Submissions

Author Guidelines

GUIDELINE FOR THE QUANTITY SURVEYOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION (YOUR MANUSCRIPT TITLE HERE)

Givenname FAMILYNAME^1* and Givenname FAMILYNAME²

¹Department of Quantity Surveying, Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria; name@futa.edu.ng

²Department of Quantity Surveying, Kaduna State Polytechnic Kaduna, Nigeria; name@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

These instructions are formatted to resemble a final manuscript. Your abstract should be about 250 words long; it must never exceed the first page or contain artwork or references. The abstract should present a concise statement of the scope, principal findings, and conclusions of the paper. Formatting of manuscript is important especially for those interested in seeing articles that have a consistent appearance. This manuscript presents the guidelines for authors wishing to submit an article to “The Quantity Surveyor”. The guidelines presented here have also been adopted while formatting the present manuscript. Styles have been defined. After you have formatted your manuscript according to this guideline, your submission should have the same ‘look’ as the manuscript presented here.

Keywords: Up to 5 keywords should be provided in alphabetical order separated by commas

1. INTRODUCTION

The starter section should provide a synopsis of the article as well as the background and context of the paper. Starting from general to the specifics, this section should provide a rationale that substantiates the research. This can be done by providing evidences of difficulties that needs solution and / or identified knowledge gap in a specific domain, level, geographical location, society, and industry. As the response, a clear research agenda can be described specifying research aim and objectives in order to clarify the purpose of conducting the investigation.

Following this, the author needs to describe in general how the research can be or had been done to satisfy the aim and objectives, i.e. a brief discussion on the research methodology. This should highlight the research design, data collection methods and data analysis conducted or to be conducted in the research. Research limitations should also be explained.

The findings of the research have to be outlined by emphasising the originality and general contributions of the investigation and preferably specific contributions of this paper. It is also a good practice to clarify who exactly will or expected to benefit from such investigation. This should be closely linked to the research rationale, aim and objectives.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review should flow from general to specific. There is no strict set of rules that prescribes the numbers of references that should be presented. However, as a rule of thumbs, every claims or important statement in the paper should be supported by at least one reference. References should be reasonably recent, key references and seminal works relevant to the field of study should be included.

The referencing system used should be the Harvard system. There are several variances in styles that can be adopted. However for consistency, the following style should be applied in writing “the Quantity Surveyor” manuscript. Examples: “…… for more sustainable submission (Ogunsemi, 2019), (Oke et al., 2018)”, Ogunsemi and Oke (2019) noted that…..” Please notice that for more than two authors, only the surname of the first author appears followed by “et al.” in italic, a comma, one space and then the year of publication. In the case of more than one articles referenced, a semi colon (;) has to be added in between followed by one space, and should be arranged according to year and then alphabetical order.

Even though it is called the literature review section, the actual title of the section 2 does not have to be “Literature Review”. It can be other titles that might better represent the content of this section.

• Nesting Sub-sections

Starting from section 2 onwards (except for section 7 - References), nesting subsections can be added whenever necessary by selecting Heading 2 or heading 3 as appropriate. In order to format the numbering, right-click on the subsection title, choose Bullets and Numbering, select customize and choose the appropriate level and start at as appropriate.

2.1.1    The Level of Sub-section Nesting

Authors are not advised to use more than three levels of subsections’ nesting. The use of too many nesting levels will reduce clarity and may be confusing for the readers of the article.

3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research methodology should clearly discuss the approach and/or the research design, data collection, and data analysis adapted or to be adapted in the research. One of the most important issues to be discussed here is the appropriateness of the selected methodology, is the most appropriate choice compared to other alternatives. This is the opportunity for the authors to demonstrate their awareness and understanding (appropriate for the level of study) of the research tools commonly used in their field and how this knowledge is used to inform them in constructing a robust methodology to tackle the research problems / questions.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, authors should discuss all the findings emerging from conducting the investigation so far. Even for early stages of research (e.g. the article may only aim to report an initial literature study), what have been synthesised from the literature should be discussed. This may be done by highlighting the similarities and/or differences from a variety of literature sources on the issues being investigated and the contextual nature of the similarities / differences (such as geographical locations, culture or many other factors that may influence the discussion in those different literature sources).

