Author Guidelines

INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Education in the 21st Century is an international, double-blind peer-reviewed, fully Open Access journal of the pedagogical sciences, published twice a year by Yerevan State University Publishing House (ISSN 2579-2792). No article processing charges are levied at any stage.

These instructions apply to all submissions. They are written to be consistent with the COPE Core Practices and with the transparency requirements of international indexing services, and they are read together with the journal’s Peer Review Process, Publication Ethics, Open Access Policy and Licensing Terms and Copyright.

1. Scope and Types of Contributions

The journal publishes both theoretical and applied research in educational policy and management, teaching methodology, digital transformation of education, inclusive education, primary, secondary and higher education, teacher education, pedagogical theory and philosophy, lifelong learning, and emerging branches of pedagogy.

The journal does not privilege any single research paradigm. Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, theoretical, review-based and methodological contributions are equally welcome and are judged by the same criteria: the significance of the problem, the transparency and appropriateness of the method, the soundness of the reasoning, and the contribution to the field.

Authors must state the type of their contribution on the title page and in the cover letter, and must follow the corresponding structure set out in Section 4. Formats not listed below — for example book reviews, translated classics or thematic editorials — may be submitted only after prior consultation with the editorial office.

These figures are guidance, not thresholds. A manuscript is assessed on the completeness of its argument rather than on its word count. Length beyond the upper guidance figure requires the prior agreement of the editorial office and is granted where the material — for example a review protocol, an extended data table or a full instrument — justifies it.

2. Submission System: The Three-File Model

To uphold double-blind peer review, every submission consists of three separate Microsoft Word (.docx) files. Manuscripts that are not anonymised, or that omit a required file, are returned to the author before review.

File 1. Title Page

Prepared from the Title Page Template and containing:

·  the full article title, identical to the title in the manuscript;

·  the type of contribution, as listed in Section 1;

·  full names of all authors, their affiliations (department, institution, city, country) and ORCID iDs;

·  the corresponding author, marked as such, with an institutional e-mail address;

·  a CRediT statement describing each author’s contribution, using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy;

·  the declarations required by Section 5: funding, conflicts of interest, ethical approval and consent, data availability, use of generative artificial intelligence, and acknowledgments.

File 2. Anonymous Manuscript

The complete text — title, abstract, keywords, body and reference list — with all author-identifying information removed:

·  no author names, affiliations, e-mail addresses, funder or project names, or institutional identifiers in the text, in figure and table content, or in file names;

·  references to the authors’ own earlier work anonymised in the text and in the reference list (for example, In a previous study (Anonymized, 2023)), and restored at acceptance;

·  document properties cleared of personal metadata (author, last modified by, company), and the file named neutrally, for example Manuscript_anonymous.docx;

·  the second-language block of title, abstract and keywords required by Section 4.3, placed immediately after the Conclusion and before the reference list.

File 3. Cover Letter

Prepared from the Cover Letter Template, addressed to the Editor-in-Chief and confirming that:

·  the work is original and is neither published nor under consideration elsewhere, with any preprint or conference presentation disclosed and cited;

·  all named authors meet the journal’s authorship criteria, have read the final manuscript and agree to its submission;

·  the study complies with the journal’s Ethical Guidelines;

·  the type of contribution is stated, together with a short statement of what the manuscript adds to the field.

For a revised submission, the cover letter must additionally contain a point-by-point response to each item of the previous editorial or review report, stating the change made and where it can be found in the revised manuscript.

3. General Formatting

·  Font: Times New Roman, 11 pt.

·  Line spacing: single throughout, including the abstract, block quotations, tables, figure captions and the reference list.

·  Margins: 2.5 cm (1 inch) on all four sides.

·  Alignment: justified.

·  Paragraph indentation: first line indented by 1.27 cm (0.5 inch). The abstract is not indented. Reference-list entries carry a hanging indent of 1.27 cm instead of a first-line indent.

·  Page numbering: bottom centre, continuous.

·  Headings: the three levels of APA 7, without numbering:

·  Level 1 — Centered, Bold, Title Case

·  Level 2 — Flush Left, Bold, Title Case

·  Level 3 — Flush Left, Bold Italic, Title Case

·  Language: manuscripts are accepted in English and in Russian. Every manuscript additionally carries a second-language block of title, abstract and keywords, as set out in Section 4.3. Texts must be linguistically edited before submission; the editorial office does not provide language editing.

4. Manuscript Structure

Every manuscript, whatever its type, opens with the same three elements and closes with a reference list. The sections in between follow the structure of the declared contribution type.

4.1. Elements Common to All Contributions

·  Title: maximum 15 words, bold, centred, Title Case. Titles must be informative rather than decorative and must avoid unexplained abbreviations.

·  Abstract: a single, non-indented paragraph of 150–250 words covering the problem and objective, the approach or method, the principal findings or the substance of the argument, and the contribution. Abstracts contain no citations, tables or abbreviations.

