Gulf Education and Social Policy Review

Submission Guidelines

The Gulf Education and Social Policy Review publishes new issues in June and December. Beginning in 2020, the submission deadlines are March 31 for the publication in June and September 30 for the publication in December. Submissions are considered on a rolling basis prior to these deadlines.

There are no fees to publish with the Gulf Education and Social Policy Review. The submissions to the Gulf Education and Social Policy Review may include the following:

Research Articles (6,000–8,000 words)

This type of submission encompasses previously unpublished, original research that advances the knowledge of the subject matter with the support of data presented in tables and/or figures. Research articles may fall into one of two categories: applied research articles or theoretical research articles. Word count includes an abstract (200 words or less), five to six keywords, footnotes, references, and appendices. Tables and figures with captions count as 250 words (half-page) or 450 words (full-page). For articles published in Arabic, the abstract and keywords must be presented in both English and Arabic; however, these English translations are not included in word counts. Please contact Natasha Mansur (natasha.m@alqasimifoundation.rak.ae) should you need support with translating these. Do not use an online translation tool.

Policy Commentaries (3,000–5,000 words)

This type of submission must focus on new policy interventions or examine current practices, making recommendations as appropriate with a grounding in evidence. Policy commentary papers should be no longer than 5,000 words in length, including a one-paragraph abstract (200 words or less), three to five keywords, footnotes, references, and appendices. Tables and figures with captions count 250 words. For articles submitted in Arabic, the abstract and keywords must be presented in both English and Arabic; however, these English translations are not included in word counts. Please contact Natasha Mansur (natasha.m@alqasimifoundation.rak.ae) should you need support with translating these. Do not use an online translation tool.

Because the Gulf Education and Social Policy Review uses a double-blind review process, no identifying information must be included in the files sent to reviewers. During the submission process, authors will be asked to upload at least two separate files. Each author on the submission will also need to submit a signed Submission Declaration Form.

The first file uploaded should include the following labelled information, in the font Calibri ([Body], size 12), single-spaced:

• Author information. This section should include the names of all authors, affiliations where the research occurred, email addresses, ORCID numbers if available, Twitter names if available, and biographies (80 to 100 words). Author names should include a first and last name. The affiliation should include an institution, city, and country. Please specify who is the corresponding author. All authors must fit within the journal’s definition of an author given below.
• Author contributions. This section should include a sentence or a short paragraph detailing the roles of each author listed. The ICMJE defines an author as someone who has contributed to each of the following four areas:
  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • 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. (ICMJE, n.d.-a)
• Acknowledgements (optional).
• Funding information. Please provide a brief statement about funding sources and what roles these played in any stage of research and writing. Should a funding source not have been involved at any stage, please state this.
• Competing interests. If any of the authors have any competing/conflicting interests, then these must be declared in a short paragraph to be published with the work. Besides, each author must complete an ICMJE Form for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest, to be kept on file by the journal, which is available here. If there are no competing interests to declare, then the following statement should be published: The author(s) has/have no competing interests to declare.
• Comments to the editor (if applicable). Please explain here if the submission has been published elsewhere (in part or in whole). Also, explain here if the submission is under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The manuscript that is uploaded for review should include the following, in the font Calibri ([Body], size 12), double-spaced:

• Title page. To ensure a double-blind peer review, please only list the title and abstract on the submitted manuscript file.
• Main text. The main text should be presented logically. Up to three levels of headings may be used, and these should adhere to the American Psychological Association (APA) (7^th edition) style. In general, the main text sections of a research article should broadly include an Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions; policy commentaries, it is understood, may be organized differently.
• Figures and Tables. Figures and tables should be submitted within the manuscript. They should fit onto one page and be numbered and captioned following the APA (7th edition) style guidelines. In addition,
  • For figures:
    • The figure resolution should be 300 dpi or higher.
    • The figures’ text should be in Calibri (body) and size 12 to match the article text.
    • Be sure a legend is included for all graphs.
    • Figures should be submitted in grayscale.
    • Figures should be centred.
  • For tables:
    • The table should be created within the Microsoft Word document.
    • The tables’ text should be in Calibri (body) and size 12 to match the article text.
    • Tables should be left-aligned.
    • Decimals should be aligned. The number of decimal places reported should be consistent within a column.
    • No vertical lines should be included in a table.
• No identifying information should be included in the manuscript file. When the author is cited, “Author” and the year of publication should be used for the in-text citation and in the references. Any identifying information embedded in the files should be removed. For example, in Word, the author should go to Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document to see if personal information is still embedded in the document and remove it. All comments and tracked changes should be removed as well.
• Consent for human subjects, material, and/or data research. The Declaration of Helsinki sets the guidelines for research involving human subjects, material, and/or data. In the manuscript, the author(s) should detail how ethics approval was gained when required, being sure to omit the identifying information, such as the name of the institution, at this stage. Authors should also ensure that the research participant’s anonymity is maintained. The process of gaining informed consent from research participants (or their legal guardians), in the case of human subjects research, should be detailed in the manuscript. In cases where ethical approval is not required, authors should mention this.
• References. All references cited within the submission must be listed at the end of the manuscript file using the APA (7^th edition) style. To maintain anonymity for review, when the author is cited, “Author” and the year of publication should be used for references.

Additionally, supplementary files should be uploaded if applicable. These should clearly connect to the manuscript text, and this should be evident to readers by referring to them in the main text. Each file should include a descriptive title. As reviewers will receive these, they should include no identifying information.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used for the stated purposes of this journal. In addition, all authors submitting content will be automatically registered for content email alerts from GESPR. To stop receiving the alerts, authors can subsequently unsubscribe through the link provided in the email. These email addresses will not be made available to any other party.

Copyright

All the articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Also, authors are allowed to deposit all versions of their paper in an institutional or subject repository.