Author Guidelines

This page sets out The Asian Educational Therapist's editorial standards, content quality requirements and policy compliance obligations for authors. 

The journal aligns its publication ethics policies and editorial practices with the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) , and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Authors are expected to adhere to these guidelines throughout the publication process. 

For detailed information on publication ethics, please see our Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

 

1. International Relevance

The journal welcomes submissions from clinicians, neuroscientists, therapists, psychologists, psychosocial interventionists, researchers, educators and policymakers worldwide. Manuscripts from all cultural, linguistic, and regional contexts are equally valued, provided they fall within the journal's Aims and Scope. The journal is is committed to publishing content of international relevance and readability, with all articles featuring English titles, abstracts, and keywords.

Manuscripts must be written in clear and grammatically correct English (American or British, applied consistently), be original and not under concurrent consideration elsewhere, and comply with all formatting, word count, and citation requirements set out in the Instructions for Authors.

See Aims and Scope

 

2. Authorship

All authors must meet International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria. The Author Contributions statement on the Title Page must be completed using the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) framework. Honorary, gift, and ghost authorship are prohibited. 
● Participation in funding acquisition or general supervision alone does not qualify for authorship.
● The order of authors should reflect relative contributions.
● Changes to authorship after submission require written consent from all authors.
● Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged.

See Authorship Policy

 

3. Peer Review and Plagiarism Screening

The journal operates a double-anonymised peer review process for all submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts are reviewed by at least two independent expert reviewers. Average time from submission to first decision is 4 to 8 weeks. Editorial decisions are independent of author characteristics.

All manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using licensed detection software (iThenticate or equivalent) prior to editorial review; manuscripts above the acceptable similarity threshold will be returned without review.

Where a manuscript involves quantitative data analysis, the editor may appoint a statistical reviewer to assess the appropriateness and accuracy of the statistical methods reported.

See Plagiarism Policy and Review and Publication Process

 

4. Evidential Basis

All submissions must demonstrate at least one of the following evidential bases:
● Original empirical data
● Critical synthesis of the existing scientific literature
● Convergent scientific inference from established findings across disciplines, where the inferential logic is made explicit and conclusions are clearly distinguished from settled empirical claims
● Formal logical or mathematical derivation grounded in established axioms
● Structured expert consensus with transparent methodology
● Rigorously documented practice-based evidence

The journal does not accept manuscripts that present concepts, ideas, or theoretical propositions as unsupported assertion without rigorous evidential grounding. Submissions without critical engagement with the existing literature will be returned without peer review. Authors advancing a conceptual or theoretical contribution must do so within a Narrative Review structure. A standalone conceptual paper without evidential grounding is not an accepted article type in the journal.

 

5. Content Quality Standards

All manuscripts are evaluated against the following standards at both editorial assessment and peer review stages, in accordance with the requirements of Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed/MEDLINE indexing evaluations:

Standard	Requirement
Scientific Rigour	Methodology must be appropriate, transparent, and sufficiently detailed for independent replication. Conclusions must not exceed what the evidence supports. Limitations must be acknowledged.
Originality	Manuscripts must make a genuine and identifiable contribution to knowledge. Those that substantially replicate existing published work without advancing the field will be declined at editorial assessment.
Intellectual Honesty	All factual claims must be supported by verifiable peer-reviewed sources. Authors must accurately represent cited works and must not selectively cite evidence to support a predetermined conclusion. See Academic Misconduct Policy and Citation Manipulation Policy
Clarity	Manuscripts must be written in clear, precise English comprehensible to an international readership, a requirement of Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed/MEDLINE.
Currency of Literature	The literature cited must be current and representative. Systematic avoidance of contradictory recent evidence constitutes selective citation. See Citation Manipulation Policy
Ethical Integrity	Research must have been conducted with appropriate ethics committee approval and informed consent. Manuscripts without documented ethical oversight will be rejected regardless of scientific quality. See Research Ethics Policy
Translational Relevance	Manuscripts should articulate clear implications for educational therapy or psychosocial intervention practice, policy, or training, in alignment with the journal's mission.

 

6. Mandatory Declarations

The following declarations must be completed on the Title Page for all submissions. Incomplete declarations will result in the submission being returned before editorial review.

Declaration	What Is Required
Conflict of Interest	Declare all financial and non-financial competing interests, or state explicitly that none exist. See Conflict of Interest Policy
Funding	State all funding sources and whether the funder was involved in the research or reporting. See Funding Policy
Data Availability	State whether data are publicly available, available on request, or restricted, with reasons. See Data and Software Availability Policy
Ethics Approval	Name the ethics committee, approval number, date, and consent procedure. See Research Ethics Policy
AI Disclosure	Name any AI tools used, state the purpose and extent of author oversight. See Artificial Intelligence Policy
Clinical Trial Registration	State registry name, ID, public title, and registration date (where applicable). See Research Ethics Policy

 

7. Appeals

Authors who receive a rejection decision may appeal within 30 days on specific grounds, such as a demonstrable factual error in the review or evidence of an undisclosed conflict of interest. Disagreement with the reviewer's scholarly judgement does not constitute grounds for appeal. The Editor-in-Chief's decision on appeal is final.

See Complaints and Appeals Policy

 

8. Copyright, Licensing and Archiving

Authors retain full copyright of their published works. All articles are published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence and assigned a Crossref DOI. The journal uses LOCKSS and CLOCKSS for long-term digital preservation, satisfying the archiving requirements of major indexing platforms.

See
Open Access, Copyrights and Licensing Policy
Archiving and Preservation Policy,
Repository Policy

 

9. Author Charges and Fees

The journal is committed to full transparency on all charges that may apply from submission through to publication.

Submission fee	None.
Other fees	None.
Article Processing Charge (APC)	Only an APC is payable only upon acceptance of a manuscript for publication. The APC covers editorial management, production, online hosting, and long-term archiving. No APC is charged for rejected manuscripts.
Waiver policy	APC waivers or discounts are available based on membership of the Association of Educational Therapists (Singapore). The current APC schedule, membership discount tiers, and waiver conditions are set out in full on the Article Processing Charge page.
Withdrawal after submission	If an author withdraws a manuscript after submission, no fee is charged provided the manuscript has not yet been accepted. No withdrawal fee will ever exceed the applicable APC.