For Authors

All manuscripts must be submitted via the online submission system. Authors can track the progress of their manuscripts through the system.

Manuscripts submitted for publication must be prepared according to the guidelines given below.

The ACIG Editors will check the originality of the submitted articles, using Similarity Check the system provided by Crossref and powered by iThenticate.

Article types

• Full Research Papers (6,000–8,000 words in length) report on an empirical study or a series of empirical studies using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Research articles should provide complete and detailed information about the empirical methods and findings to allow replication. All findings should be extensively discussed;
• Conceptual Articles (6,000–8,000 words in length) develop and enhance a particular theoretical perspective. They synthesize knowledge and present it in a new context to challenge current thinking, as well as to practice and propose new approaches and models for application;
• Review Articles (6,000–8,000 words in length) integrate and evaluate the empirical literature on a particular topic. They aim to structure and organize the literature through theoretically relevant categories, survey previously published research, and critically evaluate the data. Review articles may identify potential research areas to investigate and draw new conclusions from the existing data;
• Commentaries (1,500–2,000 words in length) are short, narrowly focused articles that can be submitted unsolicited in response to cover a contemporary issue or to address published articles. They should be concise and specific in their contribution. They can provide theoretical, methodological, or empirically based critiques or elaborations; offer alternative perspectives; embed the article in a broader context; point to interdisciplinary links; or discuss ethical issues and implications for applications;
• Book Reviews (1,500–2,000 words in length) should describe and critically evaluate the content, quality, meaning, and significance of a book. They should provide a thoughtful perspective, critical evaluation of the book, and comment on how the book contributes to the advancement of knowledge;
• Short Papers (1,500–3,000 words in length) should present self-contained, complete, compact works, such as focused and concise research contributions, follow-up extensions or evaluations of existing methods, or exploratory work. They must describe original and unpublished work.

All manuscripts submitted to ACIG are peer reviewed in a double-blind peer review system.

All papers must be written in English (British English), with a clear and concise style. The language editors will check the language and grammar of any submitted manuscript, and will make editorial changes when deemed necessary. However, manuscripts written in poor English will be rejected. This journal provides immediate open access to its content to support a greater global exchange of knowledge.

ACIG does not charge any author fee for the submission or publication of papers.

Submission Process

Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://www.editorialsystem.com/acig. The corresponding author is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer review process; however, all co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

Microsoft Word: manuscripts should be submitted in .doc or .docx format. Please ensure the file is editable and includes all necessary elements such as tables, figures, and references. Authors are required to use strictly the template: Download Microsoft Word template

LaTex: Authors preparing their manuscripts in LaTeX should submit a compiled .pdf file for review.

Manuscripts

Title and Author Information

• The title of the paper should be in Times New Roman, Bold, 14 pt, center aligned. Capitalize the first letter of each notional word of the title (title case format);
• Provide full names of all authors and their affiliations. The authors line should be centered;
• Affiliations should include the authors’ departments, institutes, institution and its full correspondence address;
• The corresponding author should be marked with the superscript*.

Abstract

• Typically, abstract length is between 150 and 250 words;
• The abstract should be a single (not structured) paragraph but it should explain the paper’s objective, methods (briefly describe the main research methods), results and main conclusions or interpretations;
• The abstracts should not include reference citations.

Keywords

• Use 3–5 keywords describing the main topics of the paper;
• Keywords should be separated with a comma;
• Keywords should be written in lower case, unless it is a proper name or required.

Structure

• Introduction should clearly state the background of the research and/or importance of the topic and the significance or value of the study. State the research objective and the research questions or hypothesis; provide a synopsis of the research design and methods; give a brief overview of the paper;
• Literature review;
• Results should provide a description of the experimental results. Information already displayed in tables, figures or schemes should not be reiterated in the text if it is unnecessary for any important discussion;
• Discussion links the results to related research studies and to existing knowledge. Discuss the results from the perspective of the hypotheses. The findings and their implications should be discussed in the broadest context possible and the limitations of the work highlighted. Future research directions may also be mentioned. This section may be combined with Results;
• Conclusions should summarize the major interpretations and final comments of the paper as well as the significance of the findings. Recommendations for future work or policy recommendations may also be provided. This section is not mandatory.

Text Layout

• Use Times New Roman, font size 12 pt.;
• The paper must be single column, single-spaced;
• Do not insert page numbers or line numbers.

Headings

• In the main body of the paper, three different levels of headings (sections, subsections, and subsections) may be used.
• Level one headings for sections should be in bold, with the left margin (flush left). Level one heading should be numbered using Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.);
• Level two headings for subsections should be in bold italic, flushed to the left. Level two headings should be numbered after the level one heading. For example, the second level two heading under the third level one heading should be numbered as 3.2;
• Level three headings should be italicized, flushed to the left. Similarly, level three headings should be numbered after level two headings, such as 3.2.1, 3.2.2, etc.;
• The initial letter of each notional word in all headings is capitalized.

