Irfan Ahmed, PhD

What is the APA Style? In 1929, the APA published a manual with instructions for authors on how to prepare manuscripts for publication in psychology journals. Later, it was used for thesis and term papers, etc. This manual is widely used in social sciences. Latest edition of APA manual is 6th in 2010. General Guidelines: Paper size should be 8½ X 11 inches with double space, left justify text only. Paper should have one-inch margin on the sides, top, and bottom. Page numbers should be on the top right corner, beginning with the title page. Use a shortened form of the title as a header just before the page number. Times New Roman is the only accepted font style with 12-point size. Indent paragraphs with 5-7 spaces. There must be not more than 27 lines of text per page. Headings: Level 1 headings (used for major sections) should be centered in boldface with all major words capitalized. No punctuation after a Level 1 heading. Level 2 headings (used for subsections of Level 1 s...

Crafting a Successful Manuscript: Lessons from 131 Reviews is actually an article published in Journal of Business Psychology (2009) . The authors in this paper focus on how to prepare a quality manuscript by content analyzed reviewer comments from nearly 100 manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Business and Psychology over a 4-month time period (Nov 2008 to April 2009). This paper identifies areas of concern commonly expressed by manuscript reviewers and educates authors on the key elements of a successful manuscript. After analyzing 131 reviews, common themes were identified and then organized into the following categories: (1) introduction section, (2) methods and results section (3) discussion section and (4) writing. The article is very useful for the researchers. After reading this article, researchers will be able to incorporate all the essential elements in their manuscripts which reviewers could desire for a good and effective manuscript. So reading is must. READ DOW...