About the Journal

GUIDELINES ON MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

1. Articles on all aspects of field, laboratory, human knowledge and experiences are welcome for consideration.

2. Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in the journal. Authors submitting to the journal (J-GEORR) should not simultaneously submit the manuscript to another journal, nor should the manuscript have been published elsewhere in substantially similar form or with substantially similar content. Authors in doubt about what constitutes prior publication should consult the editor. Submit all manuscripts electronically to the editorial team at geo@uew.edu.gh

3. For questions or inquiries about new or revised manuscript submissions, email the editorial office at geo@uew.edu.gh.

4. J-GEORR encourages submissions of three types of research articles— Research Articles, reviews and technical reports.
a. Research Articles present important new research results of broad significance.
Feature articles should include an abstract, an introductory paragraph, figures or
tables, and up and references, with text totaling no more than 7,500 words.
Significant feature articles may be somewhat longer than 7,500 words at the
discretion of the editors. Methods need to be sufficiently presented in research
article to warrant results, but information should usually be included in
supplementary online material to further support the paper & conclusions.

b. Reviews describe new developments of broad significance and highlight
unresolved questions and future directions. Reviews are research-based and aim
to convey new developments in the state of the knowledge and its implications,
whether theoretical, empirical, or methodological. Reviews should include an
abstract, an introduction that outlines the main point, brief subheadings, and
references, with text totaling no more than 6,000 words.

c. Technical report is a comprehensive document that details the process, progress,
and results of technical or scientific research. Unlike traditional research articles,
which often focus on theoretical aspects and hypotheses testing, technical reports
are more focused on practical applications and detailed documentation of methods
and findings.

d. J-GEORR may publish special issues or sections on topics that are sufficiently
compelling or of broad-based significance for the field or for the advancement of
geographical research deserving wide attention and dissemination from time to
time. Guidance for special issues would be made available once they are
constituted.

5. Manuscript organization: The manuscript should follow the following guidelines. The
section headings in the manuscript should include the following.
a. Title page
b. Abstract

i. The abstract should not exceed 250 words. The abstract should include
background, methods, results, conclusion and recommendation.
ii. Five to six keywords representing the manuscript’s main content
should be included.
c. Background of the study
i. The background of the study should provide the context of the study
which will enable readers to understand the purpose or significance of the
study
ii. Authors should highlight and describe the key research problem
and relevance of the study.
iii. If appropriate, authors should highlight on theories underpinning
the study
d. Methods
i. The methods should include a clear description of the study design, study
settings, sources of data, sampling techniques, data collection procedures,
data analysis and ethical clearance
ii. Authors should include the ethical clearance (the name of IRB and
clearance number etc) in the main work and also in the declaration section.
iii. Include a statement on ethical clearance and consent. Note: All
manuscripts that require adherence to strict ethical consideration cannot
proceed without ethical clearance.

e. Results
i. The results section should describe the findings of the study. The results
should be clear and concise. Results of the analysis must be included in
the text and also represented in either Tables or Figures. Tables and
figures must communicate information and not necessarily part of the text
ii. Quantitative study: authors should be able to describe statistics
well.
iii. Qualitative study: there should be clear themes and quotes
explaining the themes. If appropriate, authors should add thematic
diagrams.
iv. Mixed study must show clear demonstration of the two study
research approaches in the results section.

f. Discussion
i. The discussion section should highlight and discuss the implication of the
findings of the studies in the context of existing literature. The discussion
must reflect the approach(es) employed in the methodology and results
(findings) section of the study.

g. Conclusions
i. The section should describe the conclusion and recommendation of the
study. It should also include the limitation of the study.

h. Abbreviations

i. If abbreviations were used in the text, authors should fist provide full
within the text before applying abbreviations in the subsequent writing.

i. Declarations
i. All manuscripts must contain the following.
1. Ethical approval and consent
2. Acknowledgments
3. Authors’ contributions
4. Authors’ information
5. Competing interest
6. Funding

j. References
i. All submissions should follow the APA style of referencing (7 th edition

