Research manuscripts should comprise:
Review manuscripts should comprise the front matter, appropriate literature review sections, and the back matter. The journal template may also be used to prepare the front and back matter of review manuscripts.
Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be defined in parentheses the first time they appear in the abstract, main text, and figure or table captions.
SI Units: International System of Units (SI) should be used. Imperial, US customary, and other units should be converted to SI units whenever possible.
Equations: When preparing manuscripts in Microsoft Word, authors should use the Microsoft Equation Editor or MathType. Equations must remain editable by the Editorial Office and should not be submitted as images.
Research Data and Supplementary Materials: Publication of a manuscript implies that authors should make the materials, data, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Any restrictions on the availability of materials, data, or other information should be disclosed during submission.
The following sections should appear in all manuscript types:
Title: The title of the manuscript should be concise, specific, and relevant. Where established names of decision-making models, methods, algorithms, or analytical approaches have commonly recognized abbreviations, the appropriate abbreviated form may be used.
Author List and Affiliations: Authors' full first and last names must be provided. Initials of middle names may be included. Complete affiliation information should be provided, including institution, city, postal code, state/province where applicable, and country. At least one author must be designated as the corresponding author, and the corresponding author's email address should be provided.
Abstract: The abstract should be approximately 200 words or fewer. It should be presented as a single paragraph and follow the general structure of a structured abstract without using headings: (1) Background – place the research question in a broader context and state the purpose of the study; (2) Methods – briefly describe the principal methods or approaches used; (3) Results – summarize the main findings; and (4) Conclusions – state the principal conclusions and interpretations. The abstract must objectively represent the content of the article and should not contain results that are not presented and substantiated in the main text or exaggerate the conclusions.
Keywords: Authors should provide three to ten relevant keywords after the abstract. Keywords should be specific to the article while remaining reasonably common within the relevant subject discipline.
Introduction: The Introduction should place the study in a broad scientific context and explain its importance. It should clearly define the purpose and significance of the work, including specific research questions or hypotheses where applicable. The current state of the research field should be reviewed and relevant key publications cited. Controversial or diverging hypotheses should be identified where appropriate. The Introduction should conclude by clearly stating the main aim of the work.
Materials and Methods: Materials, methods, models, algorithms, datasets, and analytical procedures should be described in sufficient detail to enable other researchers to replicate and build upon the published results. New methods and procedures should be described in detail, while well-established methods may be described briefly and appropriately cited. Authors should provide the name and version of software used and indicate whether relevant computer code is publicly available. Any applicable preregistration information should also be provided.
Results: Authors should provide a concise and precise description of the research results and the findings that can be derived from them. Results should be presented clearly and supported by appropriate tables, figures, statistical analyses, computational results, or other evidence where applicable.
Discussion: Authors should discuss the results and explain how they can be interpreted in relation to previous studies, research questions, and hypotheses. The implications of the findings should be considered in the broadest relevant context, and the limitations of the work should be clearly identified. Directions for future research should also be discussed where appropriate. The Discussion section may be combined with the Results section when appropriate.
Conclusions: A separate Conclusions section is optional. It may be included when it provides a concise synthesis of the principal findings, implications, and contributions of the research.
Supplementary Materials: Authors should describe any supplementary materials published online alongside the manuscript, including figures, tables, datasets, software, or other supporting files. Supplementary elements should be clearly identified, for example: Figure S1: title; Table S1: title.
Acknowledgments: Authors should acknowledge individuals, organizations, or other contributors who assisted with the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship.
Funding: All sources of research funding should be disclosed. Authors should clearly identify grants or other financial support received for conducting the research and, where applicable, funding received to cover publication costs.
Author Contributions: Each listed author is expected to have made a substantial contribution to the work and to have approved the submitted version of the manuscript. Authorship should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to the research and preparation of the manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest: Authors must identify and declare any personal, professional, or financial circumstances or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of the reported research results. If no conflict of interest exists, authors should state: "The authors declare no conflicts of interest."
References: References must be numbered according to their first appearance in the text, including citations appearing in table captions and figure legends, and listed individually at the end of the manuscript. Authors should include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for references whenever available.
Citations in the Text
Authors should ensure that every reference cited in the manuscript appears in the reference list and that every reference included in the reference list is cited in the manuscript. References cited in the abstract must also be provided in full in the reference list.
Unpublished results and personal communications are generally not recommended for inclusion in the reference list but may be mentioned in the text where appropriate. A reference described as "in press" should only be used when the work has been formally accepted for publication.
Citations in the text should be indicated by reference numbers enclosed in square brackets, for example [1] or [26].
Examples:
"...as demonstrated in previous research [13]."
"The theory was first proposed in 1987 [1]."
"Scholtz [2] has argued that..."
"Liu et al. [8] demonstrated that..."
"Several recent studies [3, 4, 15, 16] have suggested that..."
"For example, see [7]."
It is not necessary to mention the author name or publication date unless this information is relevant to the discussion. It is also unnecessary to write "in reference [26]"; "in [26]" is sufficient.
When citing multiple sources at the same location, reference numbers should be separated by commas or presented as a range where appropriate.
Examples:
[1, 3, 5]
[1–5]
For web references, authors should provide, at minimum, the complete URL and the date on which the resource was last accessed. Where available, additional bibliographic information such as author names, publication date, title, and source should also be included.
Journal of Decision Intelligence and Analytics (DINA) encourages authors to cite underlying or relevant datasets in their manuscripts and include data references in the reference list. Data references should include the author name(s), dataset title, data repository, version where available, year, and a globally persistent identifier such as a DOI.
The identifier [dataset] should be placed immediately before a data reference so that it can be properly identified during the publication process.
Reference to a Journal Publication:
Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59.
Reference to a Book:
Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style (4th ed.). New York: Longman.
Reference to a Chapter in an Edited Book:
Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.
Reference to a Website:
Cancer Research UK. Cancer statistics reports for the UK. (2003). Available online: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/ (accessed 13 March 2003).
Reference to a Dataset:
[dataset] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., & Nakashizuka, T. (2015). Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.
Journal titles should be abbreviated according to the List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA).
Data Availability
To support the integrity, transparency, and reproducibility of the scientific record, authors should make experimental and research data associated with their published work openly available by depositing the data in an appropriate repository or by providing the relevant data and files as supplementary materials with the article. Any restrictions on data availability should be clearly disclosed and justified.
Computer Code and Software
For research in which novel computer code or software has been developed, authors should make the relevant code available by depositing it in a recognized public repository or by providing it as supplementary material to the publication. The name and version of software used in the research should be clearly stated.
Supplementary Material
Additional data, documents, software, and other files may be uploaded as supplementary files during the manuscript submission process. Supplementary files may be made available to reviewers as part of the peer-review process. Common, accessible, and non-proprietary file formats are recommended whenever possible.
References in Supplementary Files
Citations and references may be included in supplementary files, provided that the corresponding references also appear in the reference list of the main manuscript.