Equations and Mathematical Expressions

• Equations and mathematical expressions must be inserted into the main text;
• Two different types of styles can be used: In-Line style and Display style;
• Use either the Microsoft Equation Editor or the MathType add-on. Math equations should be editable text, and not images.

In-Line Style

• In-line equations/expressions are embedded in paragraphs of the text. For example, E = mc2;
• In-line equations/expressions should not be numbered;
• In-line equations/expressions should use the same/similar size font as the main text.

Display Style

• Equations in display format are separated from the paragraphs of the text;
• Equations should be flushed to the left margin of the column;
• Equations should be editable;
• Display style equations should be numbered consecutively, using Arabic numbers in parentheses.
  See Eq. (1) for an example. The number should be flushed all the way to the right margin.
  (1): E=mc2

Figures and Tables
Figures and tables should be inserted in the text of the manuscript.

Figures

• Figures should have relevant legends and should not contain the same information already covered in the main text.
• Figures (diagrams and pictures) should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers.
• They should be placed in the text soon after the point where they are referenced.
• Figures must be submitted in digital format, with a resolution higher than 300 dpi.

Figure Format

• Figures should be centered and should have a figure caption placed underneath.
• Captions should be centered with the following format “Figure 1. The text caption …”, where the number of the figure follows the keyword Figure, and the caption comes after.

Figure Labels and Titles

• Figure labels must be sharp, legible and sized in proportion to the image;
• Label size should be no smaller than 8-point and no larger than the font size of the main text;
• Labels must be saved in a standard font (Times New Roman) and should be consistent for all the figures;
• All labels should be in black, should not overlap, be faded, broken or distorted;
• A space must be inserted before the measurement units;
• Only the first letter of each sentence must be capitalized, NOT each word;
• In referencing a Figure, please use abbreviation “Fig.” followed by the number, e.g. Fig. 1.

Tables

• Tables should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers.
• Tables should be placed in the text soon after where they are referenced.
• Tables should be centered and should have a caption placed above them.
• In the text, you should reference a table as such: For example, see Tab. 1.

Third Party Content Use
Authors may use third party content (figures, images, photographs, tables, etc.) provided they have obtained permission from the copyright holder. It is the responsibility of the Authors to obtain these permissions and they are legally liable to do this correctly. Authors must provide evidence of permission to reproduce any copyrighted material.

Citations

• Please use IEEE referencing style;
• Please cite references in the main text, by a number inside brackets, e.g. [1], [2], [3], ….;
• If the cited reference contains more than 2 consecutive references, the format should be: Please see the example [1–3], [4–6];
• No citation to the page number should be used.
• References list (only items cited in the text) have to be arranged in order as cited in the text.

Acknowledgement & Declarations
The Acknowledgement, Funding, Competing Interest and References headings should be left justified, bold, not numbered, and with the first letter capitalized. Text below those headings continues as normal. Authors should thank those who contributed to the article but cannot list themselves.

Funding
All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed, including specific grant numbers, initials of authors who received the grant, and the URLs to sponsors’ websites. If there is no funding support, please write "This research received no external funding".

Acknowledgments
In this section you can acknowledge any support given which is not covered by the author contribution or funding sections.

Competing Interest
Authors must declare all competing interest. If there are no conflicts of interest, it should also be stated as such: “No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.”

Author Contributions
The listed authors are expected to have made substantial contributions to the intellectual content of an article in terms of the conception or design, drafting, and revising of the work and the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data. Their approval is required for the submitted version as well as any substantially modified version to which they have contributed. Furthermore, all of the listed authors are considered personally responsible for all aspects of the work and must guarantee that any questions regarding its accuracy or integrity—even for aspects of the work in which an individual author did not personally take part—are appropriately examined, resolved, and documented in the article.

On the other hand, involvement in the securing of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of a research group does not in itself justify listing someone as an author. Rather, those who have contributed to the work in such ways should be listed in the acknowledgments.

Please note that submissions by any individual other than one of the listed authors and any authorship/affiliation changes will not be considered. If such request is necessary, the manuscript will be rejected. Authors can resubmit the manuscript with the renewed authorship/affiliation information.

References

• All references should be in font size 10 and listed at the end of the paper;
• Reference numbers are flushed all the way to the left margin and form a column of their own;
• The reference numbers are enclosed in square brackets;
• In all references, the given names of the authors or editors are abbreviated with their initials only and precede their family names;
• Journal and book titles should be in italicized, and the first letter of the notional word should be capitalized;
• The full name of the journal cited in references should be used, followed by a comma, then the volume, issue, page numbers, and the published year. Please refer to the examples below;
• Note that the format for journals, books and other publications is different;
• The first letter of the titles of articles, reports, dissertations and conferences should be capitalized;
• References at the end should be arranged in the order in which they appear in the text;
• Based on our particular style, the first five authors will be listed as they appear. When more than five authors are listed, keep the first five authors and add “et al.”.

