Guidelines and Stylesheet

General Guidelines

Contributors are advised to submit their manuscripts in .docx (MS Word) format. Manuscript should carry:

Author name, short bio not exceeding forty words, current designation or institutional affiliation, email address and phone number.
An abstract not exceeding 250 words.
6-8 keywords related to the major theme/ thrust area of the research.

Contributors should avoid plagiarism and excessive self-referencing.

The whole manuscripts should be processed in Times New Roman font with font size 12pt having line-space 1.5 pt. The manuscript should be 'left-aligned'.

Tables, figures, maps and other supporting elements should be prepared in MS Word format.

Contributors may send their manuscripts at researchmonthly@outlook.com mentioning only one-word MANUSCRIPT in the subject field.

Style Guidelines

We encourage authors to use APA style (6th Edition) which involves:

(1) In-Text citation

(2) Reference list

We don’t use footnotes, instead we prefer text citation. When a reference is made to a work or idea within the text of the research article, it is known as in-text citation or text citation or citing in text.

The works cited within the text of an article are ultimately accumulated at the end of the article in the form of a reference list. It is interesting to note that every work cited through text citation is compulsorily present in the reference list. However, personal conversation cited in the text can’t be put in the reference list.

(1) In-Text Citation

In-text citation should have only surname of the author, year and page number (if any) as shown:

(Kothari, 1970: 103)

There should be a comma between the surname and year. Page number (if required) should be written after the year with a colon and a space in-between. The whole text citation should be inside the parenthesis or brackets.

In-text citation may be either be Paraphrase Citation or Quotation Citation as shown below:

Paraphrase Citation

This can be as shown below:

While agreeing with the views of T N Madan (1999: 34), Nandy (1999) and Partha Chatterjee (1999), Bhargava holds the view that one of the internal threats to secularism is the failure to realise the distinctive character of Indian secularism.

Quotation Citation

This can be as shown below:

There should be a drastic change in the perspective itself with a view to take the spiritual and ethical elements common to all religious practices, and transpose them into a secular, non-doctrinal framework for behaviour under the broader umbrella called spiritualised, humanist secularism (Bhargava, 1995: 201)

Paraphrase citation is also known as the part-of-the narrative citation and doesn’t mention author’s surname within the parenthesis. While quotation citation mentions author’s surname within parenthesis.

(2) Reference List

Following points must be noted while making a reference list:

The reference list is alphabetically arranged by the authors’ surname.
When there is more than one work by the same author, older work would appear first in the list.
When there is no author, list is alphabetically arranged as per the title of the book excluding words “A” and “The”.
When a book is written by many authors, sign “&” should be used instead of “and”.
Only first word of the title, subtitle is Capitalised. Proper nouns are also Capitalised in the same way.
Title of the book, journal/serial, web-document are italicised.
No separate reference list is made for different types of documents. All are included in one combined list.
Reference list must be all encompassing i.e. all works cited in text citation should also appear in reference list except the personal conversation.

A- Citing or Referencing a Book

General rules to be followed are:

Author/s or Editor/s surname should come first and should be followed by initial. For example Amartya Sen must be written as Sen, A. If the book has editor and not the author, (Ed.) / (Eds.) is added after the initials e.g. Prasad V. (Ed.)

Year of publication must follow the author/s name within brackets followed by a dot (.). For instance, Sen, A. (2005).

Year of publication should be followed by the full title of the book. Only first alphabet of the title and subtitle (if any) is capitalized. A proper noun should also be capitalized. Title and the subtitle must be separated by a colon (:). The full title is italicised and should be followed by a dot in the end.

Sen, A. (2005). The argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian culture, history and identity.

If there is a new edition or revised edition of book, the edition should be placed within brackets after title with no dot in between. e.g.

Basu, D.D. (2015). Introduction to the constitution of India (22nd ed.).

Place of publication should come after the full tiltle. If the work has been published within the US, name of city should be accompanied with the two-letter state code having a comma (,) in between. For example, Los Angeles, CA. Here Los Angeles is a city in the US state of California. Latter is abbreviated as CA. If the book has been published outside the US, one should write city name first, followed by a comma and country name. e.g. New Delhi, India.

