Submissions

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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 that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The author(s) may be middle or high school students, or college sophomores, submitting individually or as part of a team.
  • The author(s) confirm that the submission has not been previously published and is not under consideration by another journal (unless an explanation is provided in the Comments to the Editor section).
  • Multiple submissions are not allowed.
  • Plagiarism, data fabrication, or inappropriate authorship will result in immediate withdrawal.
  • The author(s) agree that the manuscript must adhere to the Research Competence Author Guidelines and ethical standards.
  • The author(s) confirm that the manuscript is written and submitted in English.
  • The author(s) have included their full names, school affiliations, and contact email addresses in the submission.
  • The submission file must be in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF format. PDF or any other non-editable file formats will not be accepted.
  • Figures and images included in the submission should be uploaded as separate high-resolution JPEG or PNG files.

Author Guidelines

Manuscript Format:

  • Size: A4
  • Margins: Normal
  • Font: Times New Roman
  • Title font size: 16 pt, Bold
  • Font size for the author(s)’ full name(s), affiliation(s), and email address(es): 11 pt
  • Heading font size: 12 pt, Bold
  • Subheading font size: 11 pt, Bold
  • Sub-subheading font size: 11 pt, Italic
  • Body text font size: 10 pt
  • Footnotes / Captions font size: 8 pt
  • Line spacing: 1.15
  • No indent 
  • Between paragraphs: single line spacing
  • Between headings: single line spacing
  • Length: Up to 8,000 words (excluding abstract and references)
  • Abstract: 150–200 words
  • Keywords: 3–5
  • Tables/Images/Figures: Allowed within the text; must include captions and sources
  • Appendices: Optional; submit as a separate file
  • Footnotes: Not permitted

Reference Style:

Authors may choose one of the following styles, depending on the research field.
Only one style must be used consistently throughout the manuscript. Include a full reference list at the end of the paper.

  • Humanities & Social Sciences APA
  • Natural & Engineering Sciences APA or IEEE

*Please submit your manuscript following the general submission guidelines only. Research Competence does not provide a submission template in order to minimize the initial burden on student authors. An official template and final formatting assistance can be provided only if the paper is accepted and requires significant formatting changes.

Language: English

  • Figures: If a figure or image contains non-English text, it must be translated into English directly within the figure or image itself (e.g., in labels, captions, or legends).
  • References: References should be listed in English whenever possible. For sources originally in a non-English language, please provide the original reference along with an English translation of the title in brackets [ ], and for non-Latin scripts (e.g., Arabic, Chinese, Korean), include a romanization of the original text alongside the English translation. 

Example: Juan Pérez (2020). Título del artículo en español [Title of the paper in English]. Journal Name, 12(3), 45–56.

Publication Fees: There are no Open Access Article Processing Charges (OA APC).

Articles

Review Process:
All submissions undergo double-blind peer review by at least two external experts.
The final decision on acceptance rests with the Editorial Board.

Acceptable Manuscript Types: 

  • Original Research Article
  • Review Article / Literature Review

AI Usage:

Research Competence permits the use of AI-assisted tools (e.g., ChatGPT, code-generating software, image generation tools) in the preparation of manuscripts. However:

The author(s) must clearly disclose which parts of the manuscript were generated or assisted by AI, the purpose of using AI, and how it was used.

  • The author(s) must clearly disclose which parts of the manuscript were generated or assisted by AI, the purpose of using AI, and how it was used.
  • The disclosed AI usage will be taken into account during the peer-review process.
  • Any disadvantages, including withdrawal or rejection, resulting from failure to disclose AI usage are solely the responsibility of the author(s).

Simplified Ethical Review for Human Subjects Research:

All authors are responsible for ensuring that their research strictly adheres to all national and institutional ethical guidelines regarding human subjects and that they have obtained all necessary approvals (e.g., from an IRB or Ethics Committee) prior to conducting the research.

If the research involves human subjects (e.g., surveys, interviews, experiments), a simplified ethical review may be conducted by the editorial board, if necessary. This simplified review will consider factors such as:

  • Whether personally identifiable information was collected
  • Whether sensitive topics were involved
  • Whether participants provided informed and voluntary consent
  • Whether data were collected and stored anonymously

Copyright Notice

Authors retain the copyright of their work published in Research Competence.
By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to grant Research Competence the non-exclusive right to publish, distribute, and display the article online as part of the journal’s open-access policy.

All articles are freely available to read, download, and share under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and the source.

Privacy Statement

Research Competence is committed to protecting the privacy of its users, authors, reviewers, and readers.

1. Data Collection and Usage
Names, affiliations, and email addresses provided on this site are used exclusively for the purposes of this journal and will not be shared with third parties for commercial use. Data is collected and processed to:

  • Process Submissions: Facilitate the editorial and peer-review process.
  • Communicate: Notify authors, reviewers, and editors about manuscript status and journal updates.
  • Indexing and Publication: Ensure accurate metadata (author names, affiliations, email addresses) for indexing in academic databases.

2. Public Transparency
Only authors’ names and affiliations are published alongside their articles for proper academic credit. All other personally identifiable information remains confidential.

3. Reviewer Confidentiality
The identities of reviewers are strictly confidential and are never disclosed to authors or third parties.