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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 Microsoft Word document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is according to the styles and formatting used in template; 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 About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

Journal policy:
The journal policy is to publish only original research work, therefore J. mt. area res. does not wish to receive any paper that has already been reported in parts or contains already published text, data, figures, tables or other illustrations or any copyright materials whatsoever that has been submitted or accepted for publication either in a journal or conference proceedings elsewhere in any form.  Misconduct in research papers, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication is unacceptable to this journal, and will be strongly discouraged. All submissions will be checked for plagiarism, any manuscript that contains redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar research work violates the policies of this journal and will be rejected. This journal follows the guidelines of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) for dealing with the cases of research misconduct.
Review policy:
J. mt. area res. adopts a rigorous peer-review procedure. All submissions are initially evaluated carefully by the editors. Manuscripts that are not deemed by the editors to be strong candidates for publication will be returned to the authors before peer-review. The manuscripts passing the initial review will be sent to at least two qualified peer reviewers. The journal adopts both single and double blind peer review system, authors are given option at the submission stage. Being a multidisciplinary journal, the editorial criteria can be made uniform across disciplines. The editors will make every effort to reach decisions on these papers within shortest possible time. Accepted papers will normally be published online as early as possible. Any major changes are not allowed after acceptance.


Publication Ethics
GENERAL
Journal of Mountain Area Research abides by the guidelines produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).  In particular, authors should not submit manuscripts that contain previously published results, plagiarised material, fictitious results, or intentional reference omissions.
Authors should disclose related manuscripts that are under consideration or in press elsewhere, describing their relationship to the submitted manuscript and providing copies preferably at submission, and in any case upon request.
Authors should not submit manuscripts reporting essentially the same research to multiple journals. In addition, authors should not intentionally fragment research into multiple manuscripts if a single report would be more appropriate.
Breaches of these guidelines may result in the loss of publication privileges in the journal.
Please contact the editorial office with any questions on ethics or authorship.
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT ISSUES
Any alleged violation of any of the rules of scientific publishing ethics as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics will be investigated confidentially.
If the violations are found to be sufficiently serious, the Editor-in-Chief will request that the authors provide a written explanation. If the authors do not provide an explanation or the explanation is unsatisfactory, such that the journal's Editorial Team finds that the evidence clearly shows that a violation of our publishing ethics policy has occurred, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted, depending on current status.
In such cases the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to both notify the authors' institution of the violation of the journal's scientific ethics policy and impose punitive actions, e.g., a ban on publishing in the journal. The above course of action will also take effect if it is established that authors have violated any of the basic rules of ethical scientific conduct.
AUTHORSHIP
Credit for authorship should be based on:
 - substantial contributions to research design;
 - the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data, drafting the paper or critically revising it;
 - approval of the submitted and final versions.
Authors should meet all three criteria. All contributors who do not meet all the criteria for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgement section. In order to guarantee that appropriate authorship credit is given to all contributors we request that a brief but exhaustive statement describing the contribution of every listed author is added to the manuscript, after the conclusion and before the references.
The corresponding author should take responsibility for communicating with all other authors and getting their approval for the final version to be published. Given the fact that editors are, in general, not in a position to determine whether or not claims of contested authorship are valid, J. mt. area res. will not allow, under any circumstances, changes in authorship (additions or removal) after acceptance of a manuscript. Changes in the order in which authors are listed are allowed after acceptance, subject to editorial approval. Please also note that retractions over matters of contested authorship, if the data in the manuscript is sound, are not allowed, as per COPE guidelines.
OWNERSHIP
Authors must declare that the submitted work is their own and that copyright has not been breached in seeking its publication.
ORIGINALITY
Authors should declare that the submitted work has not previously been published in full, and is not being considered for publication, elsewhere. Publication of abstracts and presentations at scientific meetings will not jeopardise full publication.
ANIMAL STUDIES
For detailed reporting of animal experimentation the ARRIVE guidelines should be followed. Such manuscripts must include a statement in the Experimental Section or in a separate Ethical Statement that permission was obtained from the relevant national or local authorities. The institutional committees that have approved the experiments must be identified and the accreditation number of the laboratory or of the investigator given where applicable. If no such rules or permissions are in place in the country where the research/experiments were performed, then this must also be clearly stated in the manuscript.
HUMAN STUDIES/SUBJECTS AND CLINICAL SAMPLES
For manuscripts containing experiments (including the testing of sensor/wearable technologies) with human subjects or tissue samples (including blood or sweat) from human subjects, a statement regarding appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB)/Ethical Committee approval must be included in the manuscript. The informed consent of all participating subjects (or next of kin when appropriate) must be obtained and a statement to indicate this must also be included. Confirmation that the study conforms to recognized standards, such as the Declaration of Helsinki, is required.
When reporting phase II and III clinical trials, reporting on tumour marker studies or describing human biospecimens, authors should refer, respectively, to the relevant CONSORT statementREMARK or BRISQ guidelines. Prospective clinical trials must be registered in www.clinicaltrials.gov (or a similar public repository that matches the criteria established by ICMJE) prior to the start of patient enrolment. Trial registration numbers must be reported in the manuscript.
COMPETING FINANCIAL INTERESTS AND CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
J. mt. area res. requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise, that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to, patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for, or receipt of, speaker's fees from a company. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication.
As a consequence:
 - authors must provide details of competing financial interests in any company or institution that might benefit from their publication;
 - if authors have no conflict of interest to declare, this must be stated upon submission;
 - it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission ALL pertinent commercial and other relationships;
 - The Editors and Advisory Board members of J. mt. area res. should declare their affiliation with the journal in the Conflict of Interest statement.
 - The Conflict of Interest statement should be included within the main text file.
FUNDING
 - Authors must disclose all sources of funding for their research and its publication, or for their publication if it is not a research publication.
 - Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation. If in doubt, please check the Open Funder Registry for the correct nomenclature: https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/.
Copyrights:
Papers accepted for publication become copyright of the Editorial Office, Journal of Mountain Area Research, Karakoram International University Gilgit, Gilgit-15100, Pakistan and authors will be asked to sign a copyright transfer agreement. Articles cannot be published until a signed copyright transfer agreement form has been received.
Article Processing Charges (APCs):
There are no Article Processing Charges (APCs) for all authors worldwide. All costs of the manuscript processing and publishing are borne by the Karakoram International University.


