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Pacific Asia Journal of the Association for Information Systems

Guide for Authors

Contents

MANUSCRIPT CATEGORY

1. Research Articles

2. Research Perspectives

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PUBLICATION FREQUENCY

PAJAIS is a quarterly journal, will publish four issues in March, June, September, and December.

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SUBMISSION GUIDELINE

1. New submissions

Authors are invited to submit original and unpublished papers. To submit a manuscript to PAJAIS, the online submission system will guide you step by step through the process of entering your manuscript details and uploading your files. The system will convert your files to a single PDF file automatically, which is used in the peer-review process. The PAJAIS MS Word template is available here. Papers should be submitted through the online submission system at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pajais. Submission to PAJAIS implies the authors' certification that the manuscript is not copyrighted and is not currently under review in any other journal or conference.

To ensure the validity of empirical studies, editors and reviewers can ask authors to provide a complete dataset during the review for testing and validation of executed statistical analyses. In such cases, authors are expected to provide the dataset as a condition for publishing the article. See PAJAIS Data Policies.

To avoid any misunderstanding regarding the originality of submission, the authors are expected to provide full information about authorship, pre-submission history, earlier related publications and necessary acknowledgments in Title Page.

2. Submitting a Cover Letter

Authors are strongly encouraged to provide a cover letter with their submission. The cover letter should contain the following information:

(1) A brief summary of this submission (i.e. research background, result, and contribution).

(2) A declaration of any closely related research that has been published or submitted for publication elsewhere. Closely related research includes: research by any of the authors that investigates one, or more, of the same central constructs and that has been published in, submitted to, or planned for submission to, another journal or conference; research by any of the authors using the same data set that has been published in, submitted to, or planned for submission to, another journal or conference.

(3) A notification if the paper is a revision of previously submitted paper to PAJAIS. Only papers that received an invitation for revision (minor revision, major revision, reject & resubmit) may be resubmitted to PAJAIS. Papers rejected from the journal or from a special issue of the journal are not invited for revision unless specifically mentioned in the Senior Editor’s report.

If disclosures need to be made against point 2 above, then the authors should provide an explanation as to how the current paper offers a contribution over and above that which has appeared before or been submitted for publication elsewhere. For papers that have appeared in a conference proceeding, the authors should explain how they have improved and extended the paper over and above the conference publication.

The major requirements at PAJAIS are that the journal version must have at least 50% new material, the journal version must include a citation to the conference paper, and the authors must carefully discuss the conference paper and summarize the new material in the submission. The detailed requirements as below.

(1) The current study is an extension of the article published at the conference, and thus the major differences between your current study and the article published at the conference should be discussed.

(2) All submissions go through a textual similarity check to avoid copyright problems. If the text has been taken verbatim from other sources (e.g. a number of full sentences are copied) it will not go into the review process. Rewrite, rephrase and restructure all sentences in your submission that are largely overlapped with the article published at the conference.

(3) Ensure your contributions would be significantly different from the article published at the conference. We expect that the journal paper would present much more new content than the conference paper.

(4) The main body of the manuscript (including the references, figures, tables, and any acknowledgments) should be written in a way that it does not show an author’s identity.

3. Double-blind review

Upon submission, manuscripts are checked for their completeness and adherence to the AIS policies. Next, each completed manuscript is assigned a Senior Editor to manage its evaluation. Each Senior Editor has the autonomy to accept or reject a paper for publication or to request that the author revise and resubmit the paper.

Submissions are screened to provide quick feedback to authors if there are significant issues that would preclude a favorable reaction from the reviewers. Senior Editor solicits reviews from two or three reviewers and integrates them to provide a recommendation. The Editor-in-Chief makes the final decision based on reviewer comments and Senior Editor’s recommendation.

The journal seeks to complete evaluations and decisions on each submission within 90 days from the original date of submission of a manuscript. If the revision of a manuscript is invited, authors are urged to complete their work and resubmit their paper within three months.

PAJAIS implements double-blinded reviews, meaning that both the authors and the reviewers are ‘blind’ to the identity of the other. To achieve this, please upload the following separately:

  • Title page (with author details): Title page should include the title of the manuscript, authors' names, e-mail address, affiliations, acknowledgments and any Declaration of Interest statement. The corresponding author should provide a complete address and an e-mail address.

  • Blinded manuscript (no author details): The main body of the manuscript (including the references, figures, tables) should be written in a way that it does not show an author’s identity.

4. Revised submissions

At revision, you must provide us a response letter to answer point-by-point requirements in a two-column format, upload to online review system separately.

Authors should familiarize themselves with PAJAIS Policies and PAJAIS Copyright.

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PREPARING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

1. Language (usage and editing services)

Please write your manuscript in good English (American). The quality and clarity of writing can significantly impact the views of reviewers. PAJAIS aims to publish the highest quality papers in research contribution. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to submit manuscripts that are well written. Poorly written and error-prone manuscripts risk initial desk rejection.

2. Submission checklist

You can use this list to carry out a final check of your submission before you send it to the journal for review.

(1) Manuscript

  • Include abstract and keywords
  • Main body (no author details)
  • All figures (include relevant captions) and all tables (including titles, description, footnotes)
  • Ensure all figure and table citations in the text match the files provided
  • Correct reference format

(2) Title Page

  • Concise and instructive. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems, avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.
  • Author names and affiliations. Please clearly present the given name and family name of each author and confirm that all names are accurately spelled. Present the authors' affiliation addresses below the names. Provide the e-mail address of each author.
  • Corresponding author. To mark who will be the corresponding author at all stages (under review process and also post-publication) and ensure that the e-mail address is given. This responsibility includes answering any future queries about methodology and materials.
  • The title page stored here.

