INTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

TITLE: Concise (≤20 words); Reflect variables and study design; Avoid abbreviations

ABSTRACT:
Background and Purpose:
Materials & Methods: (design, participants, instruments, statistical analysis)
Results: (main findings with key statistics)
Conclusion: (international contribution)
Keywords: (3–6 MeSH/Scopus/OpenAlex terms)

1. INTRODUCTION
Write 700–1,200 words. Move logically from the international problem to the specific study objective. Do not produce a purely local or descriptive background. Synthesize recent international literature critically rather than listing studies one by one.
1.1. Global and Theoretical Context
Explain the global significance, prevalence or scale, consequences, core concepts, and the theoretical mechanisms linking the main variables. Define constructs only when needed and show how the selected theory predicts the expected relationship or intervention effect.
1.2. Critical Review of Existing Evidence
Compare prior quantitative studies across countries, populations, designs, samples, measures, intervention dose, follow-up, analyses, and effect magnitude. Identify inconsistencies and plausible methodological or contextual explanations, including small samples, weak controls, short duration, invalid measures, inadequate confounder control, or missing effect-size reporting.
1.3. Research Gap, Novelty, and International Contribution
State the unresolved gap precisely using a structure such as: Although previous studies show [known evidence], it remains unclear whether [specific unresolved issue] among [population] under [condition]. Specify the novelty: new intervention, population, design, measurement, mechanism, longitudinal evidence, multicenter evidence, mediation/moderation test, fidelity procedure, or culturally transferable component. Explain how the study confirms, refines, challenges, or extends an international theory or evidence base.
1.4. Objectives and Hypotheses
State one primary objective and any secondary objectives. Formulate directional, testable hypotheses aligned with the variables, design, and analysis. Ensure the wording of the objective matches the primary outcome and comparison reported later.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS
Write sufficient detail for replication and identify the applicable EQUATOR reporting guideline.
2.1. Setting and Participants
Report design, sites, dates, allocation, randomization, concealment, blinding, prospective/retrospective status, follow-up, protocol registration, and deviations.
2.2. Study Design and Reporting Guideline
Describe the setting, target and accessible populations, inclusion/exclusion criteria, recruitment, sampling, consent, baseline characteristics, withdrawal rules, and attrition.
2.3 Sample Size and Rigor Justification
Report the a priori calculation: software/version, test family, expected effect size, alpha, power, groups, measurements, correlation assumptions, attrition allowance, minimum sample, and recruited sample. If no formal power analysis was possible, provide a defensible design-specific justification.
2.4 Intervention, Exposure, or Research Procedures
Describe preparation, baseline measurement, intervention or exposure, dose, frequency, duration, progression, provider training, comparator, equipment, fidelity, adherence, safety, adverse events, post-test, follow-up, and deviations.
2.5 Measures and Instruments
For primary and secondary outcomes, report operational definitions, instrument source, items, scale, scoring, units, timing, validity, reliability, cultural adaptation, permissions, assessor training, and covariates.
2.6. Statistical or Analytical Procedures
Name software/version; describe data cleaning, missing data, outliers, assumptions, descriptive statistics, model specification, covariates, primary and secondary tests, effect sizes, 95% CIs, multiplicity, sensitivity analyses, subgroup analyses, and two-sided alpha. Never write p = .000.
2.7. Ethical Approval and Informed Consent:
Provide the authentic committee, institution, approval number/date, consent procedures, assent/guardian consent where relevant, confidentiality, anonymization, storage, withdrawal rights, and registration.

