Author Guidelines

Webology is an international scientific online journal which publishes articles from all areas related to the World Wide Web and serves as a forum for discussion and experimentation. It welcomes original papers in all fields. Survey articles of exceptional quality will also be considered. Particularly welcome are articles contributing new results in practical and active theoretical areas. Webology will consider article in English which deal with any aspect of the World Wide Web.

The submission of the manuscript by the authors means that the paper has not been published by another journal, nor it is under review by another journal. Manuscripts are received with the understanding that they have not been previously published in or submitted to other journals, and that if the work received official sponsorship, it has been duly released for publication.

These Author Guidelines are published to prepare and submit articles to a standard format that will be accepted by Webology. Manuscripts that do not conform to these specifications will be returned to authors.

Submission of articles

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically in MS-Word format as "attachment". However, Rich Text format, PDF and HTML format are acceptable. Authors should submit their article using the submission system available in the journal website.

Peer review and Review process

Manuscripts are acknowledged upon receipt by e-mail to the corresponding author within seven working days. The manuscript is read and examined for conformity to the Authors Guidelines by the editor. Failure to meet the criteria outlined may result in return of the article for correction before evaluation. The editor assigns management of the peer review to an associate editor responsible for the subject area of the article. The associate editor selects reviewers who are invited, in confidence, to evaluate the article according to the Webology Authors Guidelines. After this evaluation process the author and the editor receive the comments from the peer reviewers regarding the suitability of the submission.

All submissions except those sent as "Letters to the Editor" are subject to review by two or more independent reviewers selected by the editor(s). Authors may suggest reviewers. The reviewers are asked to indicate the article's degree of interest to Webology readers and whether the article should be published without change, with minor, major, or appropriate revision, or not at all.
Each author is kept informed of delays in the review process and receives formal notification of the status of his or her submission after reviewers have commented upon it. Questions about the review process and accepted articles should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

The editors reserve the right to submit a revision to the original reviewers for approval before accepting the article for publication.

The editors reserve the right to modify style, make editorial corrections where necessary, shorten articles, and to determine time and priority of publication. Members of the Editorial Board are asked to assess articles on the basis of importance of the research topic and problem; originality of approach; methodology of research; organization and structure of articles; recognition of existing literature; quality of references, scientific strength, clarity of presentation and appropriateness for readers of the Webology. The journal uses an Evaluation Form to collect referees comments. Copies of the referees' comments will be forwarded to the author along with the editor's decision.

Revision

A request for revision does not mean that the article has been accepted for publication, but is an opportunity to present the best possible article to the editorial committee for a decision about publication. Authors are generally given 2 to 4 weeks to return the revised article to us.

Final test and proofs

The authors are requested to proofread the final version before the article is available for public. They must check the HTML versions (full text). After receiving the authors final approval for the HTML versions, the article is published, according author's corrections. Once all accepted articles are ready, they become online available for public. Authors are encouraged to add hyperlinks to their articles on their personal web pages.

Copyright and permissions

The copyright of articles accepted for Webology rests with the author(s) under the Creative Commons. All opinion stated are exclusively that of the author(s). Fair Use and Educational Use are permitted. External links to Webology and its articles are welcome.

Figures that reproduce copyrighted or trademarked visual images or that show objects whose design is copyrighted or trademarked can be published only with the permission of the owner of the copyright or trademark. It is the responsibility of the author of the article in which the figure appears to obtain this permission, or to determine that the image or design is in the public domain.

Paper organization

In general, the background and purpose of the study should be stated first, followed by details of the materials, methods, procedures, and equipment used. Findings, discussion, conclusions, acknowledgements, and references should follow in that order. Appendices may be employed where appropriate. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association should be consulted for details as needed.

Format and style of articles

The articles will be managed electronically, examined by a scientific committee and anonymous evaluators and published quarterly in HTML format. The journal will maintain the essential characteristics of scientific publications: to have an Editorial Board that evaluates the quality of the article contents.

Please submit texts as Word or RTF documents. We will convert the Word format to HTML. Webology uses a style sheet for headings, paragraphs, and references.

Articles should contain title (the full title of the article without abbreviations, it should be brief and informative, specifying clearly the content of the article); author's full names, and degrees; contact information for authors, complete affiliations (include a current, complete street address, along with fax, telephone numbers, and e-mail address); an abstract; and references. Keep all information pertinent to a particular section, and avoid repetition. The title of the article, author(s) name(s) and affiliation(s) should appear at the head of the article as follows:

Title of the Article

 

Author(s) full name(s)
Affiliation, Street, City, Country. E-mail:

Abstract

An informative abstract of 200 words or less is required for all articles. The abstract must be a single paragraph that summarizes the main findings of the paper. It should state the purpose of the study, basic procedures, the techniques used, main findings and the principal conclusions, and what was accomplished. Abbreviations and citations should be avoided in the abstract.

 

Keywords

After the abstract, author(s) should provide between three and ten keywords, which must not be part of the title of the article. Keywords will be useful for indexing or searching. Keywords should be separated by a semicolon, and a space.

Heading in the text

Organize your article text into sections entitled Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, and References. Use only three levels of headings in the text. Clearly indicate the levels of headings by using H1 (title of the article), H2 (for first level headings), and H3 (for second level headings). Keep headings short (three or four words); do not use abbreviations. Do not underline any headings. Do not use font size or color. The paper should not form part of a numbered series but should be headed by concise, informative headings.

