Manuscript guidelines
What your manuscript should contain before you submit it in My Journal. None of this is meant to intimidate: the editors would rather receive honest, clearly structured work than polished imitation.
Scope and article types
Pick the one subject category that fits your work best — it decides which section's editors review your manuscript: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Humanities, Economics, Psychology. If your work genuinely spans two categories, choose the one whose readers you most want to reach; if in doubt, write to journal@synthica.org before submitting.
The journal publishes three main formats. An Article is a full study: a question, methods, results, and discussion. A Letter is a short report of a focused result that does not need full-Article length. An Analysis examines methods, tools, or existing evidence rather than reporting new experimental data. Most submissions are Articles.
Structure
Empirical manuscripts should follow the conventional IMRaD shape. The names matter less than the logic: what you asked, how you did it, what you found, what it means.
- Title page — title, every author's full name and affiliation (school, institution, or “Independent Researcher”), and keywords.
- Abstract — a self-contained summary (see below).
- Introduction — the question, why it matters, and what was known before.
- Methods — in enough detail that someone else could repeat the work, including materials, procedures, and any statistical or computational analysis.
- Results — what you found, with figures and tables; keep interpretation for the discussion.
- Discussion — what the results mean, their limitations, and what should happen next.
- Acknowledgements — mentors, facilities, funding, and any disclosed AI use (see below).
- References — complete and consistently formatted.
Work in the Humanities or Mathematics may follow the structure its argument needs — a source-led essay or a definitions-theorem-proof paper is welcome — provided the question, approach, evidence, and conclusion are just as explicit.
Abstract and keywords
The abstract is entered as plain text when you submit and may be up to 5,000 characters, though most strong abstracts are 150–300 words. It should state the question, the approach, the main result (with numbers where you have them), and the conclusion — and be understandable without reading the paper. No citations, figures, or undefined abbreviations.
Choose three to six keywords: the terms someone searching for your work would actually type.
References
Cite every source that shaped the work — papers, datasets, software, and web resources. Any consistent style is acceptable; the journal recommends a numbered style with authors, title, source, and year, with a DOI or URL where one exists. For example:
Hughes, T. P. et al. Global warming and recurrent mass bleaching of corals. Nature 543, 373–377 (2017).
Accuracy matters more than formatting: editors check that references exist and say what the manuscript claims they say.
Figures, tables, and data availability
Submit one PDF containing the full manuscript with figures and tables placed near their first mention. Number every figure and table, give each a caption that can stand alone, and make sure text and axes are legible at normal page size. Plots should label their axes and units; images should state their source if not your own.
End the manuscript with a short data availability statement: where the underlying data and code live (a repository link), that they are available from the authors on request, or that all data are contained in the paper. Editors may ask to see underlying data during review — keep it.
AI-use disclosure
Generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot take responsibility for a manuscript. If you used such tools substantively — drafting text, generating or refactoring analysis code, summarising literature — say so, briefly and plainly, in the Methods or Acknowledgements: which tool, and for what.
Routine assistance (spelling and grammar checking, reference managers, translation of your own writing) needs no disclosure. Either way, the authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, and honesty of everything in the manuscript — “the model said so” is not a citation.
Checklist
- Manuscript is a single PDF with figures and tables included
- One subject category chosen
- Abstract ready as plain text, within 5,000 characters
- Three to six keywords chosen
- References complete and consistently formatted
- Data availability statement included
- AI use disclosed, if any
- All co-authors listed, in agreed order, and have approved the manuscript