3. RESULTS
Present findings objectively in the order of the objectives. Do not interpret mechanisms or importance here, and do not duplicate all table values in the text.
3.1 Participant Flow and Baseline Characteristics
Report assessed, excluded with reasons, enrolled, allocated/randomized, treated, lost, analysed, ITT/per-protocol populations, missing data, and baseline characteristics. Refer to a flow diagram when appropriate.
3.2 Primary Outcome
Report baseline and post/follow-up values, within-group changes, between-group estimate, adjusted estimate, 95% CI, effect size, exact p value, and analysis population.
3.3 Secondary Outcomes
Report all prespecified secondary outcomes, including nonsignificant findings, with estimates, uncertainty, and effect sizes.
3.4 Additional, Subgroup, Sensitivity, or Qualitative Findings
Report prespecified sensitivity, per-protocol, subgroup, mediation, moderation, fidelity, adherence, and adverse-event analyses. Clearly label exploratory analyses. Recommended Tables and Figures: Prepare Table 1 for baseline characteristics, Table 2 for primary and secondary outcomes, and Table 3 for fidelity/adherence/adverse events when relevant. Recommend only informative figures such as a participant-flow diagram, adjusted mean-change plot, or forest plot.

4. DISCUSSION
Write 1,000–1,800 words. Explain how the findings contribute to international knowledge rather than merely repeating numerical results.
4.1 Principal Findings
Answer the objective and indicate whether hypotheses were supported. Distinguish statistical significance from practical or clinical importance.
4.2 Comparison with International Evidence
Compare agreement and disagreement with high-quality studies from multiple countries. Explain differences using population, dose, duration, design, measurement, cultural context, implementation fidelity, and analytical choices.
4.3 Theoretical, Methodological, and Practical Implications
Explain how findings support, refine, extend, or challenge theory; identify methodological advances; and provide feasible practice or policy implications without overgeneralization.
4.4 Strengths and Limitations
Mandatory. Discuss design, sampling, measurement, bias, confounding, missing data, blinding, follow-up, multiplicity, transferability, uncertainty, mitigation, and implications for interpretation.
5.5 Future Research
Recommend specific populations, countries, designs, follow-up durations, mechanisms, mediators/moderators, cost-effectiveness analyses, implementation studies, and replication strategies.

6. CONCLUSION
Write one or two concise paragraphs that answer the primary objective, state the main evidence-based contribution and international relevance, and acknowledge the limits of generalization. Use causal wording only when justified. Introduce no new data.

7. DECLARATIONS
Use authentic information only. Insert [AUTHOR INPUT REQUIRED] where documentation is unavailable.
7.1 Ethical Approval
Provide committee, institution, approval number/date, applicable ethical standards, and authenticity check.
7.2 Consent to Participate
State written consent, guardian consent, assent, waiver, or exemption as actually approved.
7.3 Consent for Publication
Clarify whether identifiable information, images, or case details are included and whether publication consent was obtained.
7.4 Author Contributions (CRediT)
Assign actual CRediT roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
7.5 Funding
Name the funder and grant number or state that no specific funding was received.
7.6 Conflict of Interest
Disclose financial and non-financial conflicts or explicitly declare none.
7.7 Data Availability
State open repository, reasonable-request access, or ethically restricted access.
7.8 Acknowledgements
Acknowledge legitimate non-author contributions.
7.9 Generative AI Disclosure
Describe actual AI use, verification responsibilities, and the prohibition on entering confidential participant data.

8.REFERENCES
Create an APA 7th edition list containing only sources cited in the manuscript. Prioritize recent, relevant, peer-reviewed international literature while retaining essential seminal theory and methods sources.
Verify authors, year, title, journal, volume, issue, pages, and DOI. Present DOI as https://doi.org/... and never invent one.
For an original quantitative study, use approximately 25–40 references when justified by the topic. Flag every unverified citation as [REFERENCE VERIFICATION REQUIRED].

