Before submitting to our online submission system,  please carefully check that your manuscript has been prepared in accordance with the step-by-step instructions. 

Manuscript Format

Your manuscript should be in MS Word format. You are advised to download the document, SF Manuscript Submission Template, as a template or for more details on preparing your submissions for consideration. The new template applies to articles to be published in 2024 and beyond. 

All manuscripts must be written in clear, comprehensible English. Both British and American English are accepted. The usage of non-English words should be kept to a minimum. If you have concerns about the level of English in your manuscript, please ensure that it is proofread by a native English speaker or a scientific editing service before submission. 

Cover letter 

All submissions should include a cover letter as a separate file. A cover letter should contain a brief explanation of what was previously known, the conceptual advancement with the findings and its significance to broad readership. The cover letter is confidential and will be read only by the editors. It will not be seen by reviewers.

Article types

Please refer to the Section Policies for details.

Title
The title should capture the conceptual significance for a broad audience. The title should not be more than 50 words and should be able to give readers an overall view of the paper’s significance. Titles should avoid using uncommon jargons, abbreviations and punctuation.

List of Authors
The names of authors must be spelled out rather than set in initials with their affiliations footnoted. Authors should be listed according to the extent of their contribution, with the major contributor listed first. All corresponding authors (maximum 2) should be identified with an asterisk. Affiliations should contain the following core information: department, institution, city, state, postal code, and country. For contact, email address of only one corresponding author is expected within the manuscript. Please note that all authors must see and approve the final version of the manuscript before submitting.

Abstract
Articles must include an abstract containing a maximum of 200 words. The purpose of abstract is to provide sufficient information for a reader to determine whether or not to proceed to the full text of the article. After the abstract, please give 5-8 key words; please avoid using the same words as those already used in the title.

Section Headings
Please number all section headings, subheadings and sub-subheadings. Use boldface to identify major headings (e.g. 1., 2., 3., etc.) and subheadings (e.g. 1.1., 1.2., 2.1., 2.2. etc.) For the sub-subheadings, please distinguish it further using non-boldface numbers in parenthesis (e.g. (1), (2), (3), etc.)

Introduction
Introduction should provide a background that gives a broad readership an overall outlook of the field and the research performed. It tackles a problem and states its important regarding with the significance of the study. Introduction can conclude with a brief statement of the aim of the work and a comment about whether that aim was achieved.

Materials and Methods
This section provides the general experimental design and methodologies used. The aim is to provide enough detail to for other investigators to fully replicate your results. It is also required to facilitate better understanding of the results obtained. Protocols and procedures for new methods must be included in detail to reproduce the experiments.

Results
This section can be divided into subheadings. This section focuses on the results of the experiments performed.

Discussion
This section should provide the significance of the results and identify the impact of the research in a broader context. It should not be redundant or similar to the content of the results section.

Conclusion
Please use the conclusion section for interpretation only, and not to summarize information already presented in the text or abstract.

Author contributions

For research articles with more than one author (not mandatory for other article types), a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided.

Funding
This part only exists if the study received funding. If your research has received any external funding, pleaese provide details and check carefully that the details given are accurate and use the standard spelling of funding agency names at https://search.crossref.org/funding. 

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments section is not required. This is the section where authors can credit others for their guidance or help in writing the manuscript.

Conflict of interest

All authors are required to declare all activities that have the potential to be deemed as a source of competing interest relating to their submitted manuscript (see Conflict of Interest Policy). If there are no conflicts of interest, please state so, for example, "The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest".

Appendix
This section is optional and is for all materials (e.g., advanced technical details) that has been excluded from the main text but remain essential to readers in understanding the manuscripts. This section is not for supplementary figures. Authors are advised to refer to the section on "Supplementary figures" for such submissions.

Text
The text of the manuscript should be in Microsoft Word or Latex. The length of the manuscript cannot be more than 50000 characters (inclusive of spaces) or approximately 7000 words.