Types of contributions
Full length articles: J. mt. area res.  publishes high-quality full papers reporting substantial advances regarding an important scientific problem. Results must be compared with similar works reported by other researchers and discussed scientifically. Articles normally include a 250-word abstract, 3–5 keywords. Articles are suggested to be limited to a maximum of 15 pages, including references, captions and notes.
Letters: J. mt. area res. publishes important communications of novel findings which are brief in nature but is of general interest to a broad readership. The recommended length of letters is 4-6 journal pages with an abstract, 3–5 keywords, maximum 15 references and no subsections.
Review articles: Review articles are normally solicited by the editors, but unsolicited submissions may also be considered. Review Articles should bring the reader up-to-date with research in a particular field, highlighting the areas of special excitement and progress. They should focus on one topical aspect rather than providing a comprehensive literature survey. Authors should identify areas in the field where further developments are imminent, and give possible directions. Reviews normally include a 250-word abstract, 4–6 keywords, up to a maximum of 20 figures or tables and up to 80 references. Reviews are suggested to be limited to a maximum of 20 journal pages, including references, captions and notes. Authors are responsible to obtain written copyright permissions to reproduce any copyright materials in print and online editions of the journal from other sources for reproduction of the material from previously published work.
Guidelines for manuscript preparation
Cover letter: A cover letter should include:
- The name, affiliation and contact details of corresponding author(s)
- suggestion for 3-6 national and international potential reviewers (name, complete affiliation and a valid official e-mail). The suggested reviewers  must not be author(s)
- collaborator(s) at any stage. However, the journal editors are free to choose reviewers beyond the list suggested by the author(s).
- A statement of the conflict of interest for all authors
- Brief description about the significance and novelty of the research work
Manuscript order: The following order may please be followed in the arrangement of the manuscript:
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction
- Materials & methods (experimental/simulation procedures)
- Results and discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Declarations
- Reference
Manuscript template: Please click here to download the manuscript template (or right click and save the file). Authors are requested to use this template for your manuscript preparation. 
General Layout: Set up the layout on your PC/Mac/workstation in the format (11.7″ high, 8.27″ wide). In this format, define 0.5″ (1.27 cm) wide left and right. The top margin should be 0.6″ (1.52 cm). The bottom margin should be 0.75″(1.9 cm). For unit conversion: 1 inch = 2.54 cm. Define a two-column layout, with a space of 0.25″(0.635cm) between columns. The title/ author/ affiliation section should be centered above both columns. NO blank lines between authors and institutions. Adjust the two columns on the last page to equal length, as far as possible. All paragraphs are to be indented 0.2″. 
Text Formatting: Please use Century Gothic throughout the entire manuscript body, except where stated specifically.  To achieve a unified look, the following formats should be used as illustrated also by this sample manuscript:
- Title: 16 points, century gothic font, all capitals, bold;
- Authors10 points, italic;
- Affiliation: 8 points, regular;
- Abstract headings: 11 points, century gothic font, all capitals, bold, without numbering;
- Section headings: 12 points, century gothic font, all capitals, bold, numbered;
- Sub section Headings: 11 points, bold, century gothic font, numbered;
- Text body: 10 points, regular; all paragraphs indented .2”;
- Figure captions: 9 points, century gothic;
- Table captions: 9 points, century gothic;
- References: 9 points, regular, numbered.
Figures and tables: Figures and illustrations may be in black and white, grey-scale or color.  Digital images, e.g., schematic drawings, photos, micrographs, etc., should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi.  Each figure should be accompanied by a numbered caption, as shown in Fig. 1, placed right below the figure being described.  All labels within the figure frame should be in font 10 or larger. Please ensure that all labels, arrows, lines, and other graphical elements superimposed on schematic drawings and micrographs print with sufficient contrast.  Figure 2 shows a photograph with unfavorable resolution (96 dpi) and low contrast.
 