TITLE: Concise (≤20 words); Reflect variables and study design; Avoid abbreviations

ABSTRACT:
Background and Purpose:
Materials For Analysis: 
Results: 
Conclusion: 
Keywords: (3–7 MeSH/Scopus/OpenAlex terms)

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Global and Theoretical Context
Write 2-4 paragraphs introducing the international significance of [TOPIC]. Define the central concepts, explain their relationships, and present the most relevant theoretical or conceptual frameworks. Show why the issue matters scientifically, socially, educationally, clinically, economically, or politically, as appropriate. Use recent international evidence and essential seminal sources. Avoid an extended local background and avoid dictionary-style definitions.
1.2 Critical Overview of Existing Evidence
Critically synthesize what is currently known. Organize the evidence by major themes, competing theories, intervention types, study designs, populations, regions, or outcomes. Compare consistencies and contradictions. Discuss recurring methodological limitations, measurement variation, sample bias, geographical concentration, publication bias, and underrepresented populations. Do not summarize studies one by one.
1.3 Previous Reviews and the Unresolved Gap
Identify existing narrative, scoping, integrative, or systematic reviews on the topic. Explain their scope, search period, principal conclusions, and limitations. State precisely why an updated or differently designed review is necessary. Clarify whether the new review addresses an outdated search, narrower population, missing theory, methodological inconsistency, neglected geography, emerging evidence, contradictory conclusions, or lack of implementation analysis.
1.4 Novelty and International Contribution
State the novelty of this review explicitly. Explain how it advances international scholarship through a new synthesis framework, expanded evidence base, updated search, cross-context comparison, theory refinement, methodological critique, evidence-gap map, or policy-oriented interpretation. Distinguish novelty from merely repeating previous summaries.
1.5 Review Objective and Review Questions
State one primary objective and a limited number of specific review questions. Use an appropriate framework: PICO/PICOS for intervention effectiveness; PECO for exposure; SPIDER for qualitative evidence; PCC for scoping reviews; or another justified framework. Ensure the questions match the eligibility criteria, extraction fields, synthesis, results, and conclusion.

2. MATERIALS FOR ANALYSIS
2.1 Review Design and Reporting Guideline
Identify the review design and justify why it is appropriate. State the reporting guideline used, such as PRISMA 2020 for systematic reviews, PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews, or a relevant framework for integrative, critical, or narrative reviews. State whether a protocol was prepared, registered, published, or made available. Report and justify any deviations from the protocol.
2.2 Eligibility Criteria
Present inclusion and exclusion criteria in a transparent table or structured narrative. Address population, concept/intervention/exposure, comparator where relevant, outcomes/themes, study design, context, publication type, peer-review status, language, date range, and accessibility of full text. Justify restrictions and discuss their potential effect on evidence coverage.
2.3 Information Sources
List every database, registry, repository, grey-literature source, citation index, organizational website, and manual-search method used. State the coverage dates and the exact final search date for each source. Explain supplementary methods such as backward citation searching, forward citation tracking, expert consultation, and related-review searching.
2.4 Search Strategy
Describe how the search strategy was developed, including key concepts, controlled vocabulary, free-text terms, Boolean operators, proximity operators, truncation, and database adaptation. Provide the complete reproducible search string for at least one major database and place all other strategies in supplementary material. State whether an information specialist or librarian reviewed the strategy. Do not invent search terms or search dates.
2.5 Study Selection and Screening
Describe reference management, deduplication, title/abstract screening, full-text screening, number of reviewers, independent screening, pilot calibration, disagreement resolution, and reasons for full-text exclusion. State the software used. For systematic and scoping reviews, prepare data for a PRISMA flow diagram. Screening counts must be authentic and internally consistent.
2.6 Data Extraction and Data Items
Describe the standardized extraction form, pilot testing, extraction reviewers, verification procedure, and management of missing or unclear information. Specify all extracted variables: bibliographic information, country, setting, sample, design, theory, intervention/exposure, comparator, duration, instruments, outcomes, effect estimates, themes, implementation factors, funding, and conflicts of interest. Adapt the fields to the review question.
2.7 Quality Appraisal or Risk of Bias
Identify and justify the appraisal tool appropriate to each included study design, for example RoB 2, ROBINS-I, JBI critical-appraisal checklists, CASP, MMAT, AMSTAR 2, or another validated tool. Describe the number of reviewers, independent assessment, calibration, disagreement resolution, domain-level judgement, and how appraisal influenced synthesis. Do not create appraisal results.
2.8 Synthesis and Analysis
Explain the synthesis method in enough detail to replicate it. For narrative synthesis, describe grouping, tabulation, pattern comparison, direction of effect, and exploration of heterogeneity. For thematic synthesis, explain coding, descriptive themes, analytical themes, reflexivity, and software. For framework synthesis, identify the framework and treatment of data outside it. For meta-analysis, specify effect measures, data transformations, model choice, heterogeneity statistics, subgroup analyses, meta-regression, sensitivity analyses, small-study effects, publication-bias assessment, and software. Do not pool studies when clinical or methodological heterogeneity makes pooling inappropriate.
2.9 Certainty or Confidence in the Evidence
When appropriate, describe how certainty or confidence was assessed using GRADE, GRADE-CERQual, or another justified framework. Explain domains, reviewer procedures, and presentation in evidence-profile or summary-of-findings tables. If no formal certainty assessment was conducted, state this transparently and justify it.
2.10 Ethics, Data, Materials, and Code Availability
State whether ethics approval was required for the review. Reviews of publicly available literature generally do not require participant consent, but institutional requirements must be followed. Report availability of search strategies, screening forms, extraction templates, excluded-study lists, datasets, analytic code, protocol, and supplementary files. Provide an authentic repository DOI or use a transparent availability statement.