                                                                   (1)

Supplementary information
This section is optional and contains all materials and figures that have been excluded from the entire manuscript. These information are relevant to the manuscript but remains non-essential to readers' understanding of the manuscript’s main content. All supplementary information should be submitted as a separate file in Step 4 during submission. Please ensure the names of such files contain 'suppl. info'.

In-text citations

Reference citations in the text should be in APA style, that is the author-date citation system. There are two types of in-text citations: narrative citations and parenthetical citations.

Narrative citations:

Arellano and Bond (1991) proposed a new GMM estimator for dynamic panel models.

Parenthetical citations:

The quick development of digital economy has reduced the cost of residents’ commodity search (Stigler, 1961; Brynjolfsson and Oh, 2012) and realized the residents' 24/7 consumption at all times and places. 

In finance, search cost refers to the cost of the search activity itself in the financial market (Fink et al., 2020).

Personal communications and unpublished works can only be used in the main text of the submission and are not to be placed in the Reference section. Authors are advised to limit such usage to the minimum. They should also be easily identifiable by stating the authors and year of such unpublished works or personal communications and the word "Unpublished" in parenthesis.

E.g. (Smith J, 2000, Unpublished)

References

This section is compulsory and should be placed at the end of all manuscripts. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list. The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should be excluded from this section.

The list should be in alphabetical order by surname of the first author. If the referred article has more than three authors, list only the first three authors and abbreviate the remaining authors to "et al." (meaning: "and others").

Journal

• Author 1 FM, Author 2 FM, Author 3 FM, et al. (Year). Title of the article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue) (if available), Firstpage–Lastpage. doi (if available)

e.g., Börner, J., Baylis, K., Corbera, E., et al. (2017). The Effectiveness of Payments for Environmental Services. World Development, 96, 359–374. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.03.020

Article in a language other than English

• Author 1 FM, Author 2 FM, Author 3 FM, et al. (Year). English title of the article (language). Journal Name, Volume(Issue) (if available), Firstpage–Lastpage. doi (if available)

e.g., Massone, L., Borghi, S., & Pestarino, A. (1987). Purpuric palmarsites of dermatitis herpetiformis (French). Annual Dermatol Venerol, 114(12), 1545–1547.

Book

Book without editors

• Author 1 FM, & Author 2 FM (Year). Chapter (optional). In: Title of the Book, Edition (if available). Publisher. pp. Page range (optional).

e.g., Cerdá, C. (2014). Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Non‐communicable Diseases—Molecular Mechanisms and Perspectives in Therapeutics. Springer International Publishing.

e.g., Desiraju, G. R., & Steiner, T. (1999). The Weak Hydrogen Bond in Structural Chemistry and Biology, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press. pp. 10–25.

Book with editors

• Author 1 FM, & Author 2 FM (Year). Title of the contribution. In: Editor 1 FM, & Editor 2 FM (editors). Title of the Book, Edition (if available). Publisher. Volume (optional), pp. Page range (optional).

e.g., Almlof, J., & Gropen, O. (1996). Relativistic effects in chemistry. In: Lipkowitz, K. B., & Boyd, D. B. (editors). Reviews in Computational Chemistry. VCH. Volume 8. pp. 206–210.

• In a translated book, put the translators' names after the editors' names: "Translator 1 FM (translator)" or "Translator 1 FM, & Translator 2 FM (translators)". For example:

e.g., Tessier, J. (1982). Structure, synthesis and physical—Chemical properties of deltamethrin. In: Tessier, J. (editor). Walden, B. V. d G. (translator). Deltamethrin Monograph. Roussel‐Uclaf.

• If the editors and translators are the same, the format should be as in the following example:

e.g., Gadamer, H. G. (1989). Hermeneutics and logocentrism. In: Michelfelder, D. P., & Palmer, R. E. (editors and translators). Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer‐Derrida Debate. State University of New York Press. pp. 114–125.