In the case of manuscripts reporting further stages of research, findings from the investigation should be clearly presented followed by an analytical discussion of the findings. This can be done, for instance, by critically demonstrating how the findings relate to the current body of knowledge in or relevant to the field of investigation. For manuscripts reporting completed investigation (or very close to completion), recommendations (for improvement) should be offered by the authors based on the data analysis and discussion of the findings. By all means, this section represents one of the most important aspects of the discussion that presents main contributions of the submitted article.

Tables and figures may be used within the sections 2, 3, and/or 4 to better illustrate the points made or to better present data. For tables, the table caption should be numbered and positioned before the table as follows. One space should be added after the table.

Figures and tables.  All graphics (photos, line art, and tables) must fit within the above margin settings. All graphics should be understandable when printed in black and white. Do not use only color as a distinguishing feature. Use symbols or patterns on line and bar graphs to identify lines and columns. Landscape orientation is acceptable (unless absolutely necessary). Use 12 point type “Times” for text and captions in figures and tables.

Captions and legends.  A descriptive caption, including figure number, should be placed directly below the illustration (see Figure 1). A descriptive legend, including table number, should be placed immediately above the table (see Table 1).

Figure 1.Sample line art illustration.

Illustrations should be numbered consecutively as they are presented (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc., and Table 1, Table 2, etc.). Each figure should be mentioned or called out before it appears. More than one figure may appear on a page.

Table 1.Margin Settings.

(Source: Ogunsemi and Oke, 2018)

Equations and Formulas. Displayed equations should be indented 6 spaces and numbered consecutively, with the equation number flush right (i.e. right-justified) and enclosed in parentheses. In multiple-line equations, the number should be given on the last line. Please ensure that equations are numbered correctly, without repetition, and that no important equations are omitted from the numbering scheme. See Equation (1) as an example of correct layout and numbering.

 (1)Equations should be typed in the same font size as the main text, with superscripts and subscripts 2–3 pts. smaller. Conventional symbols and SI units should be adopted and used consistently.

PAGE SETUP

1. Paper size is A4
2. Margin is as indicated in this template
3. Page Limitation: Author(s) are allowed to submit a manuscript not exceeding 8, 500 words.       

FOOTNOTES

Footnotes are not allowed.

LISTS

Lists, whether set out with roman numerals (i, ii, iii, etc.), arabic numerals, or bullet points, should be set out with a single blank line.

• here is;
• an; and

5. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

In this section, the author / authors should summarise the whole discussion presented in the manuscript. This should be done by concisely reminding the reader about the origin of the investigation and how the research has been designed and conducted, followed by the findings so far and who can benefit from the results. However, repetition from previous sections of the paper should be avoided. It is important that new materials should not be introduced in this section, except for the recommendation / further research as explained below.

The summary should be followed by flagging further research that could emerge from the investigation. For on-going research, this may include the next stages of the research that will be conducted by the researcher to complete the research, whilst for completed research this may include emerging new possibilities revealed during the course of the research and / or potential for expansion based on the scope and limitation of the research set earlier.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In some cases it is necessary for the author to acknowledge that the manuscript is a part of a larger research project, acknowledging the funding contributed by a certain funding agencies, or simply acknowledging contributions of other colleagues who are not included in the authorship of this paper. If no acknowledgement is necessary, this section should be deleted from the manuscript.

7. REFERENCES

All references should appear together at the end of the manuscript (see below). List all authors in the order given in the source document, then sort references in alphabetical order by authors. References are listed alphabetically by last name of the first author. When two or more references by the same author are listed, year of publication is taken into account, and the earliest work is listed first. Wherever reference is made in the text to an author’s work, the author’s name and year of publication should appear in parentheses. We strongly recommend that superscripts not be used to denote references, as these numbers often appear too small to be read easily. All listed references must be cited in text. See final references output below.

Ogunsemi. D. R. and Oke, A.E. (2018). Article Title, Journal Title, Vol. (issue no.): 11-25. [For Journal articles]

Oke, A. E., Eze, C.C., Mustapha, Z., Dahiru, O. M. & Muhammed, A. P. (2018). Book title. Place: Publisher. [For Books]

Ogunsemi, D. R. (2019). Article Title, In: Editor(s), Book Title, Place, Publisher, pp. 40-50. [For chapter of a book]

Donald, A. C. (2014). Article Title, In: Editor(s), Conference Proceeding, Dates of Conference, Place, Publisher, pp. 21-30. [For conference paper]

Reynolds, M. (2018). Paper Title, Retrieved February 28 2018, from website [For online articles]

All fonts in “The Quantity Surveyor” must be in TIMES NEW ROMAN size 12 only