Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission declaration

When authors submit an article to a LASU journal it is implied that:

• the work described has not been published previously except in the form of a preprint, an abstract, a published lecture, academic thesis or registered report.
• the article is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
• the article's publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out.
• if accepted, the article will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically, without the written consent of the copyright-holder.

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following:

1. The conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Final approval of the version to be submitted.

All authors should agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Declaration of interests

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests include:

• Employment
• Consultancies
• Stock ownership
• Honoraria
• Paid expert testimony
• Patent applications or registrations
• Grants or any other funding

Authors with no competing interests to declare should select the option, "I have nothing to declare".

Funding sources

Any financial support from a funding body for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article must be declared by the authors. The role of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report and decision to submit the article for publication. If funding sources had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.

If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Manuscripts Submission

1. All contributors are invited to send articles they would like to be considered for publication in one of the following formats. It is preferred that manuscripts are sent by email to LASU-JEST@gmail.com.  Manuscripts may also be submitted in soft copy, sent to The Editor.  An exactly-matching printed version of it must be sent to the Editor.
2. Author information should be provided on a separate sheet and should include full postal address and contact details (email, phone), organizational affiliation,   any present post held, and a brief reference to any relevant activity which would add significance or authority to the article.
3. Articles should be submitted in English and accompanied by an Abstract of not more than 300 words.
4. Only original articles will be considered for publication. Articles are accepted on the understanding that they have not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere in any form.
5. All pages, tables and illustrations should be clearly numbered.
6. Abbreviations in the text should be avoided as much as possible, e.g. the expression “personal and social education” is preferable to “PSE” Initial capitals          should be avoided except in the case of proper nouns, e.g. “the Lagos State University” but “the Nigerian universities,” “Chesterton Community College,” but “most community colleges.”
7. MLA, APA and Turabian styles of references are allowed because of the multi- disciplinary nature of the Journal.
8. The Editor reserves the right to shorten and edit the articles without any fundamental changes.
9. LASU-JHEL is not responsible for the views expressed or factual information supplied in the articles published in this Journal. The authors are solely responsible for these.

Abstract

You are required to provide a concise and factual abstract which does not exceed 300 words. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of your research, principal results and major conclusions. Some guidelines:

• Abstracts must be able to stand alone as abstracts are often presented separately from the article.
• Avoid references. If any are essential to include, ensure that you cite the author(s) and year(s).
• Avoid non-standard or uncommon abbreviations. If any are essential to include, ensure they are defined within your abstract at first mention.

Keywords

You are required to provide 1 to 7 keywords for indexing purposes. Keywords should be written in English. Please try to avoid keywords consisting of multiple words (using "and" or "of").

We recommend that you only use abbreviations in keywords if they are firmly established in the field.

Highlights

You are encouraged to provide article highlights at submission.

Highlights are a short collection of bullet points that should capture the novel results of your research as well as any new methods used during your study. Highlights will help increase the discoverability of your article via search engines. Some guidelines:

• Submit highlights as a separate editable file in the online submission system with the word "highlights" included in the file name.
• Highlights should consist of 3 to 5 bullet points, each a maximum of 85 characters, including spaces.

We encourage you to view example article highlights and read about the benefits of their inclusion.

Graphical abstract

You are encouraged to provide a graphical abstract at submission. Although it is not a prerequisite for submission. A graphical abstract will help draw more attention to your online article and support readers in digesting your research. Some guidelines:

• Submit your graphical abstract as a separate file in the online submission system.
• Ensure the image is a minimum of 531 x 1328 pixels (h x w) or proportionally more and is readable at a size of 5 x 13 cm using a regular screen resolution of 96 dpi.
• Our preferred file types for graphical abstracts are TIFF, EPS, PDF or MS Office files.

We encourage you to view example graphical abstracts and read about the benefits of including them.

Tables, Figures and Images

Tables and Figures must be self-explanatory, with a brief caption, it must be submitted as editable text, not as images. Some guidelines:

• Place tables next to the relevant text or on a separate page(s) at the end of your article.
• Cite all tables in the manuscript text.
• Numbered in Arabic numerals consecutively according to their appearance in the text.
• Please provide Figure captions in a separate sheet of paper along with the figure.
• Place any table notes below the table body.
• Avoid vertical rules and shading within table cells.
• The word Table should be fully spelt out in the text while Fig should be written in text as against Figure.
• Graphs should be boxed and ordinates. Illustrations should be in black and white

Appendices

We ask you to use the following format for appendices:

• Identify individual appendices within your article using the format: A, B, etc.
• Give separate numbering to formulae and equations within appendices using formats such as Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc. and in subsequent appendices, Eq. (B.1), Eq. (B. 2) etc. In a similar way, give separate numbering to tables and figures using formats such as Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

References

References within text

Any references cited within your article should also be present in your reference list and vice versa. Some guidelines:

• References cited in your abstract must be given in full.
• Any unpublished results and personal communications included in your reference list must follow the standard reference style of the journal. In substitution of the publication date add "unpublished results" or "personal communication."
• References cited as "in press" imply that the item has been accepted for publication.
• The reference list should be arranged alphabetically.
• Authors should be referred to in text by name and year.
• References should be as recent as possible                                   

Linking to cited sources will increase the discoverability of your research.

Before submission, check that all data provided in your reference list are correct, including any references which have been copied.

The use of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) as reference links is allowed, as they provide a permanent link to the electronic article referenced. See the example below, though be aware that the format of such citations should be adapted to follow the style of other references in your paper.

DOI link example (for an article not yet in an issue):
Shannon, J.C., Russo R.M., James D.E., Ambeh W.B., Franke M. (2023). Aseismic continuation of the Lesser Antilles slab beneath northeastern Venezuela. Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JB000884.

Reference style

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

Yesmin, F., Nasim, R., Anjum, R. and Dewan, S. (2024). Epidemiological challenges in Dengue

outbreak: DENV-5 emergence and public health strategies. International Journal of Surgery Open

62(1): 70-71

Web references

When listing web references, as a minimum you should provide the full URL and the date when the reference was last accessed. Additional information (e.g. DOI, author names, dates or reference to a source publication) should also be provided, if known.

You can list web references separately under a new heading directly after your reference list or include them in your reference list.

Data references

Authors are encourage you to cite underlying or relevant datasets within article text and to list data references in the reference list.

When citing data references, you should include:

• author name(s)
• dataset title
• data repository
• version (where available)
• year
• global persistent identifier

Add [dataset] immediately before your reference. This will help us to properly identify the dataset. The [dataset] identifier will not appear in your published article.

Preprint references

We ask you to mark preprints clearly. You should include the word "preprint" or the name of the preprint server as part of your reference and provide the preprint DOI.

Where a preprint has subsequently become available as a peer-reviewed publication, use the formal publication as your reference.

If there are preprints that are central to your work or that cover crucial developments in the topic, but they are not yet formally published, you may reference the preprint.

Reference management software

Most Elsevier journals have their reference template available in popular reference management software products. These include products that support Citation Style Language (CSL) such as Mendeley Reference Manager.

If you use a citation plug-in from these products, select the relevant journal template and all your citations and bibliographies will automatically be formatted in the journal style. We advise you to remove all field codes before submitting your manuscript to any reference management software product.

If a template is not available for this journal, follow the format given in examples in the reference style section of this Guide for Authors.