaced. Page settings should be for A4 size paper with 2.5 cm margin for all sides.

Manuscripts should be uploaded as e-mail attachment to the editorial office at: editor@informaticsstudies.org. A manuscript number will be mailed to the corresponding author within one week.

The cover letter should include the corresponding author's full address and telephone/mobile numbers and should be MS Word file attach? in the e-mail message sent to the editor, with the first author's surname plus year followed by an underscore and cl, (e.g.: hussain2012_cl) as filename. The author(s) may also suggest three to five reviewers for the manuscript. Informatics Studies may designate other reviewers.

Informatics Studies will only accept manuscripts submitted along with cover letters as separate files as e-mail attachments as per the specification mentioned above.

Manuscript's Category: Three types of manuscripts may be submitted:

Regular Articles: These should describe new and carefully confirmed findings, in which experimental procedures should be given in sufficient detail for others to verify the work. The length of a full paper should be the minimum required to describe and interpret the work clearly. Research Article should arrange content in the following order: abstract, brief introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, acknowledgements, references, figures, tables.

Reviews: Review articles are an attempt by one or more authors to sum up the current state of the research on a particular topic. Ideally, the author searches for everything relevant to the topic, and then sorts it all out into a coherent view of the 'state of the art' as it now stands. Review Articles should inform about: the main researchers working in a field, recent major advances and discoveries, significant gaps in the research, current debates, and future directions

Submissions of reviews and perspectives covering topics of current interest are welcome and encouraged. Reviews should be concise and not longer than 5 to 7 printed pages (about 15 to 20 manuscript pages). Reviews are also peer-reviewed.

Short Communications: A Short Communication is suitable for recording the results of small investigations or giving details of new models or hypotheses, innovative methods, techniques or apparatus. The style of main sections need not conform to that of full-length papers. Short communications are 2 to 5 printed pages (about 6 to 10 manuscript pages) in length.

Book Reviews: Authors and publishers are encouraged to send two review copies of their recent related books on subjects dealt by Informatics Studies to Editor, Informatics Studies, GNRA-A4, Trivandrum - 695043, India. Books received will be initially listed in the journal with bibliographical details and abstract (to be provided by the publishers) and then offered to the scholarly community for preparing reviews.

Review Process: Informatics Studies shall not accept or publish in print or online manuscripts without prior peer review. There shall be a review process of manuscripts by one or more independent referees who are conversant in the pertinent subject area. Editors of Informatics Studies shall follow a clearly defined review process.

Referees shall treat the contents of papers under review as privileged information not to be disclosed to others before publication.

The editor evaluates the recommendation and notifies the author of the manuscript status. The manuscript may be: accepted as it is, accepted after minor revision, accepted after major revision, or rejected

The comments of the anonymous reviewers will be forwarded to the authors. The authors have to revise the manuscript based on the comments of the editors and reviewers and resubmit it. They should give a statement telling what modifications they have made in their manuscript or why they have not made the suggested changes.

Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible. The reviewers have to submit comments within one month. The journal will return reviewers' comments to authors within the next month. If minor revision is required, authors should return a revised version as soon as possible within 15 days. If major revision is required, authors should return a revised version within one month. The editorial board will re-review manuscripts that are accepted pending revision. It is the goal of the Informatics Studies to publish manuscripts within six months after submission.

Regular Articles: All portions of the manuscript must be typed double-spaced and all pages numbered starting from the title page.

The title should be a brief phrase describing the contents of the paper. The Title Page should include the authors' full names and affiliations, the name of the corresponding author along with phone and e-mail information. Present addresses of authors should appear as a footnote.

The abstract should be informative and completely self-explanatory, briefly present the topic, state the scope of the experiments, indicate significant data, and point out major findings and conclusions. The abstract should be 100 to 200 words in length. Complete sentences, active verbs, and the third person should be used, and the abstract should be written in the past tense. Standard nomenclature should be used and abbreviations should be avoided. No literature should be cited in the abstract.

Following the abstract, about 5 to 10 key words that will provide indexing references should be listed.

A list of non-standard abbreviations should be added. In general, non-standard abbreviations should be used only when the full term is very long and used often. Each abbreviation should be spelt out and introduced in parentheses the first time it is used in the text.

The Introduction should provide a clear statement of the problem, the relevant literature on the subject, and the proposed approach or solution. It should be understandable to colleagues from a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Materials and methods should be complete to allow experiments to be reproduced. However, only truly new procedures should be described in detail; previously published procedures should be cited, and important modifications of published procedures should be mentioned briefly. Trade names should be capitalized and manufacturer's name and address should be sited. Subheadings should be used wherever necessary. Methods in general use need not be described in detail.