Introduction

The purpose of the article and rationale for the study should be presented. Do not review the subject extensively. Use a comma at the beginning of a sentence to set off introductory words, a participial phrase, or an adverb clause (e.g., "In our current work,"; "In our early experiments,"; "In this research,")

Abbreviations and Terminology

The APA Style Guide is generally used to determine spelling, hyphenation, style, usage, and abbreviation. Standardized, universally recognized terms and abbreviations should be used. Special nomenclature should be defined at the point of first use in the text. Define trade names and special symbols. Define or explain new or highly technical terminology. Write out the first use of a term that you expect to use subsequently in abbreviated form. For example, Information retrieval (IR).

Abbreviations (i.e., e.g., etc.) are only acceptable in parenthesis, otherwise they must be spelled out, that is, for example, and so forth, respectively.

Acronyms, abbreviations, local and organizations names need to be explained, for example IRANDOC (Iranian Information and Documentation Center). All nonstandard abbreviations should be defined at that point in the text where they first appear. Abbreviations that are accepted and recognized as common scientific terminology may be used without definition.

In all cases, the first letter of the word "Web" should be written in minuscule, except in a case which "the Web" is a surrogate for the "World Wide Web". Webology use American-English spellings.

Illustrations: Tables and Figures

Illustrations (tables and figures) should be embedded within the text. All illustrations should be cited in the text as Table 1, Table 2, etc. or Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.

Tables

If you send your article in HTML, tables in the text should be designed in HTML format. They must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals in the order in which they are cited in the text. They should have a brief descriptive title placed at the top and with essential footnotes below. Prepare tables in a consistent form, and each appropriately titled. Provide them at approximately the correct size they are to be published.

Diagrams

Diagrams should be converted to .jpg or .gif files and attached to the e-mail message. Number figures consecutively with Arabic numerals. Lettering on drawings should be professional quality.

Figures

The figures must be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and have a brief descriptive title. They should have a brief descriptive title placed at the top and with essential footnotes below. Lettering on drawings should be professional quality or generated by high-resolution computer graphics and must be large enough.

Acknowledgements

At the end of the article, before references, individuals, institutions, or funding agencies may be acknowledged. Acknowledge only persons or colleagues who have contributed to the scientific content and provided technical or financial support. Authors may also acknowledge the referee if they wish. However, it is not appropriate to acknowledge the help of the Scientific Editor or other members of the Webology staff. Authors must submit written permission from persons acknowledged for other than financial or technical support.

References

Webology uses the style of the APA to conform to U.S.A. styles. The references section should be located following acknowledgements at the end of the text. Complete information should be given for each reference. The accuracy and completeness of the references is the responsibility of the author(s). References to personal letters (e-mail communications), papers presented at meetings, and other unpublished works (papers in preparation) may be cited. If such work may be of help in the evaluation of the article, copies should be made available to the editor(s). Author(s) must submit a letter of permission from the cited persons to cite e-mail communications. The corresponding authors and references should be set out as the style of the APA, and only the first word of a cited title should be written in initial capital letter. Journal names should not be abbreviated and should be given in italics. Footnotes should not be used.

Citations in the text

All references should be cited in the text mentioning the last name of the author and year of publication between parentheses. In case of two authors, both should be mentioned. When there are three or more authors, mention only the first author followed by et al., and the year. When two or more references are cited in the same parenthesis, the authors should be in chronological order. And if they have published in the same year, they should be in alphabetical order. Moreover, if there is more than one reference of the same author and the same year, they should be indicated with letters. See examples:

1. One author: (Ingwersen, 1998).
2. Two authors: (Small & Garfield, 1986).
3. Three or more authors: papers by three or more authors are cited by the first author followed by et al., and the date (Ingwersen et al., 2003).
4. Two or more references with the same year: (Garfield, 1999; Lancaster, 1999; Small, 1999).
5. Two or more references with the same author and the same year: (Garfield, 2003a; 2003b; 2003c).
6. Two or more references in the same parenthesis: (Garfield, 2000; Ingwersen, 2003; Small et al., 2004). More examples:
   

"The Web is a loose concept (Berners-Lee, 1999) for which many alternative rigorous definitions are possible (Lavoie & Nielsen, 1999; Boutell, 2003) and the trend seems to be towards very inclusive definitions, including anything that can be accessed through a web browser."

In 2004, Bjorneborn & Ingwersen defined Webometrics as "the study of the quantitative aspects of the construction and use of information resources, structures and technologies on the WWW drawing on bibliometric and informetric approaches."

Another example: According to Garfield (1979) citations are the formal explicit linkage between publications that have particular points in common.

They do not need any additional citations.

Citations in the References section

At the end of the article, in the references section the literature should be arranged in alphabetical order. If they have the same author, they should be in chronological order. They must be presented according to the APA style.

The references list should not include unpublished material. References to articles accepted for publication but not yet published must include the title of the journal and the year of expected publication by inserting a reference within parenthesis in the text (forthcoming), and then ask the Editor to change its bibliographic information, when it will be published.

Electronic information resources

For references to electronic information resources, please use the APA manual. For more information, or examples, see the APA manual. Hyperlinks should be correct and active.

Questions

The editors welcome questions from readers regarding equipment and application techniques. Questions should be sent to the Editor and should include a name and affiliation.