Publisher’s name comes after the place of publication with a colon (:) in between. Publishers name should be made as brief as possible. One should not use words like Publishers, Co., Inc. etc. However, words Books and Press may be used. When the author and the publisher are the same, the word Author should be put after the colon. e.g.

Basu, D.D. (2015). Introduction to the constitution of India (22nd ed.). Mumbai, India: LexisNexis

Sen, A. (2005). The argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian culture, history and identity. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books

Citizen Council (1982). The adivasis: Report of a survey. New Delhi, India: Author.

A1. Book by One Author

Above general rules would be followed, e.g.

Basu, D.D. (2015). Introduction to the constitution of India (22nd ed.). Mumbai, India: LexisNexis

In-text citation:

Basu (2015) or (Basu, 2015)

A2. Book by Two Authors

Names of the two authors should be separated by a comma and & as shown:

Sen, A., & Dreze J. (2013). An uncertain glory: India and its contradictions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

In-text citation:

Sen and Dreze (2015) or (Sen & Dreze, 2015)

Important: Take care of the words ‘and’ and ‘&’ in in-text citation. Paraphrase citation uses ‘and’ while quotation citation uses ‘&’.

A3. Book by Three, Four or Five Authors

Name of all the authors/ editors should be written as per the general rules; provided that the last two names should be separated by a comma and & as shown below:

Chandra, B., Mukherjee, M., Mukherjee, A., Mahajan, S., & Panikkar, K.N. (2000). India’s struggle for independence (1st ed.). New Delhi, India: Penguin.

In-text citation:

Cite all the authors first time in the text. Henceforth, cite last name of the first author

followed by et. al. In Latin, et. al. means ‘and others’.

First text citation: (Chandra, Mukherjee, Mukherjee, Mahajan & Panikkar, 2000)

Subsequent in-text citation: (Chandra et. al., 2000)

A4. Book by Six or Seven Authors

Name of all the authors/ editors should be written as per the general rules; provided that the last two names should be separated by a comma and ‘&’ as shown below:

Bexby, C., Nigel, E., Smith, K., Rodgers, G. A., Williams, H., & Robinson, J. (2005). Referencing and plagiarism: A complete guide. London: Sage.

In-text citation:

Cite last name of the first author followed by et. al. i.e.

(Bexby et. al., 2005)

A5. Book by Eight or More Authors

Names of first six authors are included followed by ellipsis points (…) and then the name of the eighth author is written. Do not use comma and &. See:

Berman, A., Snyder, S. J., Levett-Jones, T., Dwyer, T., Hales, M., Harvey, N. … Stanley, D. (2012). Kozier and Erb’s fundamentals of nursing (2nd Aust. ed.). Frenchs Forest, Australia: Pearson Australia.

In-text citation:

Cite last name of the first author followed by et. al. i.e.

(Berman et. al., 2012)

A6. Book by a Group

Group, as author, may include corporations, associations, and government agencies. Names of the groups are generally written in full. If the author and publisher are same, write word Author in place of publisher at the end of citation.

Indian Institute of Public administration (2017). The 63rd annual report 2016-17. New Delhi, India: Author.

In-text citation:

Names of groups are usually written in full each time they appear in the text unless recognized by an abbreviation. If they can be abbreviated in a non-confusing manner, write full name in first citation followed by abbreviation in subsequent citations.

First citation: (Indian Institute of Public Administration [IIPA], 2017)

Subsequent citation: (IIPA, 2017)

A7. Similar Information Referred to by more than One Author

In a reference list, both references are made separately following the general rules. Sources are listed in alphabetic order of authors’ surname.

Ansari, M.A. (2017). Administrative document of Mughal India. New Delhi, India: B.R. Publishing

Chandra, S. (1925). History of medieval India. New Delhi, India: Orient Blackswan.

In-text citation:

Sources are listed in alphabetic order within a bracket separated by a semi-colon.

(Ansari, 2017; Chandra, 1925)

A8. Same Author and Same Year

If two or more works of the same author in the same year appears, they are listed in the reference list alphabetically by title (excluding A and The). To each work a lower case letter is assigned in the year of publication.

Roy, A. (2011a). Broken republic. New Delhi, India: Penguin.

