THE ANTONINUS JOURNAL

Peer Review

All manuscripts submitted to TAJ will undergo several stages of review. This begins with the preliminary evaluation on the scope and style of the manuscript which will be done by the managing editor in consultation with the editor-in-chief and at least one associate editor. Once a paper is judged to adhere to the scope and style of the journal, it will be sent to 2 or 3 peer reviewers suggested by the editor-in-chief and / associate editor. TAJ follows a double-blind peer review process on all manuscripts. Reviewers are given 3 to 4 weeks to review a manuscript. If upon review, the manuscript is deemed acceptable upon certain the incorporation of revisions, it is returned to the authors by the managing editor, and he/she is given 2-3 weeks to revise the manuscript. The revised manuscript must then be returned to the managing editor accompanied by a response letter highlighting the revisions done or answers the queries of the reviewers. The managing editor then forwards the revised manuscript and letter to the assigned associate editor and editor for final review. Final decision on the acceptance of the paper will be made by the editor-in-chief upon the recommendation of the associate editor.

The decisions on submitted manuscripts are as follows:

1. Accept
2. Revisions Required
3. Resubmit for Review
4. Resubmit Elsewhere
5. Decline

Author Guidelines

1. Articles should be written in English or Filipino. Articles written in Filipino should be accompanied by an abstract in English. The article should be from 4,000 to 6,000 words in length. Authors should have their manuscript checked for grammatical errors by an English editor prior to submission.
2. The manuscript proper should be in MS Word format, double spaced with row numbers using either Arial or Times New Roman font style at 12 font size. Pages should be numbered consecutively in the top right corner, including those for the acknowledgements, tables, figures and legends. The journal requires authors to strictly conform to the citation styles of the American Psychological Association (APA) for articles in the humanities and the social sciences and the Harvard format for natural and health sciences.
3. Manuscripts should be original and have not yet been submitted to other journals nor have appeared in abridged or slightly similar form in other publications. Authors also bear the responsibility of securing the permission of concerned institutions and individuals who may have any claim on copyrighted materials such as photos and excerpts from primary documents.
4. The article should begin with a title page in page 1 followed by a 200-word abstract with a list of not more than 6 key words on page 2. The main body of the manuscript should begin on page 3.
5. The article proper should not bear any identifying information such as name of author and institutional affiliation. Instead, authors are required to submit a separate page bearing the following information:
   Name of Author(s); name of the corresponding author should be marked with an asterisk after the name (*)
   E-mail Address of corresponding author
   Institutional Affiliation and Contact Numbers of Institution
   
6. A Bio Note consisting of not more than 100 words
7. Contributors may submit their manuscript by email to [email protected]. A letter addressed to:

   Prof. Camilla J. Vizconde, Ph.D.
   Editor-in-Chief
   The Antoninus Journal: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the UST Graduate School
   Room 301, UST Graduate School
   Thomas Aquinas Research Complex

   should be submitted as a separate email attachment (preferably as a .pdf file). The letter should explicitly state that 1) the submission is original 2) that all authors agree to the contents and 3) the manuscript has not yet been published nor is it under review in another publication.

Acknowledgements

Authors must acknowledge all funding sources (research grants, scholarships, and fellowships), persons and institutions who have contributed to the study. Peer-reviewers and TAJ editors need not be put in the acknowledgement. If there are identified potential conflicts of interest by the authors, this must be explicitly stated in a “Declaration of Conflict of Interest” section after the acknowledgements.

Section Policies

Manuscripts submitted to the TAJ are categorized as

1. Research Articles
2. Theoretical and / Critical essays
3. Review Paper
4. Book Review

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Authors should declare potential conflict of interest and sources of funding and must be ready to provide the editorial board copies of government permits for the collection of wildlife and or clearance from the ethics review board if requested. The corresponding author is responsible for gathering the said documents upon request by the editorial board. TAJ reserves the right to reject a manuscript that fails to comply with any of the above mentioned criteria.

Complaints

Complaints on the peer-review process, plagiarism, falsification and fabrication of data and the like, non-declaration of conflicts of interests and other publication and research malpractices must be sent to the Managing Editor in a letter addressed to the Editor-in-Chief.
The Editorial Board will process the complaint and decide accordingly. If complaints are deemed meritorious, the manuscript maybe rejected, given an addendum explaining the correction in the next issue of the journal (if manuscript has been published), and authors may be banned from submitting in TAJ. Other legal actions may be utilized in order to protect the integrity of TAJ.