Manuscript Type

Journal of Sustainable Community Service (JSCS) considers the following types of scholarly manuscripts in the fields of community service, community empowerment, and sustainable development, provided that they establish a clear and substantive connection with the journal’s focus and scope:

1. Original Research Articles
Empirical studies reporting original findings based on quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods research. Manuscripts should present a clear research problem, explain the methods used, and discuss the findings and their contribution to knowledge or community practice. Data and analysis must be verifiable (see the Data Availability policy).

2. Review Articles
Systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses, and other structured reviews, including bibliometric studies. Manuscripts should explain how sources were identified, selected, and analyzed so that the review can be replicated. A review must go beyond summarizing by synthesizing findings, identifying gaps, and proposing directions for future research.

3. Conceptual and Theoretical Papers
Articles that develop, extend, integrate, or critically examine a theory, framework, model, or proposition relevant to community service and sustainability. Manuscripts must provide a coherent scholarly argument grounded in current literature, state a distinct theoretical contribution, and, where possible, explain implications for research or community practice.

4. Case Studies
Research-based analyses of communities, villages, community-based organizations, empowerment programs, policies, or service practices. Manuscripts should explain the basis for case selection, data collection, and analysis, and demonstrate implications beyond a purely descriptive account of the case.

5. Methodological Studies
Articles that develop, adapt, compare, or evaluate research methods, participatory approaches, analytical techniques, measurement instruments, or impact-evaluation approaches relevant to community service and sustainable development. Manuscripts should provide appropriate validation or evaluation and explain the value of the methodological contribution.

Submission requirements

Authors should identify the manuscript type when submitting. Each submission must demonstrate originality, adequate scholarly grounding, a clear contribution, and methods or an analytical approach appropriate to its manuscript type. In addition, all manuscripts must meet the following:

  • The manuscript must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration by another journal or publisher.
  • Length: no more than 8,000 words or 20 pages, and no fewer than 5 pages, including references, tables, and figures (appendices excluded).
  • The Abstract (150 to 250 words) and Keywords must be written in English.
  • At least 20 references are required, in line with the Reference rules in the Author Guidelines.
  • All declarations (Funding, Conflict of Interest, Author Contributions, Ethical Approval, Informed Consent, Data Availability, and Generative AI) are required (starting from volume 6).

Manuscript preparation

Authors must follow the structure of manuscripts (Title, Authors, Abstract, Keywords, Introduction, Literature Review, Method, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Declarations and Supplementary Sections, References) and use the latest official Manuscript Template. For review articles, conceptual papers, case studies, and methodological studies, the organization may be adapted to the nature of the work. The Method section should describe the review protocol, conceptual approach, case design, or validation procedure used, and any necessary departures from the standard research structure should be explained to the editor.