·  Keywords: 5–7 indexing terms, separated by semicolons, in the language of the manuscript. Only the label Keywords: is italicised.

·  Second-language block: the title, abstract and keywords repeated in the second language, as set out in Section 4.3.

·  Introduction: background and context; the problem addressed; a critical review of the relevant scholarship; the research gap; the research questions or hypotheses; and the objective of the study. Where the review of scholarship is extensive it may be given its own Level 1 section titled Literature Review.

·  Discussion: interpretation of the findings or of the argument; comparison with existing scholarship; theoretical and practical implications; limitations; and directions for further research.

·  Conclusion: a concise statement of what the study contributes. The conclusion introduces no new material and repeats no passage verbatim from earlier sections.

·  References: as set out in Section 7.

4.2. Structure by Type of Contribution

Where a recognised reporting guideline exists for the chosen design, authors are encouraged to follow it and to name it in the Methods section; guidelines for the main designs are collected by the EQUATOR Network.

Manuscripts that do not report empirical data must state this explicitly in the abstract and in the Methods or Analysis section, and must not present conceptual propositions in the language of measured effects.

4.3. Second-Language Title, Abstract and Keywords

The journal accepts manuscripts in English and in Russian. Every manuscript carries, in addition to its main abstract, a second-language block consisting of the title, the abstract and the keywords. The block is placed immediately after the Conclusion and before the reference list, and its heading is given in the second language.

The second-language block reproduces the content of the main abstract; it is a translation, not a new text, and is subject to the same requirements: a single non-indented paragraph of 150–250 words, and 5–7 keywords separated by semicolons. The translated title must correspond to the main title and observe the same limit of 15 words. Authors are responsible for the quality of the translation, which is used in the journal’s metadata and transmitted to indexing services.

5. Research Integrity and Declarations

The following declarations are placed on the title page. Where a declaration does not apply, this is stated in one sentence rather than omitted. The declarations are reproduced in the published article.

Ethical approval and informed consent

Research involving human participants — including pupils, students, teachers and parents — must name the approving committee or institutional body, give the approval reference where one exists, and describe how informed consent was obtained. Where participants are minors, the consent of a parent or legal guardian and the assent of the child must both be described. Research that does not involve human participants, such as theoretical, documentary or review work, must carry a brief statement explaining why ethical approval was not required.

Consent for identifiable material

Photographs, video stills, recordings, drawings or quotations from which an individual may be identified may be published only with the written consent of that person or of their legal guardian. Authors must confirm that such consent has been obtained and retained.

Conflicts of interest

All authors disclose financial and non-financial interests that could be perceived to influence the work, including employment by, or a leading role in, an institution or project that is the object of the study. Where no such interest exists, the authors state that none exists.

Funding

Funding bodies are named with grant numbers where applicable, or the absence of external funding is stated.

Data availability

Authors include a statement indicating whether the data underlying the study are openly available, available from the authors on reasonable request, or unavailable, and on what grounds. Restrictions arising from the protection of participants, and particularly of minors, are a legitimate ground and should be named as such. For theoretical and review contributions the statement identifies the corpus of sources analysed.

Generative artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors. Where such tools have been used in the conduct of the research or in the preparation of the manuscript, authors state which tool was used, in what version, and for what purpose. Routine language correction need not be declared. Authors remain fully responsible for the whole of the text, including the accuracy and the existence of every cited source; unverifiable AI-generated content leads to rejection.

Originality and screening

All submissions are screened for textual similarity using iThenticate and Crossref Similarity Check. Redundant publication, undisclosed reuse of the authors’ own earlier text, and manipulated or fabricated data are handled in accordance with the COPE flowcharts.

Citation practice

Citations must support the specific claim to which they are attached, and must be verifiable at the stated location. Authors should not add references for the sole purpose of increasing their number, and the editorial office does not require any fixed quantity of citations; excessive, irrelevant or self-serving citation is treated as a deficiency in quality.

6. Tables and Figures

Visual material must be necessary to the argument, comprehensible without the surrounding text, and referred to by number at the appropriate point in the text. Tables and figures are placed in the body of the manuscript where they are first discussed, and are formatted according to APA 7.

·  Tables: no vertical lines; horizontal lines only above and below the table and beneath the column headings. Table 1 in bold on its own line above the table, the title in italics and Title Case on the following line, notes beneath the table.

·  Figures: minimum resolution 300 dpi at the size at which they are printed. Figure 1 in bold above the figure, the title in italics and Title Case beneath the number, notes and the source of the image beneath the figure.

·  Third-party material: reproduced tables, figures, photographs and instruments require written permission from the rights holder, and the source must be credited in the note.

·  Statistical reporting: statistical symbols are italicised (p, t, F, M, SD, r), and estimates are accompanied by the relevant precision indicators such as effect sizes or confidence intervals.

