Submission Guidelines

SUBMISSION PREPARATION CHECKLIST  

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in this page.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

 

 

Author Guidelines

All authors are expected to follow the highest standards of publication ethics. All manuscripts must comply with the policies of Jurnal Kinabalu. Jurnal Kinabalu reserves the right to decline submission of suspected plagiarism or a high degree of AI-generated writing at any point during the assessment process. Any articles found to violate the guidelines after publication will be retracted.

1. Preparation of manuscripts

Manuscripts submitted must be in Bahasa Melayu or English. Manuscripts are assessed based on academic rigour and sound reasoning. Nonetheless, it is not the reviewers’ nor the editors’ responsibility to provide language assistance. If necessary, the author(s) should ensure that external help has been consulted for language editing services prior to manuscript submission.

Author(s) must strictly adhere to the formatting instructions for Jurnal Kinabalu. Failure to comply will cause delays in publication and can be grounds for manuscript rejection. Manuscripts that fail to conform to the journal’s style will be returned unreviewed to the authors for reformatting. Please adhere to Jurnal Kinabalu manuscript template that can be downloaded from here (English version) and here (Malay version).

All manuscripts should follow this format:

  • Microsoft Word Document (.doc or .docx)
  • Text to be in Times New Roman (12 point, except if stated otherwise for particular sections below)
  • Insert continuous line numbers
  • All paragraphs should be justified
  • Page numbers should be in the centre of the footer, in Times New Roman (10 point)
  • All headings should be left aligned, in upper case and bold
  • Sub-headings should be left aligned, in sentence case, italic and in bold

All manuscripts must include a title page, which should contain the following:

  • The title in title case, i.e., capitalise words and bold
  • Names of Author(s) as first name(s), followed by surname/preferred name in uppercase
  • Institutional Affiliations of Author(s)
  • Corresponding Author’s email address

Manuscript structure:

  • Full length articles or reviews (up to 8,000 words)
    • Title page
    • Abstract (no longer than 300 words)
    • Keywords (3–6 words)
    • Introduction
    • Literature Review
    • Methods
    • Results
    • Discussion (Results and Discussion may be combined)
    • Conclusions (if appropriate)
    • Acknowledgments (if any, include relevant permit numbers and funding source)
    • References
  • Manuscripts submitted must be original and not published in any publication.
  • The manuscript text uses Times New Roman 12 point, 1.0 spacing, and is justified.

2. Title

A concise and informative title that accurately reflects the content of the article.

3. Authors and affiliations

In accordance with the policies of Jurnal Kinabalu, authorship should only be claimed for those who have contributed substantially to the study. Adding of authors after submission should be avoided. For authors who do not have institutional affiliations, the city, state/province/territory and country should be provided.

4. Abstract

All full length articles should contain and Abstract, which should be no longer than 300 words. The abstract should include a brief rationale and objectives of the study, summary of the methods, key results and implications of the study.

5. In-text citations

Citations of references in the text are by the surname of the author and year of publication, e.g.:

  • one author: Idris (2020) or (Idris, 2020)
  • two authors: Walker & Jamru (2025) or (Walker & Jamru, 2025)
  • three or more authors: De Silva et al. (2023) or (De Silva et al., 2023)

Multiple references should be arranged chronologically, followed by alphabetically. Multiple references by the same author(s) should be listed chronologically, with the publication year(s) separated by a comma. Multiple references by the same first author, in the same year, with three or more co-authors should use lower case letters (a, b, c) with the year, separated by a comma. The order of citation should be arranged alphabetically following the names of the co-authors. E.g., “(Jamru, 1990, 1998; Lee et al. 2019a, b; Ibrahim, 2019; ILO, 2023)”.

6. References

All references that are cited in the text must be listed in the References at the end of the manuscript. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that all citations in the text are listed in the References, and vice versa.

The references should be listed in alphabetical, followed by chronological order, with a hanging indent of 12.7 mm. Journal names should be given in full. The digital object identifier (DOI) should be included if available. The style and punctuation of the examples below should be followed accurately (Refer to the APA 7th edition style manual).

7. Figures and Tables

In the initial submission and when submitting a revised manuscript, figures and tables should be placed at appropriate points in the text (preferably after the paragraph that contains its first mention in the text). Each figure and table should be numbered according to the order of appearance in the text, i.e., Figure 1, Figure 2, and Table 1, Table 2. All figures and tables should fit within the A4 size page format. If the full manuscript file exceeds 5MB, please insert the figure captions at the end of the text, after References, remove all images from the file and submit them individually in JPG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) format.

Composite figures should be labelled alphabetically, according to the sequence of its arrangement. Text within figures (e.g., graphs) should be of reasonable size for ease of readability. Figure captions, table text and legends should be presented in 10 point. The table legends and figure captions should be standalone, i.e., should be understandable to someone who has not read the text.

Upon acceptance, the copy editor will request for figures to be submitted individually in JPG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) format, with the minimum resolution of 300 dpi. The editors reserve the right to request for unmodified or original images, and failure to provide these images could result in the rejection of a manuscript.

8. Submission of manuscripts

For the initial submission of manuscript, authors need to prepare two versions: one anonymised manuscript and one manuscript with author details.

When submitting a revised article, please upload a version with the revisions and corrections highlighted.

The title page should only contain the title, name of authors, affiliation, addresses, contact details, keywords and corresponding author. If the full manuscript file exceeds 5MB, please insert the figure captions at the end of the text, after References; remove all images from the file and submit them individually in JPG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) format.

Funding information and if applicable, each research and/or ethical permit approval number must be listed in the acknowledgements.

Manuscripts should be submitted via the link on the Submissions page. All manuscripts are subjected to peer review by two independent reviewers.

Later, upon acceptance, the copy editor will request for figures to be submitted individually. Upload a Word file containing the revised text, including figure captions placed at the appropriate locations in the text. Remove all graphics from this file. Instead, figures should to be submitted as separate files in JPG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) format. Filenames should clearly correspond to the number (and part) of figure(s) enclosed in each file.

9. Revision of manuscripts and publication process

Manuscripts will be sent to the Managing Editor who will handle the peer-review process. The Managing Editor will make a provisional decision based on comments by the reviewers. The corresponding author will receive the provisional decision along with the reviewer comments.

The author(s) should respond to each of the comments and revise the manuscript accordingly. The revised manuscript (clean and tracked changes versions), along with a letter detailing the authors’ responses to each comment (including justification for any disagreements) should be returned to the Managing Editor by the stated deadline.

The manuscript will only be accepted once all the reviewers’ comments or recommendations have been addressed, and the format of the manuscript (including tables and figures) comply with the format of Jurnal Kinabalu. The Editor-in-Chief will convey the final decision to the corresponding author.

Upon acceptance, the proofs in PDF format will be sent to the corresponding author for checks and correction, together with the Transfer of Copyright Form.

Upon receipt of the corrected proofs and Transfer of Copyright form, the final PDF of the paper will be prepared and published on the Jurnal Kinabalu website. The final PDF will also be sent to the corresponding author immediately upon publication.

10. Article processing charges

There are no article processing charges for publishing in the Jurnal Kinabalu. This journal provides immediate free access to all published articles.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

All right reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced without prior written permission of the copyright holder. The written permission of the copyright holder must be obtained before any parts of this publication is stored in a retrieval system of any nature.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the Author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article.  Requests for permission to duplicate an article, review or part of this journal should be addressed to the Editor In Chief, Jurnal Kinabalu, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia.

Upon acceptance of an article, a letter will be sent to the corresponding Author confirming receipt of the manuscript.

PRIVACY STATEMENT 

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.