Roy, A. (2011b). Walking with the comrades. New Delhi, India: Penguin.

In-text citation:

(Roy, 2011a) (Roy, 2011b)

A9. Citing a Book Chapter in an Edited Book

Here, name of the chapter is not italicised but the title of the book is italicised.

Nandy, A. (2007). Closing the debate on secularism. In S. Rajan & A.D. Needham (Eds.), The crisis of secularism in India. New Delhi, India: Permanent Black.

Bhargava, R. (1995). Religious and secular identities. In U. Baxi & B. Parekh (Eds.), Crisis and change in contemporary India. New Delhi, India: Sage.

In-text citation:

Name of the author/s of chapter are written and not that of editors.

Nandy (2007) or (Nandy, 2007)

B- Citing Journal Articles

Following pattern should be followed:

Start with author/s surname followed by initials. e.g. Avasthi, A.
Name of the author is followed by the Year of publication in bracket, followed by a dot (.). e.g. Avasthi, A. (1959).
After year of publication, title of article should follow. Only first letter of title and subtitle should be capitalized. Title and subtitle should be separated by colon (:). Do not italicise the title of article. Put a dot in the end. e.g.

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M.

Title of article is followed by the title of journal/serial in italics. e.g.

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M. Indian Journal of Public Administration.

Volume number in italics. Do not write “Vol.” e.g.

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M. Indian Journal of Public Administration. 5

Issue number is put in bracket in non-italicised form just after volume number without any space. e.g.

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M. Indian Journal of Public Administration. 5(4)

After issue number, place a comma and write page numbers without “p.” or “pp.” e.g.

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M. Indian Journal of Public Administration. 5(4), 73-83.

B1. Printed Serial/ Journal Articles

Use above general rules:

Avasthi, A. (1959). A new perspective for O and M. Indian Journal of Public Administration. 5(4), 73-83.

B2. Printed Serial/ Journal Articles having more than One Author

Use general rules as given under sections A2-A5:

Arca, M., Papachristoforou, A., Mougel, F., Rortais, A., Monceau, K., Bonnard, O., … Arnold, G. (2014). Defensive behaviour of Apis mellifera against Vespa velutina in France: Testing whether European honeybees can develop an effective collective defence against a new predator. Behavioural Processes, 106, 122–129.

B3. Online Serial/ Journal Articles from Online Database (EBSCO or Newztext)

Don’t write database name and retrieval date. Include the journal url only.

Doss, M.C., (2018). Sandwiched Nehru: Religious minorities and Indian secularism. Economic and Political Weekly, 53(29). Retrieved from https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/29/special-articles/sandwichednehru.html

Write if DOI is available.

Ahn, H., & Kim, K. (2008). Using genetic algorithms to optimize nearest neighbors for data mining. Annals of Operations Research, 263(1), 5-18. doi:10.1007/s10479-0080325-2

C- Citing the Internet Sources

While citing internet sources, these should be mentioned:

Author: individual/ organization/ corporate author.
Year: write (n.d.) if year is not there. (n.d. means ‘no date’)
Title: title of webpage/ document in italics (exception Blogpost, write at the end [Blog post])
URL: complete and correct URL must be written.
Retrieval date: Don’t write retrieval date as per 6th edition of APA. But if online information may change over time, retrieval date may be mentioned. e.g. on Wikipedia. e.g.

NITI Aayog. (2018). Atal Innovation Mission. Retrieved from http://www.niti.gov.in/content/atalinnovation-mission-aim

Internet Sources: no author and no date

When no date and no author is clear, use (n.d.) after the title;

Indian philosophy (n.d.) Retrieved from www.philosophydomain.com/philosophy/indian.html

D- Miscellaneous Citation

These may include:

Act/ Statutes/ Legislations
Conference Paper
e-Book
Magazine
Newspaper article

D1. Acts/ Statutes/ Legislation

Name of the Act is written in italics. Date inside the bracket is the date of updating, reprint or amendment of the Act followed by URL of retrieval. Date is written in the form: (Year, Month Day) e.g.

Right to Information Act 2005. (2006, October 12). Retrieved from www.mha.gov.in/doc/rti_2005.htm