Results should be presented with clarity and precision. It should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the author(s)'s experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense. Results should be explained, but largely without referring to the literature. Discussion, speculation and detailed interpretation of data should not be included in the results but should be put into the discussion section.

The discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and in past studies on this topic. Conclusions should be stated in a few sentences at the end of the paper. The results and discussion sections can include subheadings, and when appropriate, both sections can be combined.

Acknowledgements: Contributors to the research other than authors credited should be mentioned under acknowledgement. The specifications of the source of funding for the research if appropriate can be included. Suppliers of resources may be mentioned along with address. The Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc should be brief.

Tables should be kept to a minimum and should be designed as simple as possible. Tables are to be typed double-spaced throughout, including headings and footnotes. Each table should be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and supplied with a heading and a legend. Tables should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. The details of the methods used in the experiments should preferably be described in the legend instead of in the text. The same data should not be presented in both table and graph forms or repeated in the text.

Figure legends should be typed in numerical order on a separate sheet. Graphics should be prepared using applications capable of generating high resolution GIF, TIFF, JPEG or PowerPoint before pasting in the MS Word manuscript file. Tables should be prepared in MS Word. Arabic numerals should be used to designate figures and upper case letters for their parts (Figure 1). Each legend should begin with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reading the text of the manuscript. Information given in legends should not be repeated in the text.

Format: Language: The language of publication is English. Authors, who are not proficient in English, must get their manuscript efficiently edited before submission to make sure that; the English is excellent. It is advised, that manuscripts should be professionally edited.

References: The author-date system should be used for references in accordance with The Chicago Manual of Style. Details are available in web also at: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

References should be listed at the end of the paper in alphabetical order. Articles in preparation or articles submitted for publication, unpublished observations, personal communications, etc. should not be refereed. Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of the references.

A standard Reference Style Manual for Informatics Studies is available at informaticsstudies.org. Several examples follow:

Journal Article

Lancaster, F. W. (2003). Do indexing and abstracting have a future? Anales de Documentaci?n, 6, 137-144. (Note: If each issue in a volume begins with page 1, then the issue number should be given, as 6 (3), 137- 144)

Book

Suber, Peter. (2012). Open access. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Chapter in Book

Parthasarathy, S. (1963). Standard for bibliographical reference. In Ranganathan, S.R. (Ed.), Documentation and its facets. (pp.501-505). Bombay: Asia.

Website

Subirats, Imma, Irene Onyancha, Gauri Salokhe, and Johannes Keizer. (2007). Towards an architecture for open archive networks in Agricultural Sciences and Technology. Retrieved: November 20, 2012. http://eprints.rclis.org/handle/10760/15658#.UKPLn4esiSo

Short Communications

Short Communications are limited to a maximum of two figures and one table. They should present a complete study that is more limited in scope than is found in full-length papers. The items of manuscript preparation listed above apply to Short Communications with the following differences: (1) Abstracts are limited to 100 words; (2) instead of a separate Materials and Methods section, experimental procedures may be incorporated into Figure Legends and Table footnotes; (3) Results and Discussion should be combined into a single section.

Proofs and Reprints

Electronic proofs will be sent (e-mail attachment) to the corresponding author as a PDF file. Page proofs are considered to be the final version of the manuscript. With the exception of typographical or minor clerical errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage. Informatics Studies will be published freely online to attract a wide audience. Authors will have free electronic access to the full text (in PDF) of the articles form journal site. Authors can freely download the PDF file from which they can print unlimited copies of their articles. Ten off prints will be send to the authors who have paid the processing fee.

Copyright

Submission of a manuscript implies; that the work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, or thesis) that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that if and when the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors agree to the following terms of licensing/copyright ownership:

First publication rights to original work accepted for publication is granted to Informatics Studies but copyright for all work published in the journal is retained by the author(s).

But papers of perpetual interest, highly relevant to the thematic issues which are under Creative Commons Attribution License, as per prior agreement by editors will be published in IS

Works published in Informatics Studies will be distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). By granting a CC-BY license in their work, authors retain copyright ownership of the work, but they give explicit permission for others to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the work, as long as the original source and author(s) are properly cited (i.e. a complete bibliographic citation and link to the Informatics Studies website). No permission is required from the author(s) or the publishers for such use. According to the terms of the CC-BY license, any reuse or redistribution must indicate the original CC-BY license terms of the work.

Exceptions to the application of the CC-BY license may be granted at the editors' discretion if reasonable extenuating circumstances exist and must be in writing. In the absence of a written exception, the CC-BY license will be applied to all published works. Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the work, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in Informatics Studies.

Authors are free to post online their work published in Informatics Studies in any Open Access institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in Informatics Studies as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.

All materials published on the Informatics Studies website are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, unless otherwise noted.