Reference examples (references at the end should be arranged in the order in which they appear in the text):

Basic format for books:
J.K. Author, Title of the book. City: Publisher, Year.

Basic format for a chapter in an edited book:
J.K. Author, K.L. Author, “Title of chapter in the book,” in Title of his published book, J.K. Editor, Ed. City: Publisher, Year, Page No.

Basic format for conference proceedings (published):
J.K. Author, “Title of paper,” Name of Conference, City, Year, Page No. [Online]. Available: https://website. [Accessed: Jan. 01, 2022].

Basic format for journals:
J.K. Author, “Title of paper,” Journal Title, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-11, Year, doi: XXX.

Appendix
Authors that need to include an appendix section should place it after the References section. Multiple appendices should all have headings in the style used above. They will be ordered A, B, C, etc.

Units and Symbols

• There should be a space between the unit and the Arabic number: 5 mm NOT 5 mm;
• There should be a space before and after the operator: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 cm × 5 cm;
• Please use Arabic numbers and relevant units in the manuscript: 5 kg NOT five kilograms or 5 kilograms or five kg;
• Do not use hyphen/dash or any connector symbol between the value and its unit: 5 kg NOT 5–kg;
• Please clarify all units during a calculation or a mathematical relationship: 3 cm × 5 cm NOT 3 × 5 cm, 123 g ± 2 g or (123 ± 2) g NOT 123 ± 2 g, 70%–85% NOT 70–85%;
• Greek letters must be inserted using the correct Greek symbol (using Times New Roman font), NOT written in full, i.e. alpha: α; beta: β, ß; and gamma: γ, etc.

Copyright and Licensing

ACIG publishes all articles under an open access license, which means that they remain accessible to all without charge and without technical or legal barriers and that they can be reused with proper acknowledgment and citation ACIG publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
ACIG is committed to open access publishing as a means to foster the exchange of research among scientists, especially across disciplines.
The copyright and other proprietary rights related to work published by ACIG are retained by the authors. If they reproduce any text, figures, tables, or illustrations from this work in their own future research, the authors must cite the original published version. They are further asked to inform the journal’s editorial office of any exceptional circumstances in this regard at the time of submission, for which exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the publisher.

Articles published in ACIG are likely to contain material republished with permission under a more restrictive license. When this situation arises, it should be indicated; it is the responsibility of the authors to seek permission for reuse from the copyright holder.

Corrections & Retractions

ACIG will issue corrections and/or retraction statements when deemed proper.

Corrections

ACIG aims to publish every article online in its final form. Upon receiving the proofs of their accepted manuscripts, authors will have an opportunity to check for errors and oversights. Occasionally, a mistake is pointed out in a published article, necessitating the issuance of a correction statement. A correction is a statement rectifying an error or an omission, Authors or readers may submit such a statement either through the journal’s online manuscript submission system, or by sending an email, along with the submission ID, to the ACIG editorial office (contact@acigjournal.pl). A correction notice, published and linked to the corresponding article, is freely accessible to all readers.

When making corrections to the original articles, the original article both in PDF and XML versions are corrected and bi-directionally linked to and from the published amendment notice that details the original error. Any changes made to the original articles affect data in the figures, tables or text, the amendment notice will reproduce the original data. If it is not possible to correct the original article in both PDF and XML versions, the article will remain unchanged but will contain links that direct to and from the published correction notice.

Author’s Correction: An Author’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the author that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or the journal. The Managing Editor of that manuscript will be responsible for handling the correction process.

Publisher’s Correction: A Publisher’s Correction may be published to correct an important error(s) made by the journal that affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the authors or of the journal.

Retractions
A retraction is a notice that a previously published paper should no longer be regarded as part of the published literature. The primary purpose of a retraction is to ensure the integrity and completeness of scholarly records by withdrawing any manuscript which is found to contain infringements of professional ethical codes, major errors, or where its main conclusion is seriously undermined as a result of new evidence coming to light. Violations of professional ethical codes include multiple submissions without proper citations or permission, redundant publications, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc. Major errors cover any or all miscalculations or experimental errors, intentionally or due to honest mistakes.

