INTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS

Submitted manuscripts must clearly relate to social sciences, humanities, or interdisciplinary studies. The study should offer a meaningful theoretical, empirical, methodological, cultural, social, or policy contribution.

Manuscripts may be submitted in English or Bahasa Indonesia. English manuscripts are strongly encouraged to improve international readership and scholarly visibility.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that the manuscript is grammatically accurate, academically written, clear, coherent, and understandable. Manuscripts with serious language problems may be returned for language revision before peer review.

• The manuscript should be prepared using the official Aptana article template.
• The manuscript must be submitted in an editable word processing format.
• The document should be concise, coherent, logically organized, and professionally presented.
• Tables, figures, citations, headings, and references must follow the journal template.
• Author names and identifying information should be removed from the review manuscript when required for double-blind peer review.
• Supplementary materials should be uploaded separately and clearly identified.

The organization may be adapted to the manuscript type. Results and Discussion may be presented separately or as an integrated section when appropriate.

The title should be concise, specific, informative, and representative of the manuscript’s main subject and scholarly contribution. Avoid unnecessary abbreviations, overly broad wording, and promotional expressions.

Author information must include:

• Full name of each author.
• Institutional affiliation.
• City and country.
• Email address.
• ORCID iD where available.
• Identification of the corresponding author.

The abstract must provide a concise and independent summary of the manuscript. It should enable readers to understand the purpose, methods, principal findings, contribution, and conclusion without consulting the full article.

The Introduction should establish the scholarly and social context of the study, critically review relevant literature, identify the research problem and gap, explain the originality or novelty of the study, and clearly state the research objectives or questions. Authors should avoid presenting an excessively broad literature summary without a clear analytical direction.

Where applicable, the manuscript should explain the theories, concepts, previous studies, intellectual traditions, or analytical frameworks used to interpret the research problem. The literature review should be critical, current, relevant, and directly connected to the study’s contribution.

The Methods section must provide sufficient detail to evaluate the validity, reliability, credibility, and reproducibility of the research.

• Research design and approach.
• Research setting or context.
• Participants, population, sample, or data sources.
• Sampling or case-selection procedures.
• Data collection instruments and procedures.
• Data analysis techniques.
• Validity, reliability, or trustworthiness procedures.
• Software or analytical tools where relevant.
• Ethical approval and informed consent where applicable.

The Results section should present the findings clearly, logically, and objectively. Quantitative results should report relevant statistical information, while qualitative findings should be supported by appropriate themes, categories, interpretations, quotations, textual evidence, historical records, or other relevant data. Tables and figures should complement rather than duplicate the narrative.

The Discussion should interpret the findings and explain their scholarly, social, cultural, theoretical, and practical significance.

• Relate findings to the research objectives.
• Compare findings with previous studies.
• Explain agreements, differences, or unexpected results.
• Clarify theoretical and conceptual implications.
• Discuss practical, cultural, social, or policy implications.
• Acknowledge study limitations.
• Identify opportunities for future research.

The Conclusion should directly address the research objectives or questions and summarize the study’s principal scholarly contribution. It should emphasize the importance, originality, implications, and potential relevance of the findings without merely repeating the Results and Discussion sections.

• Tables and figures must be numbered consecutively.
• Every table and figure must be cited in the text.
• Titles and captions must be clear and informative.
• Images and graphical materials should be clear and suitable for publication.
• Sources must be stated when material is adapted or reproduced.
• Authors must obtain permission for copyrighted third-party material where required.

Authors are encouraged to use reference-management software such as Mendeley, Zotero, or EndNote. All in-text citations must appear in the reference list, and every reference-list entry must be cited in the manuscript.

• Use relevant, credible, and scholarly references.
• Prioritize recent peer-reviewed journal literature while retaining important foundational sources.
• Include DOI links whenever available.
• Avoid excessive reliance on non-academic websites.
• Ensure that all bibliographic information is complete and accurate.

Authors must conduct and report research honestly, transparently, and responsibly. Aptana does not tolerate:

Research involving human participants, personal data, vulnerable groups, interviews, observations, or confidential records must comply with applicable ethical standards. Authors should state the ethics committee, approval number where applicable, informed-consent procedures, privacy protections, and confidentiality measures.

Authorship should be limited to individuals who made substantial scholarly contributions, participated in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, approved the final version, and agreed to be accountable for the work.

Authors are encouraged to describe individual contributions using the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy, including conceptualization, methodology, investigation, formal analysis, writing, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition.

• Artificial intelligence tools must not be listed as authors.
• Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, interpretation, and integrity of the manuscript.
• Substantial use of generative AI in writing, translation, coding, analysis, or image production should be disclosed transparently.
• AI-generated references, quotations, facts, and analyses must be independently verified.

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional, professional, academic, political, or personal relationship that could influence or reasonably appear to influence the research.

All sources of financial and institutional support must be disclosed. The funder’s role in the research should be explained where relevant.

Authors should preserve the data, documents, coding materials, transcripts, instruments, or other evidence supporting the published findings. Where appropriate, data may be deposited in a recognized repository. Any restrictions arising from privacy, ethics, copyright, or confidentiality should be explained in the Data Availability Statement.

Authors retain copyright while granting Aptana the right of first publication. Published articles are distributed under the license stated on the journal website and individual article page. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for third-party copyrighted materials included in their manuscripts.

Each manuscript undergoes an initial editorial assessment for scope, originality, structure, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and adherence to the author guidelines.

Manuscripts that pass the initial assessment are sent to independent reviewers. Editorial decisions may include acceptance, minor revision, major revision, or rejection. The final publication decision is made by the responsible editor based on reviewer reports, author responses, and the quality of the revised manuscript.

• Address every reviewer and editor comment.
• Submit a point-by-point response document.
• Clearly indicate changes made in the revised manuscript.
• Explain respectfully when a recommendation is not followed.
• Submit the revised manuscript within the specified deadline.

Before submitting, authors should confirm that:

• The manuscript fits the journal’s aims and scope.
• The work is original and not under review elsewhere.
• All authors approve the submission.
• The official template has been used.
• The manuscript is anonymized where required.
• The abstract and keywords meet journal requirements.
• Tables and figures are cited and properly labeled.
• References follow APA 7th Edition.
• DOIs have been included where available.
• Ethics, funding, conflict, and data statements are included.
• Third-party permissions have been obtained where necessary.
• The manuscript has been checked for language and formatting accuracy.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to return, request revision of, or reject manuscripts that do not comply with these instructions. Compliance with the guidelines does not guarantee acceptance, but it supports an efficient, transparent, and high-quality editorial and peer-review process.