Publishing your first paper

Who this guide is for

If you have never submitted a manuscript to a journal — for example as a postgraduate or PhD student, or as an early-career researcher — this page walks you through the whole process. IJAIDR uses the same kind of online submission and peer review as large international publishers, so what you learn here applies to any journal.

Before you start

• Agree on the author list with everyone involved: who is an author, in what order, and who will be the corresponding author. Everyone you list will receive an email when you submit.
• Collect each author's details: full name, institutional email, department and institution, city and country, and ORCID iD (free at orcid.org). The corresponding author also needs a phone number.
• Prepare two files: an anonymised manuscript (no names, affiliations or identifying acknowledgements) and a separate title page with all the author details. See the submission guidelines for formatting.
• Check similarity yourself if your institution provides a tool. Text copied from your thesis, the internet or other papers must be rewritten and cited.
• Think of two or more possible reviewers: researchers who publish on your topic, are not at your institution and have not worked with you recently.
• Prepare your statements: ethics approval (if humans or animals were involved), conflicts of interest, funding, data availability, and whether you used AI tools.

The seven submission steps

1. Article type

   Choose the type (research article, review, short communication…) and the subject area that best fits your work.

2. Title & abstract

   Paste the title, a structured abstract and 3–8 keywords. A word counter helps you keep within the limit.

3. Authors

   Enter every author in the published order, with affiliation and email, and mark the corresponding author.

4. Reviewers

   Suggest independent reviewers. The system rejects people from your own institution. You may also name people who should not review your work.

5. Files

   Upload the anonymised manuscript and the title page, then any figures, tables or supplementary files.

6. Declarations

   Confirm originality and authorship, and give your ethics, conflict-of-interest, funding, data and AI statements.

7. Review & submit

   Check the summary. Anything missing is listed in red with a link to fix it. Your draft is saved at every step, so you can stop and continue later.

What happens after you submit

1. You receive a confirmation email with a reference number, and each co-author is informed.
2. The editorial office checks scope, formatting and similarity. Manuscripts that are not ready may be returned to you with advice.
3. An editor sends the manuscript to at least two reviewers (double-blind review).
4. You receive the decision with all reviewer comments: accept, minor revision, major revision or reject.
5. If revisions are requested, revise the manuscript and reply to every comment point by point. A clear, polite response letter matters as much as the changes.
6. After acceptance and payment of the article processing charge, the article is typeset, given a DOI and published online.

Tips from the editors

• Ask a senior colleague or your supervisor to read the full manuscript before you submit.
• State a clear research question in the Introduction and answer it in the Conclusion.
• Describe methods in enough detail that someone else could repeat the work.
• Be honest about limitations; small studies are publishable when the limitations are acknowledged.
• Cite recent, primary research articles rather than websites or textbooks, and check every reference.

Create an account and start a submission