The retraction will be referred to the Editor-in-Chief or Editors who have handled the paper. Retracted articles will not be removed from the printed copies of the journal (e.g. from libraries) nor from the electronic archives. Their retracted status will be indicated as clearly as possible. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the permanence and integrity of the published scientific record. When an article is retracted, in most cases, the original manuscript is corrected and is bi-directionally linked (to and from) the published retraction notice which details the original error. For the purpose of transparency, when corrections made to the original article affect any data, figures, tables or texts, the retraction notice will display the original data alongside the corrected version. When a correction is not possible, all existing versions of the article will remain unchanged but will contain the bi-directional links, to and from, the published retraction notice. The notice of retraction is permanently linked to its corresponding retracted article and is freely available and accessible by all readers. Articles may be retracted by their Author(s), by the Journal Editors, or by the Publisher, i.e. National Research Institute NASK. In all instances, the retraction should indicate the reason for the action as well as the entity behind the decision. A retraction made without the unanimous agreement of the authors is feasible and indicated as such.

Removal of Published Content

Under special circumstances, ACIG reserves the right to remove an article or other content from ACIG’s website and submission system. Such action may be taken when:

• There is evidence indicating that the published content is defamatory, infringes on intellectual property rights, privacy rights, other legal rights, or is plainly unlawful;
• A court or government order requires the removal of such content;
• The content, if acted upon, would pose an immediate and serious risk to health. Removal may be temporary or permanent. A statement will be published explaining the decision behind the removal.

Addressing Post-Publication Issues

ACIG is fully committed to maintaining the integrity and completeness of the scientific record and recognizes its importance to researchers and the academic community at large. As such, ACIG will thoroughly investigate concerns that are directly raised with us by authors and/or readers. Authors are strongly encouraged to address any raised issues. In the course of our investigation, we may request original raw data, and consult with experts and other scholars in the field. Depending on the seriousness of the issues, the following outcomes may ensue:

• A manuscript still under consideration may be rejected and returned to the author;
• A published online article, depending on the nature and severity of the issues, may result in a correction notice or a retraction notice;
• Issues deemed to be serious may prompt ACIG to inform the authors’ institution and related affiliations.

Our dedicated aim drives our actions for transparent notification to our readers and unabated commitment to the integrity of the published record, and not by any motivation to sanction individuals or attribute responsibility to specifically named individuals. We may refer readers to the institutional investigations’ reports if they are publicly available. While we are committed to addressing post-publication issues and correcting the record swiftly, investigations typically take some time to reach resolutions given the complexity of the discussions, the diligence in our process and the need to obtain original data and consult with experts. We will issue and regularly update relevant Editor’s Notes and/or Editor’s Expression of Concern as interim notifications to alert our readership of any concerns with published material.

Appeals and Complaints

ACIG is open for further discussion after either a publication or a rejection of a manuscript.

Appeal Against a Rejection
Authors may appeal a rejection, or request further discussions or post-publication revisions, by contacting the Journal’s Editorial Team. When making such an appeal or request, Authors must provide a detailed justification for their request, with a description of the situation, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ and/or editor’s comments. The Journal’s Managing Editor will then forward the manuscript and the related information (including the identities of the referees) to the Editor-in-Chief, who will render a final and irreversible decision. Appeals will only be considered from the originally submitted Authors. All information will be kept confidential.

As a general rule, an appeal to a Rejection Decision will only be considered if:

• the authors can clearly and convincingly demonstrate that the final decision was based on an error made by a Referee or by the Editors during the review,
• if important additional data can be provided,
• if a convincing case of bias in the process can be clearly demonstrated.

Complaints

Complaint About Scientific Content
Authors may contact ACIG to file a complaint. The Editor-in-Chief or the Associate Editor will consider the Authors’ argument and the Reviewers’ reports, and will decide whether:

• the decision to reject should stand,
• another independent opinion is required,
• the appeal should be considered.

The complainant will be informed of the decision with an explanation when appropriate. Decisions on appeals are final and new submissions take priority over appeals.

Complaint About Processes
Authors may contact the Journal directly to raise a complaint concerning the process.

The Editor-in-Chief together with the Associate Editor will investigate the matter. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback. Feedback is provided to relevant stakeholders to improve processes and procedures.

Complaint About Publication Ethics
Authors may send an email to contact@acigjournal.pl concerning ethical issues or complaints.

The Editor-in-Chief or the Associate Editor will diligently follow the guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics in assessing the situation, and may resort to asking the Publisher via their in-house contact for advice on difficult or complicated cases. The Editor-in-Chief or the Associate Editor will decide on a course of action and will provide relevant feedback to the complaint.

Investigations and Sanctions

If National Research Institute NASK becomes aware of breaches of the publication ethics policies, the following sanctions may be applied:

• rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s),
• not allowing submission for 1–3 years,
• prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.

Suspected breaches of our publication ethics policies, either before and after publication, as well as concerns about research ethics, should be reported to the Editor-in-Chief and undergo a thorough investigation. During the investigation process, the underlying data, images, consult editors, and etc. may be requested to be provided by the authors for help in an investigation.