Author Guidelines

Submission Requirements

The Editorial Board of the journal is committed to transparency and accuracy in reviewing submitted research papers. Authors must comply with the following requirements:

• The research must be original work that contributes to knowledge without duplication, and must not have been previously published or submitted simultaneously to another journal.
• The research or study must not form part of the author's PhD or Master's thesis, nor be part of a previously published book.
• The study must not have been previously published in print or electronically, nor submitted to another journal at the same time.
• The research may not be published in another scientific journal after its publication has been approved by the Journal of Security Research and Studies.
• Compliance with the principles and general rules of scientific research, while ensuring accurate scientific citation and documentation of research materials.
• The identities of all authors must be concealed within the body of the study to ensure the confidentiality of the peer-review process.
• After formatting the research according to the approved requirements, it must be submitted through the journal website. Registration on the journal website is a prerequisite for submission. Researchers who are already registered may log in directly and proceed with the submission process.
• The journal does not accept printed or electronic copies submitted via regular mail or email. Only submissions made through the journal website will be considered.
• Submission of the research implies that all authors agree to the editorial conditions, policies, and publication ethics stated by the journal.
• The author shall submit the following files:
  • A publication request letter addressed to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The letter must include the publication request, research title, authors, a brief overview of the research, its findings, its significance to the journal’s readership, its scientific contribution, the funding body, and confirmation that the author has read the Author Guidelines, editorial policies, and publication ethics.
  • A completed declaration and undertaking form confirming that the research is not extracted from the author's Master's or PhD thesis, and that it has neither been previously published nor submitted to other journals.
  • A title page file containing the research title, authors’ names, and their affiliations.
  • The full manuscript without any indication of the author(s).
  • A brief biography of each author in both Arabic and English, not exceeding 200 words per biography, including: full name, current position, academic degree, latest qualification obtained, awarding institution, year obtained, field of specialization, professional affiliations, research interests, postal address, email address, and phone number.

Research Formatting

• Title Page File:
  Must contain the research title, full names of the authors in both Arabic and English, affiliations, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, acknowledgements (if any), and disclosure of any financial support or relationships that may constitute a conflict of interest (if any).
• Main Manuscript File:
  1. The Arabic abstract must not exceed 250 words and should contain the following headings: (Objectives, Method, Results, Conclusion). Abbreviations and references should not be included in the abstract. Up to five keywords in Arabic should follow the abstract.
  2. The English abstract must be preceded by the research title in English and should contain the sections (Objectives, Method, Results, Conclusion). It must not exceed 250 words, followed by up to five keywords in English. (For papers written in English, please refer to the instructions written in English).
  3. The body of the research must begin with the title; however, the text must not contain any direct or indirect reference to the author(s).
  4. The minimum word count is 5,000 words, and the paper must not exceed 10,000 words, including: abstracts, tables, figures, images, references, footnotes, and comments (if any).
  5. The text must be prepared using Microsoft Word in Times New Roman font for both Arabic and English, with a font size of 12.
  6. Line spacing must be 1.5 between consecutive lines and 2 lines between consecutive paragraphs. The first line of each paragraph should be indented by five spaces.
  7. The research must comply with the formatting guidelines specified in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2020), Seventh Edition (APA-7).
  8. In-text citations must follow the APA-7 style, whereby references are not cited in footnotes but are instead documented in the reference list at the end of the paper. Within the text, only the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number should be mentioned.
  9. Arabic references should be listed first from the far right in alphabetical order (not Abjadi order), followed directly by foreign references from the far left, disregarding the Arabic definite article “ال” and the English article “The”.
  10. References should not be numbered in any form, and holy books, including the Holy Qur’an, should not be included in the reference list.
  11. Empirical (quantitative) studies must adhere to the following structure:
      • Introduction: Includes the importance of the study, a solid theoretical background, comprehensive and up-to-date previous studies, the gaps that the current study seeks to address, how the study differs from previous research (originality and contribution), study objectives, hypotheses derived from the theoretical framework and previous studies, research questions, and their relationship to the research design and hypotheses.
      • Methodology: Includes participant information (such as demographic variables, selection method, inclusion and exclusion criteria, place of data collection, participation incentives if any, statement of voluntary participation if required), instruments used (such as psychometric or biometric characteristics, number of items and examples thereof), data collection methods, procedures such as participant distribution across groups, and statistical methods used.
      • Results: Includes information on the statistical package used, missing data and how they were handled, whether the data distribution met the assumptions of statistical analysis, statistical analyses and their significance, means and standard deviations, 95% confidence intervals, effect size, number of participants in each group, inferential statistics and their directions, degrees of freedom, exact significance levels, correlation tables, and other details depending on the nature of the analyses used.
      • Discussion: Includes the extent to which hypotheses were confirmed, whether the findings are consistent or inconsistent with previous studies, interpretation of results, possible biases due to insufficient control of variables that may threaten validity, limitations of the study, generalizability of findings, theoretical and practical implications, their usefulness in proposing new policies, and finally a concluding paragraph.
      • References: The journal encourages the use of references derived from research published in reputable journals. Therefore, authors are advised to refer to journals indexed in the Scopus database within the relevant specialization.
      • Tables and figures must be formatted according to APA-7 style. Authors must provide a high-quality version of each figure or image with a resolution of no less than 300 dpi, saved in .tif format.
      • Footnotes should be concise and brief, and should appear in numbered format corresponding to their numbering in the text.
      • Any appendices should appear after the reference list.
      • Headings should be formatted according to APA-7 style as follows:
        • Level One: Bold and centered on the page.
        • Level Two: Bold aligned to the far right for Arabic papers and to the far left for foreign-language papers.
        • Level Three: Bold italic aligned to the far right for Arabic papers and to the far left for foreign-language papers.
        • Level Four: Begins after five spaces in bold font and ends with a period directly followed by the paragraph.
        • Level Five: Begins after five spaces in bold italic font and ends with a period directly followed by the paragraph.

  For more information, you may download a PDF copy of the editorial policies and guidelines of the Journal of Security Research and Studies at Saad Al-Abdullah Academy for Security Sciences through this link.