Submissions Guidelines

INFORMATION AND GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

General Information

APJEE publishes two types of issues:

1. Themed Issues:

 Beginning in 2026, APJEE will publish three issues per year, in April (Issue 1), August (Issue 2), and December (Issue 3), in response to the increasing number of quality submissions from both local and international contributors. All issues are themed, focusing on specific topics or fields within education. These themed issues aim to address current issues, problems, difficulties, and challenges in teaching and learning, particularly within the Asia Pacific region.

2. Special Issues:

In addition to the regular themed issues, APJEE publishes special issues, which are additional issues featuring selected papers presented at conferences. These special issues provide a platform to disseminate high-quality conference papers to a wider academic audience.

Please email the Editor in Chief of APJEE (kabilan@usm.my) to discuss a possible collaboration to publish a Themed Issue or a Special Issue that would benefit the readers of APJEE.

Guidelines for Authors

Peer Review

All submissions will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review evaluation process before the final decision is made. At all stages of the review process, until the decision to accept has been taken, authors' and reviewers' identities are concealed from each other.

The Editorial Board may exercise their prerogative to reject a manuscript without peer review if that manuscript is judged to be outside the scope of the Journal, poorly written or formatted or lacking significance.

Reviewers are matched to the manuscript according to their expertise. They are selected from the Journal’s reviewers’ data bank. If a manuscript is found to be of suitable quality and meets the aims and scope of the Journal, it will then be sent to at least two reviewers. The reviewers selected by the Editor may, of course, not necessarily be from the data bank. The Journal also welcomes suggestions for reviewers from authors, though these recommendations may or may not be used.

After receiving a request for peer review, reviewers must respond in a timely fashion, particularly if they cannot do the review, to avoid unnecessarily delaying the process.

Reviewers are tasked to evaluate a manuscript for its originality and significance of contribution, subject relevancy, appropriate coverage of existing literature, the presentation of methodology, results and interpretation, and manuscript organisation. Reviewers are also required to provide anonymous comments to the author and confidential comments to the Editor.

The Journal aims to provide the first decision within 12 weeks upon submission. Typically, the review process will take 8–10 weeks. Should there be any delay, the Journal will promptly alert the reviewers. For any contradicting reports, the Journal will seek further expert opinion. A revised manuscript may be returned to the initial reviewers. Where manuscript revision is required, authors are urged to ensure that the necessary corrections are made before the manuscript can be accepted for production. Authors will be notified of the decision made by the Editor.

Manuscript Preparation

Manuscript should be written in English (UK) or Bahasa Malaysia and should not be more than 8000 words including references. Manuscripts should be prepared using Microsoft Word, following the format of Times New Roman font size 11 and 1.5 spacing between lines. Authors will also need to supply a title page separate from the main text of their manuscript. The title page should include the article title, authors’ names, affiliations, and ORCID ID, and the corresponding author’s name and email address.

Journal Style and Structure

The style guidelines of the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (http://apastyle.apa.org/) should be followed.

Manuscripts should be organized in the following order:

1. Title, Authorship and Affiliation (single page)

Please give first, middle and last name but omit titles. Give the affiliation of each author and the complete mailing address of the institution where the work was conducted. If the current address of an author is different, include it in the footnote on the title page. Please denote the corresponding author with an asterisk and provide the email address of the corresponding author. Please separate the title page from the main document.

ORCID ID requirement

All authors must provide their ORCID ID at the time of manuscript submission. An ORCID ID is a unique, persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from other researchers. Authors who do not have an ORCID ID can register for free at https://orcid.org.

 

2. ABSTRACT

- The abstract should be no longer than 300 words.

- The abstract should be a concise and factual description of the contents and conclusions as well as an indication of any new findings.

 

3. KEYWORDS

Keywords are to facilitate the retrieval of articles by search engines and will be used for indexing purposes. Authors should avoid general terms. Provide a maximum of FIVE (5) keywords. Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible.