3. RESULTS
3.1 Search and Selection Results
Report the number of records identified from each source, records after duplicate removal, screened records, full texts assessed, full texts excluded with reasons, and included studies. Ensure all numbers reconcile with the PRISMA flow diagram. Do not interpret the findings in this subsection.
3.2 Characteristics of Included Studies
Summarize publication years, countries, settings, study designs, sample sizes, participant characteristics, theories, interventions or exposures, comparators, instruments, outcome measures, and follow-up periods. Use a comprehensive characteristics table and describe only the most important patterns in the text.
3.3 Quality Appraisal or Risk-of-Bias Findings
Present domain-level and overall appraisal results objectively. Identify common strengths and weaknesses across studies. Explain how methodological quality differs by design, region, publication period, or evidence category. Do not convert appraisal checklists into unsupported numerical scores when the tool does not recommend scoring.
3.4 Thematic or Evidence Synthesis
Organize findings under a limited number of analytically meaningful themes or evidence domains that directly answer the review questions. For each theme, compare evidence across studies, report consistency and contradiction, identify contextual moderators, and distinguish strong evidence from preliminary or uncertain evidence. Avoid merely repeating the characteristics table.
3.5 Quantitative Synthesis or Meta-analysis, if Applicable
Report the number of studies and participants in each analysis, pooled effect estimate, 95% confidence interval, model, heterogeneity, prediction interval where appropriate, and exact p values. Present forest plots and justify subgroup, sensitivity, and meta-regression analyses. Report small-study-effect or publication-bias analyses cautiously, especially when few studies are available. If meta-analysis is not justified, explicitly explain why.
3.6 Evidence Gaps and Research Distribution
Map underrepresented populations, countries, settings, theories, interventions, outcomes, methods, and follow-up periods. Distinguish absence of evidence from evidence of no effect. For scoping reviews, this subsection may be central and may include evidence maps or descriptive charts.
3.7 Tables, Figures, and Supplementary Materials
• Table 1. Eligibility criteria.
• Table 2. Search databases and search dates.
• Table 3. Characteristics of included studies.
• Table 4. Quality appraisal or risk-of-bias summary.
• Table 5. Thematic synthesis, evidence matrix, or summary of findings.
• Figure 1. PRISMA flow diagram.
• Figure 2. Conceptual synthesis model, evidence map, or forest plot.
• Supplementary file: complete search strategies, excluded full-text studies, extraction form, appraisal details, and reporting checklist.