7. Citations and References (APA 7th Edition)

The journal follows the author–date system of the APA 7th Edition. Every in-text citation must correspond to an entry in the reference list and every entry must be cited in the text. The accuracy of names, dates, page numbers and digital identifiers is the responsibility of the authors.

7.1. In-Text Citations

·  One author: (Author, 2023), or Author (2023) argued that…

·  Two authors: an ampersand in parenthetical citations, the word and in narrative citations: (Datnow & Park, 2019); Datnow and Park (2019) explored…

·  Three or more authors: the first author’s surname followed by et al. from the first citation: (Harris et al., 2018).

·  Several works in one parenthesis: separated by semicolons and ordered alphabetically: (Datnow & Park, 2019; Harris et al., 2018).

·  Direct quotations: author, year and page number: “The future of humanity is in the hands of teachers” (Author, 2023, p. 16).

·  Initials are not used in in-text citations, and only surnames appear. Initials are added only to distinguish two first authors with the same surname.

7.2. Reference List: General Rules

·  Order: alphabetical by the surname of the first author; several works by the same author in ascending order of year.

·  Indentation: hanging indent of 1.27 cm (0.5 inch).

·  Spacing: single, as in the rest of the manuscript.

·  Digital identifiers: a DOI is mandatory wherever one exists, and a URL wherever a source is publicly available online without a DOI. DOIs are given as active links in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx, without the prefix “DOI:” and without a full stop after the link.

·  Publisher location is not given; the publisher’s name alone is cited.

·  Titles of books and journals are italicised, as are volume numbers; article and chapter titles are in sentence case.

·  Non-Latin scripts: sources in Armenian, Russian or another non-Latin script are transliterated into the Latin alphabet, with an English translation of the title in square brackets and the original language named at the end of the entry in square brackets, for example [In Armenian].

7.3. Reference Examples

Journal articles

Author, N. (2023). Article title. Name of the Scientific Journal, 9(1), 16–24. https://doi.org/10.46991/educ-21st-century.v5.11.016

Harris, A., & Jones, M. (2018). Leading for equity: A moral imperative. School Leadership and Management, 38(3), 239–241.

Books and chapters

Datnow, A., & Park, V. (2019). Professional collaboration with purpose: Teacher learning for equity and excellence in public education. Routledge.

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (2021). Title of the chapter. In E. E. Editor (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. 45–62). Publisher.

Online sources

United Nations Armenia. (2015). Sustainable development goals: Goal 4 — Quality education. https://www.un.am/en/p/sustainable-development-goals

Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of the Republic of Armenia. (2022). State programme for education development of the Republic of Armenia until 2030. https://www.escs.am/am/reports/2030

Legal and regulatory materials

Law on the Rights of the Child of the Republic of Armenia. (1996). https://www.arlis.am/DocumentView.aspx?ID=305

United Nations. (1989). Convention on the rights of the child. https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

Conference materials and declarations

World Conference on Education for All. (1990, March 5–9). World declaration on education for all and framework for action to meet basic learning needs. Jomtien, Thailand.

World Education Forum. (2000, April 26–28). Education for all: Meeting our collective commitments. Dakar, Senegal.

8. Copyright and Licensing

Authors retain the copyright in their work and grant the journal a non-exclusive right of first publication. Articles are published Open Access under the licence set out in the journal’s Licensing Terms and Copyright, and may be reused with proper attribution to the original publication. Authors may deposit the published version in an institutional or subject repository and on their personal pages, with a link to the article on the journal’s site.

9. Submission Checklist

Before submitting, please confirm each of the following.

·  The work is original, is not under consideration elsewhere, and any preprint or prior presentation is disclosed.

·  Three separate .docx files are ready: title page, anonymous manuscript, cover letter.

·  The type of contribution is stated and the manuscript follows the corresponding structure in Section 4.

·  The manuscript contains no author-identifying information and the document properties have been cleared.

·  The abstract is a single paragraph of 150–250 words, and 5–7 keywords are separated by semicolons.

·  The second-language block required by Section 4.3 — Armenian for an English manuscript, English for a Russian one — is placed after the Conclusion and before the reference list.

·  Research questions or hypotheses are formulated explicitly, and the Discussion returns to them.

·  The declarations of Section 5 are complete on the title page, including the statements that do not apply.

·  Formatting follows Section 3: Times New Roman 11 pt, single spacing, 2.5 cm margins, 1.27 cm first-line indent, 1.27 cm hanging indent in the reference list.

·  Every in-text citation has a matching reference entry and every entry is cited; DOIs or URLs are present and resolve correctly.

·  Tables and figures are numbered, titled, referred to in the text, and accompanied by permissions where required.

·  For a revised submission, a point-by-point response to the previous report is attached to the cover letter.

Submissions that do not meet these requirements are returned to the author for correction before peer review. Questions concerning the preparation of a manuscript may be addressed to the editorial office through the journal’s Contact page.