(3) Response

  • Response letter. When your manuscript is a revision, please submit a point-to-point summary of the revision to the online review system. When submitting your revised manuscript, you are requested to identify the revised sections in the response letter with page number and highlight these revisions in RED for clarity.

(4) Further considerations

  • Referee suggestions and contact details provided, based on journal requirements All references mentioned in the Reference List are cited in the text, and vice versa
  • A competing interests statement is provided, even if the authors have no competing interests to declare

3. Manuscript Length

PAJAIS does not have formal restrictions on page length. However, all manuscripts should be written concisely to avoid unnecessary length. An approximate guide for Research Articles is 12,000 words. Manuscripts that are more than 12,000 words are very likely to receive extra scrutiny from the editors. Prospective authors for PAJAIS publication should submit their manuscript double-spaced using Arial, 10 pt.

4. Article structure

(1) Abstract

All PAJAIS manuscripts should be submitted in the style of a structured abstract with no more than 300 words. Write an informative abstract that addresses key points. The abstract should not include references. The structured abstract has four labeled sections.

labeled sections

Essential aspects

Suggestions

Background

Concise

A brief introduction to reveal the main ideas of the manuscript. The title, abstract and content are consistent with each other and the manuscript. An examination of research objectives and contexts, why the work was done, and what is important.

Clear

The research questions must be articulated in an explicit sentence. The authors must define what the primary research objective is. State the reason for the name of the study, call attention to the proposed questions that previous scholarly conversation has neglected.

Methods

Concise

The fundamental research design for conducting the study should be reported clearly. All unnecessary methodological details should be omitted.

Clear

Do not overstate the advancement of research methods. The abstract should state explicitly how the study design has been designed to answer the posed research question(s).

Results

Concise

Only showing the expected and observed results is insufficient. Key findings that explain how and why differences occurred should be organized in summary form to make them easier to understand.

Clear

Do not report trivial findings, focus exclusively on key findings that reveal insights and develop new avenues of research.

Conclusions

Concise

Elements of the conclusion found in the abstract must be justified and supported by the evidence in the manuscript.

Clear

Focus on the contribution to existing scholarly conversation. How do the implications revise or extend well-known wisdom?


 

(2) Keywords

After the abstract, provide 3 to 5 keywords. Avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations.

(3) Introduction

Describe the problem or issues that motivate the study, outline the aim and purpose of the study/paper and derive the research questions. Define the Unit(s) of Analysis and briefly outline the benefits of the study for academics and practitioners. Also, position the study relative to other publications in the field.

(4) Literature Review

Critically engage and review, do not summarize. Outline the knowledge gaps or problematize to realize research opportunities. Include at least 4 articles from the last four years.

(5) Methodology and Analysis

In the methodology, describe methods with sufficient information to facilitate replication, include a discussion of validity, reliability, and ethics. In the analysis, first provide a descriptive analysis, then an inferential analysis, clearly state the results of each proposition/hypothesis test.

(6) Discussion

Benchmark results against other researchers’ results, develop or advance the theory. Outline academic and practitioner implications, also possibilities for future research.

(7) Conclusions

Summarize the study, answer the research question(s), and conclude with the study’s contribution to theory and practice.

(8) References

All references should follow the American Psychological Association (2010) guide. This section contains examples of all types of referencing. Note that this style does not capitalize every word in a text‘s title. In references, only the initial word and proper nouns should be capitalized. The only exception to this rule is with sources cited in conference proceedings. In these cases, the conference‘s name should be fully capitalized. The following section provides examples for reference styles. The only major difference between APA and PAJAIS style is that PAJAIS does not use Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs).

  • Journal papers:

Hevner, A., March, S., Park, J., & Ram, S. (2004). Design Science in Information Systems Research. MIS Quarterly, 28(1), 75-105.

  • Magazine Articles:

Ackerman (2007). The perfect blend. Consumer Goods Technology Magazine. Retrieved from http://consumergoods.edgl.com/media/publicationsarticle/art-mar07-6.pdf

  • Books:

Alvesson, M., & Deetz, S. (2000). Doing Critical Management Research. Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, California.

  • Book chapters:

Keren, G. (1990). Cognitive aids and debiasing methods: Can cognitive pills cure cognitive ills? In J. Caverni, J. Fabre, & M. Gonzalez (Eds.), Cognitive biases (pp. 523-555). Amsterdam, North Holland: Elsevier.

  • Conference:

Forget, A., Chiasson, S., & Biddle, R. (2007). Persuasian as education for computer security. In T. Bastiaens & S. Carliner (Eds.), Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2007 (pp. 882-82). Chesapeake, VA: AACE.

  • Working Papers:

Acha, V. (2004). Technology frames: The art of perspective and interpretation in strategy (SPRU Electronic Working Paper No. 109). Brighton: University of Sussex.

(9) Appendices

If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc.

(10) About the Authors

The authors' information only added on the last page when the manuscript has been accepted.

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AFTER ACCEPTANCE

We will send an e-mail after your manuscript had been accepted. Please find the copyright transfer form in the attachment, and have at least one of the authors sign it and return the form to Managing Editor ([email protected]). When you are preparing for the manuscript, please submit the final manuscript in regular manuscript format (single column and without page number).

Please make sure the following things before you submit your files:

  • All figures and graphs are in high quality
  • Your final manuscript is free from errors
  • Authors’ biosketches are provided at the last of your paper
  • All reference styles are in the correct format

Sample publications can also be found at http://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/.

After you complete the format, please send the files (copyright transfer form and MS Word manuscript) to [email protected].

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