Submitting a paper to OAJEA

This page explains what OAJEA publishes, what a submission must include before we will send it for review, and what happens to a manuscript from the moment you upload it to the moment it carries a DOI.

Submission requirements#

What we publish#

OAJEA accepts five kinds of contribution. Each has its own expectations for length and originality, summarised below; full word limits are on the manuscript format page.

Section	What it is	Peer reviewed
Research Articles	Original research reporting new findings, methods, or data.	Yes
Review Articles	Critical syntheses of an established body of literature. By invitation or pre-submission enquiry.	Yes
Case Studies	Detailed analyses of a single deployment, system, failure, or event.	Yes
Short Communications	Concise reports of significant preliminary findings.	Yes
Editorials	Commentary from the editorial board.	No

Scope and significance#

We publish original research across engineering, computer science, data science, and the applied physical sciences. A submission does not need to claim a breakthrough result to be in scope: a rigorous study that answers a well-posed engineering question, replicates prior work under new conditions, or reports a carefully executed negative result is exactly what this journal exists for. Work that is purely theoretical with no applied engineering relevance, or that duplicates a result already published elsewhere without adding new evidence, is out of scope.

Pre-review screening#

Before a manuscript is sent to reviewers, the handling editor checks that it is complete and in scope. This screening is not a quality judgement — it exists to avoid sending reviewers work that cannot be assessed as submitted.

Must meet#

• The manuscript reports original work, not previously published and not under review elsewhere.
• The manuscript file is fully anonymised (see Manuscript format).
• A separate title page with author names, affiliations, and contact details is uploaded as a cover letter.
• The methodology is described in enough detail for another engineer to reproduce it.
• All figures and tables are cited in the text and legible at print size.
• References follow APA 7th edition and every in-text citation resolves to a reference entry.
• Any data, code, or design files the conclusions depend on are available, or their absence is justified.

Counts in your favour#

Submissions move through screening faster when the cover letter states plainly what section the paper belongs in and why it is significant, when the abstract stands on its own without requiring the figures to make sense, and when negative or null results are framed as a contribution rather than apologised for.

If your submission is not ready yet#

If screening finds the manuscript out of scope, incomplete, or not yet anonymised, the handling editor returns it to you with a note explaining what is missing, rather than opening a review round. You are welcome to resubmit once the issue is fixed — this does not count against you.

Negative and null results#

OAJEA welcomes negative and null results when they are methodologically sound. A well-controlled experiment that shows a proposed technique does not outperform the baseline, or that a hypothesised effect does not appear under the tested conditions, is publishable science: it saves other engineers from repeating the same test. We review these submissions on the rigour of the method, not on whether the outcome was positive.

Policies#

Authorship, conflicts of interest, preprints, AI usage, plagiarism, data availability, and licensing are covered on a dedicated page: see Policies for authors. Every submission is expected to comply with these before it is sent for review.

The submission process#

Before you submit#

Read the section descriptions above and the length limits on the manuscript format page, and confirm every listed author has agreed to be listed and has seen the final manuscript. Have your anonymised manuscript file, a separate title page, and any supplementary or data files ready before you start the online form — the wizard does not save partial uploads between sessions.

Submitting through the site#

1. Register for an author account, or sign in if you already have one.
2. Work through the five-step submission wizard:
   1. Confirm the submission checklist and choose a section (Research Article, Review Article, Case Study, Short Communication).
   2. Upload the anonymised manuscript file, with the title page uploaded separately as a cover letter.
   3. Enter the title, abstract, and keyword metadata.
   4. Add every co-author, in order, with their affiliation and ORCID if they have one.
   5. Review everything on a single confirmation screen and submit.
3. You will receive a confirmation email with your submission's tracking number. Use it in any correspondence with the editorial office.

No submission fees#

OAJEA is a diamond open access journal: we charge no submission fees and no article processing charges. Publication is free for authors and free for readers, at every stage.

The review process#

What happens after you submit#

The handling editor screens the submission for scope and completeness, then invites at least two independent reviewers. Reviewers submit written reports and a recommendation; the handling editor weighs these into one decision, which is sent to the corresponding author.

Decision	What it means
Accept	No further changes required before production.
Minor revisions	Small, well-defined changes; typically re-reviewed by the editor alone.
Major revisions	Substantial changes needed; the revision goes back to reviewers.
Resubmit	The core idea has merit but the manuscript needs enough rework that it re-enters as a new submission.
Decline	Not accepted for publication in OAJEA.

Revisions and further rounds#

When revisions are requested, you submit a revised manuscript together with a point-by-point response to each reviewer comment. Major revisions typically return to the same reviewers for a second round; minor revisions are usually checked by the handling editor directly. There is no fixed limit on the number of rounds, but each round should visibly narrow the remaining concerns.

After acceptance#

Once a manuscript is accepted, it moves to copyediting, then galleys are produced for your final check, and the article is scheduled into an upcoming issue. On publication it is assigned a DOI and becomes citable, and continues to carry that DOI permanently even if later corrected.

Confidential requests#

If you need to raise something you would rather the handling editor see privately — a potential reviewer conflict, a request to exclude a specific reviewer, or a sensitive circumstance affecting the submission — put it in the cover letter to the editor, which is visible only to the editorial team, not to reviewers.

Getting help#

If anything on this page or the submission wizard is unclear, contact the editorial office at [email protected] before you submit — it is much easier to answer a question up front than to unwind a submission that went in with the wrong section or an un-anonymised file.