Figure 1: The caption should be placed after the figure.
 
Figure 2: Rendering with low resolution (96 dpi), unfavorable size, and other deficiencies.
Tables should span one column, should be concise and should be preceded by a caption. Number tables in the order they are cited in the text.  Do not use internal horizontal or vertical lines, colour or shading. Design details are left to the authors.
Do not use very thin lines (hairline rules) in any of your Illustrations, Figures, Charts.  All lines need to be .5 rule or higher. Line drawings must be made in black ink.  If a table or figure is too wide to be contained in a single column, extend it over both columns, preferable at the top or bottom of a page.
Mathematical equations: When numbering equations, enclose numbers in parentheses and place flush with right-hand margin of the column, i.e., with appropriate punctuation. 
                                                                                                            x+y+z=1                                                                                       (1)    


Declarations
Funding:
 Example (The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this study derived from the ----------------).
Conflicts of interest/Competing interests: Example (The authors declare no any conflict of interest/competing interests OR as the case may be).
Data availability: Example (Not applicable OR as the case may be).
Code availability: Example (Not applicable OR as the case may be).
Authors’ contributions: For transparency, we encourage authors to submit an author statement file outlining their individual contributions to the paper using the relevant CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) roles: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Roles/ Writing - original draft; Writing - review & editing. Authorship statements should be formatted with the names of authors first and CRediT role(s) following. e.g. here is a sample CRediT author statement: “Zaheer Khan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software Tayyabullah: Data curation, Writing- Original draft preparation. Muhammad Amir: Visualization, Investigation.  Ziaullah: Supervision Basit Ali: Software, Validation Nadia: Writing- Reviewing and Editing,”
References:  References should be in the proper format, numbered in the sequence in which they occur in the text. In the examples below, this is illustrated for contributions to conference proceedings[1], journals [2], Books [3], Book chapters [4], dissertations [5] and patents [6]. Do not use the phrases "et al." and "ibid." in the reference section. Instead, the names of all authors in a reference must be listed. If you are using Endnote for reference management, you can download the endnote style and copy this file into your endnote styles folder e.g.  C:\Program Files (x86)\EndNote X9\Styles. Do not use headers or footnotes.  Rather write your text to include all essential ideas and to be free from material of low importance.  If you have no other option and must use a footnote, number the footnotes separately in superscripts1.  Place the actual footnote at the bottom of the column in which it is cited.  Do not put footnotes in the reference list or exceed the margins limits.
Some example references:
[1]   K. Aratani, P. French, P. Sarro, S. Zaman, Topological aspects of grain growth microstructure: The two-dimensional and three-dimensional cases. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Stereology and Image Analysis in Material Science, June 3-6, (1994).
[2]   N. Akaiwa, P.W. Voorhees, Late-stage phase separation: dynamics spatial correlations, and structure functions, Phys. Rev. E 49 (1994) 3860–3880.
[3]   S. Timoshinko, D. Young, W. Weaver, Vibration Problems in Engineering, 4th edtion, John Wiley and Sons, (1974).
[4]   D. F. Khan and M.H. Farooq, Nonstructural characterization,  In Modeling of nanostructures, John Wiley and Sons, (1974), pp.163-275.
[5]   A. Ullah, Study of the evolution of grain structures via 3D reconstruction, Monte carlo simulation and Mathematical modeling techniques, Ph. D. Thesis, Beijing, University of Science and technology Beijing, (2013).
[6]  G. Q. Liu, H. Wang, and D. J. Sorolovitz, Methods for procedures related to the electrophysiology of the heart, U.S. Patent 3,154,026, May 15 (2003)