4. DISCUSSION
4.1 Principal Findings
Provide a concise synthesis of the most important findings in direct relation to the review objective and questions. Explain the overall pattern, strength, consistency, and uncertainty of the evidence. Do not repeat the Results section or overstate conclusions.
4.2 Comparison with Previous Reviews and International Evidence
Compare the findings with previous reviews, influential international studies, guidelines, and theoretical positions. Explain agreements, contradictions, and reasons for differences, including search dates, eligibility criteria, geographic coverage, study quality, measurement, and synthesis method.
4.3 Theoretical and Conceptual Implications
Explain how the synthesis confirms, refines, integrates, challenges, or extends relevant theory. Identify mechanisms, boundary conditions, conceptual ambiguities, and relationships that require theoretical revision. Where justified, propose a conceptual model derived from the synthesis and clearly distinguish evidence-supported components from hypotheses.
4.4 Methodological Implications
Discuss recurring design and reporting weaknesses in the literature, such as inadequate samples, inconsistent measures, short follow-up, weak control of confounding, lack of preregistration, selective reporting, and limited cross-cultural validation. Recommend specific methodological improvements rather than generic calls for more research.
4.5 Practical and Policy Implications
Explain what practitioners, educators, clinicians, managers, organizations, or policymakers can reasonably infer. Differentiate well-supported recommendations from provisional implications. Address feasibility, resource requirements, equity, cultural adaptation, scalability, safety, and implementation conditions. Do not recommend broad implementation when certainty is low.
4.6 Strengths and Limitations
Discuss strengths and limitations of the review itself. Address search breadth, database coverage, language and publication restrictions, protocol registration, reviewer independence, appraisal methods, heterogeneity, inability to pool data, publication bias, missing information, author judgement, and generalizability. Explain how each limitation may influence interpretation and what mitigation was used.
4.7 Future Research Agenda
Develop a prioritized and specific research agenda based on the evidence gaps. Recommend populations, countries, designs, theoretical tests, standardized outcomes, duration, follow-up, implementation studies, comparative studies, cost-effectiveness analyses, and open-science practices. Separate urgent priorities from longer-term opportunities.

5. CONCLUSION
Write a concise, evidence-based conclusion that directly answers the review objective. State the international scholarly contribution, practical meaning, and remaining uncertainty. Avoid introducing new evidence, claiming certainty beyond the reviewed literature, or treating absence of evidence as evidence of no effect.

6. DECLARATIONS
6.1 Ethical Approval
State whether ethical approval was required. Use authentic institutional wording.
6.2 Consent to Participate
Usually not applicable to literature reviews; state this accurately.
6.3 Consent for Publication
State whether identifiable material is included.
6.4 Author Contributions - CRediT
Assign authentic roles: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing, Supervision, Project administration, and Funding acquisition as applicable.
6.5 Funding
State the authentic funding source and grant number, or declare that no specific funding was received.
6.6 Conflict of Interest
Disclose all financial and non-financial conflicts, or state that none exist.
6.7 Data Availability
Explain access to extracted data, search strategies, screening decisions, appraisal files, and analysis code.
6.8 Acknowledgements
Acknowledge librarians, information specialists, statisticians, translators, or other non-author contributors.
6.9 Generative AI Disclosure
Disclose the actual use of generative AI. State that authors verified scientific claims, calculations, references, and final wording, and that responsibility remains with the authors.

7. REFERENCES
Prepare the reference list in APA 7th edition. Include every source cited in the manuscript and no uncited sources. Verify author names, year, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages or article number, and DOI. Present DOI links as https://doi.org/...
Prioritize current peer-reviewed international literature and essential seminal sources. Avoid fabricated references, predatory journals, retracted literature, citation manipulation, irrelevant citation stacking, and excessive self-citation.