Submissions

Author Guidelines

Structure

Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).

Word Limits

A typical paper for this journal should be no more than 8000 words, inclusive of abstrac, tables, references and figure or table captions.

Style Guidelines

Please use British (-ise) spelling style consistently throughout your manuscript.

In the text in Portuguese, the current orthographic standard (derived from the Orthographic Agreement of 1990) must be used.

Please note that long (over three lines) quotations should be left indented (2.0 cm) without quotation marks.

Formatting the manuscript

Font - use Times New Roman font in size 12 with simple-line spacing.

Margins - margins should be 2.5 cm.

Title - use capital letters in size 14 for your article title.

Abstract - indicate the abstract paragraph with a heading.  Please provide an abstract no longer than 150 words. The abstract should not contain any undefined abbreviations or unspecified references.

Keywords - keywords help readers find your article, so are vital for discoverability. Please provide 3 to 5 keywords.

Headings - please follow this guide to show the level of the section headings in your article:

    - First-level headings (e.g. Introduction, Conclusion) should be in bold, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

    - Second-level headings should be in bold italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

    - Third-level headings should be in italics, with an initial capital letter for any proper nouns.

Tables and figures - show clearly in the article text where the tables and figures should appear, for example, by writing [Table 1 near here].

It is very important that you have been given permission to use any tables or figures you are reproducing from another source before you submit.

Special characters - if you are preparing your manuscript in Microsoft Word and your article contains special characters, accents, or diacritics, we recommend you follow these steps:

    - European accents (Greek, Hebrew, or Cyrillic letters, or phonetic symbols): choose Times New Roman font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.

    - Asian languages (such as Sanskrit, Korean, Chinese, or Japanese): choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window and insert the character you require.

    - Transliterated Arabic: choose either Times New Roman or Arial Unicode (unless the instructions for authors specify a particular font). For ayns and hamzas, choose Arial Unicode font from the dropdown menu in the “Insert symbol” window. Type the Unicode hexes directly into the “Character code” box, using 02BF for ayn, and 02BE for hamza.

Formatting and Templates

Papers may be submitted in Word formats. Figures should be saved separately from the text.

References APA7

Authors should follow official APA version 7 guidelines for references and on the number of authors included in reference list entries (i.e., include all authors up to 20; for larger groups, give the first 19 names followed by an ellipsis and the final author’s name). However, if authors shorten the author group by using et al., this will be retained.

Checklist

1. Author details. All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCIDs. One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted.
2. Should contain an unstructured abstract no longer than 150 words.
3. Between 3 and 5 keywords.
4. Funding details. Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
   For single agency grants
   This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].
   For multiple agency grants
   This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].
5. Disclosure statement. This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research.
6. Biographical note. Please supply a short biographical note for each author. This could be adapted from your departmental website or academic networking profile and should be relatively brief (e.g. no more than 100 words).
7. Figures. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: EPS, PS, JPEG, TIFF, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) files are acceptable for figures that have been drawn in Word.
8. Tables. Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.
9. Equations. If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that equations are editable.