 

4. MAIN TEXT

Text may include the following sections as a general structure:

    1. Introduction
    2. Literature review
    3. Methodology
    4. Results
    5. Discussion
    6. Conclusion

Note: Authors may also include additional sections such as Implications, Limitations, Recommendations, and Future Directions, depending on the focus and scope of their study. The inclusion and placement of these sections are at the authors’ discretion to best present their research comprehensively.

 

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Collate acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise.

Funding acknowledgement (applicable when available)

If available, please provide all details of a funding acknowledgement with the funding agency written out in full, followed by the grant number.

  • For non-funded study: This work was not supported by any funding agency or grant. 
  • For single agency grants: This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].
  • For multiple agency grants: This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].

 

6. CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

A Conflict of Interest declaration must be provided by the authors in their manuscript. This is to acknowledge that conflicts of interest may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations that have arisen from the direct applications of your research. If there are no relevant competing interests to declare, please state this within the article.

For example: 

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare. 

 

7. DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscript to inform readers where the data supporting the findings of the study can be found, or if data is not available, to provide a justification.

The statement should specify:

  • Whether data is available in a public repository (provide repository name, DOI, or link)
  • Whether data is available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author
  • Whether there are restrictions to data sharing (e.g. confidentiality, ethical restrictions)

If no data were generated or analysed, state this clearly

Example statements:

Data Availability Statement:

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [name of repository], [DOI or URL].

or

Data Availability Statement:

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to [state reason, e.g. participant confidentiality] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

or

Data Availability Statement:

No new data were created or analysed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article.

 

8. ETHICS STATEMENT

Authors must provide a clear ‘Compliance with Ethical Standards’ statement for all manuscripts involving human participants and/or animal subjects. This statement should be included in the manuscript before the acknowledgement section. 

Compliance Statement Example:

Compliance with Ethical Standards:

This study was approved by the [Name of Ethics Committee] (Approval No: [XXXX]). Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

 

9. AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS

Authors must include “Authors’ Contributions” statement in their manuscript to clearly specify each author’s individual contribution to the work. This statement should follow the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) guidelines where applicable and include roles such as:

  • Conceptualisation (e.g. idea formulation, research goals)
  • Methodology
  • Formal Analysis
  • Investigation (e.g. data collection)
  • Resources
  • Data Curation
  • Writing – Original Draft Preparation
  • Writing – Review & Editing
  • Visualization
  • Supervision
  • Project Administration
  • Funding Acquisition

Example statement:

Contributions of Authors:

Author A: Conceptualization, methodology, writing – original draft preparation.

Author B: Data collection, formal analysis, writing – review & editing.

Author C: Supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.

 

10. REFERENCES

Authors should pay particular attention to the accuracy and correct presentation of references following the standard American Psychological Association (APA) reference style. Authors must ensure all references are properly cited following APA citation style.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) in References

Authors are required to provide DOIs in full URL format (e.g., https://doi.org/...) for all references where applicable. Including DOIs ensures accurate and persistent linking to cited sources, enhancing the reliability and accessibility of scholarly work. To check and retrieve DOIs for your references, you may use the Crossref Simple Text Query tool (https://apps.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery).

 

11. APPENDICES

If there is more than one appendix, please label each one with a capital letter (e.g., Appendix A, Appendix B). Each appendix must have a title.

 

12. Manuscript Structure 

Authors are encouraged to organize their manuscripts using the following general structure, where applicable:

  • Introduction
  • Literature Review
  • Methodology
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data Availability Statement
  • Ethics Statement
  • Author Contributions
  • References
  • Appendices

This structure promotes clarity and consistency across submissions. Authors may adapt the sections to suit the nature of their research while ensuring all relevant information is clearly presented.

A manuscript template is provided for reference to assist authors in preparing their submissions according to the journal’s formatting and structural guidelines.