6. Submission Preparation Checklist: As part of the submission process, authors are
required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and
submissions may be returned to authors who do not adhere to these guidelines.
a. Contact information: Supply complete contact information for all authors on the
title page:
i. Name, affiliation, email address, phone numbers (the more, the better).
ii. Indicate the corresponding author.
iii. The title page should be uploaded separately from the main
manuscript file. No identifying information should be included in the main
manuscript file to allow for anonymize review.

b. Abstract: All manuscripts, except technical comments and commentaries, should
include an abstract of 250 words.

c. File format: Manuscript file should be in Microsoft Word format (DOC, DOCX).
Any supplemental files should also be in Microsoft Word.

d. Language: Manuscript should be submitted in English

e. Length: Manuscripts must conform to the maximum words aforementioned
(under section 4 of guidelines for manuscript submissions).

f. Typescript/Font: The font style size of the manuscript should be Times new
Roman, 12 and 1.5-spaced respectively. Subheads should be used at reasonable
intervals to break the monotony of text. Words and symbols to be italicized must
be clearly indicated, by either italic type or underlining. Abbreviations and
acronyms should be spelled out at first mention unless found as entries in their
abbreviated form.

g. Page: Pages should be numbered consecutively.

h. Line numbers: Continuous line numbers should be used through the manuscript
(Authors should not restart the numbering on each page)

i. Tables, figures, and illustrations: The purpose of tables and figures is to present
data to the reader in an unambiguous manner. The author should not describe the
data in the text in such detail that illustration or text is redundant.

j. Figures and Tables should not be in a picture format

k. All Figures and Tables should be numbered and have a clear title

l. Figures and Tables should be included in the main manuscript.
They should not be submitted as a supplementary file.

m. Tables will be typeset; they should be editable, not embedded as
images.

n. Notes and references: Notes are for explanations or amplifications of textual
material. They are distracting to readers and expensive to set and should be
avoided whenever possible. They should be typed as normal text at the end of the
text section of the manuscript rather than as part of the footnote or endnote feature
of a computer program and should be numbered consecutively throughout the
article. A reference list contains only references that are cited in the text. Its
accuracy and completeness are the responsibility of the author(s).

o. Reference Style: All submissions should follow the APA style of referencing.
Examples of references to a book, a chapter in a book, and a journal article
follow, formatted in APA style:
I. Bobrow, D. G., & Collins, A. M. (1975). Representation and understanding: Studies in cognitive science. New York: Academic Press.
II. Crothers, E. (1972). Memory structure and the recall of discourse. In R. O. Freedle & J. B. Carroll (Eds.), Language comprehension and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 201–238). Washington, DC: Winston.
III. Fraser, L. T. (1968). Questions as aids to reading: Some research and a theory. American Educational Research Journal, 5, 319–322.
IV. Mankoe, J. O & Maynes, W. G. (1994). Decentralization of educational decision-making in Ghana. International Journal of Education Development, 14 (1), 23-33.

7. Submission of article: Submit all manuscripts electronically to the journal through the
submission portal.
a. Authors should upload the manuscript and a cover letter. The cover letter should
include the study relevance and why the article should be published.
b. The article should be submitted by the corresponding author or any designated
person as correspondence

8. Article processing fee: The journal charges no fee for publication.

9. For questions or inquiries about new or revised manuscript submissions, email the
editorial office at geo@uew.edu.gh.

10. Editorial and peer review process: J-GEORR operates a transparent-peer review process.
All articles submitted to this journal undergo a peer-reviewed process. The Editorial
Board is responsible for handling a submitted article and it involves a rigorous process.
The article will undergo editorial checks where the suitability of the article for the Journal
and formatting are checked. Articles that meet the requirement of the journal will be
forwarded to reviewers for review.
Authors should note that it takes about 10 working days for the journal to make its first
decision on a submitted article. Authors would be notified of the first and subsequent
decisions of the entire review process. There are two main decisions for any article
submitted to this Journal. The article could be either accepted or rejected. For accepted
articles, authors may be asked to revise and submit the article for publication. However,
authors are not required to resubmit a rejected paper to this journal.