Conference

Full citations of published abstracts (proceedings)

In most cases, the proceedings will be simply called "Proceedings of the Name of the Conference (full name)" without a book title. In this case, please only add the conference name in the proceedings' title and keep that in regular face (i.e., do no italicize):

• Author 1 FM, Author 2 FM, Author 3 FM, et al. (Year). Title of presentation. In: Proceedings of the Name of the Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available). Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).

e.g., Chum, O., Philbin, J., & Zisserman, A. (2008). Near duplicate image detection: Min‐Hash and tf‐idf weighting. In: Proceedings of the 19th British Machine Vision Conference (BMVC 2008); 1–4 September 2008; Leeds, UK. pp. 812–815.

If the proceedings are published as a book with a separate title (i.e., not "Proceedings of the Name of the Conference (full name)" as the title):

• Author 1 FM, Author 2 FM, & Author 3 FM (Year). Title of presentation. In: Editor 1 FM, & Editor 2 FM (editors) (if available). Title of Collected Work, Proceedings of the Name of the Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available). Publisher. Abstract Number (optional), Pagination (optional).

e.g., Beebe, N. (2009). Digital forensic research: The good, the bad and the unaddressed. In: Advances in Digital Forensics V, Proceedings of the Fifth IFIP WG 11.9 International Conference on Digital Forensics; 26–28 January 2009; Orlando, FL, USA. Springer. Volume V, pp. 17–36.

Oral presentations without published material

• Author 1 FM, Author 2 FM, & Author 3 FM (Year). Title of presentation (if any). Presented at the Name of Conference; Date of Conference (Day Month Year) (if available); Location of Conference (City, Country) (if available); Paper number (if available).

e.g., Zhang, Z., Chen, H., Zhong, J., et al. (2006). ZnO nanotip‐based QCM biosensors. Presented at the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and Exposition; 4–7 June 2006; Miami, FL, USA.

Thesis/Dissertation

• Author FM (Year). Title of Thesis [Level of thesis]. Degree‐Granting University.

e.g., Mäckel, H. (2004). Capturing the Spectra of Silicon Solar Cells [PhD thesis]. The Australian National University.

The level of thesis can be called "XX thesis" or "XX dissertation". Thesis types include but are not limited to the following:

  PhD thesis

  Master's thesis

  Bachelor's thesis

  Licentiate thesis

  Diploma thesis

Newspapers

• Author 1, Author 2, Author 3, et al. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, Complete Date, Pagination (if available).

e.g.: Squires, S. (2005). Falling short on nutrients. The Washington Post, 4 October 2005, p. H1.

Patent

• Patent Owner 1, Patent Owner 2, & Patent Owner 3 (Year). Title of Patent. Patent Number, Date (Day Month Year, the Application granted date).

e.g., Sheem, S. K. (2004). Low‐Cost Fiber Optic Pressure Sensor. U.S. Patent 6,738,537, 18 May 2004.

e.g., Thomas, W. M., Nicholas, E. D., Needham, J. C., et al. (1991). Friction Stir Butt Welding. International Patent Application No. PCT/GB92/02203; GB Patent Application No. 9125978.8; U.S. Patent Application No. 5,460,317, 6 December 1991.

Unpublished work

• Author 1 FM, & Author 2 FM (Year) (if available). Title of unpublished work. Journal Title; Phrase Indicating Stage of Publication (submitted, in press, etc.).

e.g., Guo, L., Zhu, Y., Gunawan, O., et al. (2014). Electrodeposited Cu₂ZnSnSe₄ thin film solar cell with 7% power conversion efficiency. Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications; in press.

Online resources

• Author (if available) (Year). Title of content (if available). Available online: http://URL (accessed on Day Month Year). In case of a homepage, the access date is not required.

e.g., Weier, M. H. (2012). In a big win for HP, Wal‐Mart chooses Neoview Data Warehouse. Available online: http://www.informationweek.com/news/201202317 (accessed on 2 June 2012).