Instructions for Authors

Manuscript Requirements
To ensure the highest standards of academic publishing, the Dibon Journal of Languages has established comprehensive manuscript preparation guidelines. These requirements maintain consistency across publications and facilitate efficient peer review. Authors are required to adhere to these specifications precisely; non-compliant submissions may be returned for revision before entering the review process.

Types of Submissions

DJL publishes:

  • Original Research Articles: Empirical or theoretical studies employing quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, or computational approaches (5,000–8,000 words, including references).
  • Review Articles / Meta-Analyses: Comprehensive, critical overviews and syntheses of recent research, evolving paradigms, or established theories within specific linguistic, literary, or digital discourse domains (up to 10,000 words, including references).
  • System/Tool Demonstrations & Short Papers: Concise papers introducing new corpus tools, computational models, software frameworks, annotated datasets, or preliminary experimental findings in natural language processing (NLP) and digital humanities (2,500–4,000 words, including references).
  • Book Reviews: Critical evaluations of recent scholarly works in linguistics, language studies, literature, or digital discourse (1,000–2,000 words).

Articles substantially exceeding 8,000 words are unlikely to be accepted unless their significance warrants extended treatment. Concise, focused submissions (around 5,000 words) are particularly welcome.

Submission Package

Each submission must include two separate files:

  1. A Title Page (not anonymized), containing: the article title; the full names, affiliations, and email addresses of all authors; the corresponding author's contact details; and all declarations (funding, competing interests, ethics approval, acknowledgements, and AI-use disclosure).
  2. An anonymized manuscript, prepared for double-blind review.

Anonymization for Peer Review

As DJL operates a double-blind peer review process, the manuscript file must be fully anonymized:

  • Remove all author names and affiliations from the text and from the file's document properties.
  • Refer to your own prior work in the third person, so authorship is not revealed.
  • Place all acknowledgements and declarations on the separate Title Page, not in the manuscript.

Manuscript Format

File Format

  • Microsoft Word (.docx) or LaTeX
  • Single-spaced
  • No space before or after paragraphs
  • Paragraph indentation: 0.5 inch (1.27 cm)

Typography

  • Main text: Times New Roman, 12 point
  • Title: Bold, 13 point, centered
  • Section headings: Bold, 12 point
  • Subsection headings: Italic, 12 point
  • Use italics sparingly for emphasis

Structure

  1. Abstract (150–200 words): a single paragraph stating purpose, methodology, findings, and implications; no citations.
  2. Keywords: 5–7 terms, alphabetically ordered, separated by semicolons.
  3. Main sections (numbered and capitalized):
    1. Introduction
    2. Literature Review
    3. Methodology - state the research approach, provide methodological references, and detail data collection and analysis procedures
    4. Results
    5. Discussion
    6. Implications of the Study
    7. Conclusion
    8. Limitations
    9. Acknowledgement (on the Title Page)
    10. Conflict of Interest Statement (on the Title Page)
  4. References: APA 7th Edition; 12-point; hanging indent (0.5 inch); include DOIs as full links where available.

Reporting Standards & Methodological Transparency
Authors are expected to follow established reporting guidelines appropriate to their research design to maximize transparency and reproducibility:

  • Empirical & Qualitative Research: Authors conducting field interviews, classroom observations, or surveys are encouraged to utilize standard frameworks such as COREQ/SRQR (for qualitative research) or STROBE (for observational and survey studies).
  • Systematic Reviews: Literature syntheses and meta-analyses should follow the PRISMA guidelines.
  • Corpus & Computational Linguistics: For submissions involving text-based data, corpus design, or digital text processing, authors are strongly encouraged to align their structural and metadata practices with international frameworks, such as the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) standards or data documentation practices established by the Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC).

Required Declarations (placed on the Title Page)

Where applicable, authors must include:

  • Funding - sources of financial support, or a statement that none was received.
  • Competing Interests - any financial or non-financial interests, or a statement that none exist.
  • Ethics Approval and Informed Consent - for research involving human participants, confirmation of approval by a relevant ethics committee or IRB (named), and that informed consent was obtained, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
  • Author Contributions - a brief statement of each author's contribution (the CRediT taxonomy is recommended).
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Declaration - disclosure of any generative-AI tools used in preparing the manuscript, specifying the tool, version, and purpose; where no AI tools were used, authors should state this explicitly. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, and authors remain fully responsible for all content. See the journal's Ethical Principles and Publication Policy for the full policy.
  • Originality - confirmation that the manuscript is original, has not been published previously, and is not under consideration elsewhere.
  • Data Availability, Code, and Dataset Sharing: Authors must declare whether and how the supporting data may be accessed. For submissions involving computational linguistics, corpus analysis, or digital humanities, authors are strongly encouraged to share their source code, dataset links, or corpus processing scripts via publicly accessible repositories (e.g., GitHub, Zenodo, or Hugging Face) within this statement on the Title Page.

Author Identification

All authors are encouraged to provide their ORCID iD during submission.

Permissions

Authors wishing to reproduce figures, tables, or text already published elsewhere must obtain written permission from the copyright holder and provide evidence of that permission at submission. Material submitted without such evidence will be assumed to be the authors' own.

Tables and Figures

  • Numbered consecutively; cited in text as "Table 1" / "Figure 1"
  • Table titles above the table (9 point); figure captions below the figure (9 point)
  • Figures supplied at print-quality resolution

Language and Style

  • Language of Publication: The Dibon Journal of Languages accepts manuscripts written in English, Arabic, Spanish, and French.
  • Multilingual Abstract Requirements: To maximize global indexing and abstracting potential, all manuscripts submitted in Arabic, Spanish, or French must include an English translation of the article title, abstract, and keywords. This English abstract must follow the standard 150–200 word format and be placed directly alongside the native-language abstract.
  • Font Requirements for Arabic Submissions: While English, Spanish, and French texts must use 12-point Times New Roman, manuscripts written in Arabic should be formatted using Sakkal Majalla (14 point for main text, 14 point bold for headings) or Traditional Arabic (16 point for main text, 16 point bold for headings) to ensure clear legibility of the script.
  • Linguistic Examples and Interlinear Glossing: For submissions in syntax, morphology, or descriptive linguistics, linguistic examples with word-by-word translations must strictly adhere to the Leipzig Glossing Rules.
  • Phonetic and Phonological Transcription: Papers dealing with phonology or phonetics must utilize the standard symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Authors are responsible for ensuring that all special phonetic characters and diacritics render correctly in both Microsoft Word (.docx) and LaTeX files.
  • Formatting Conventions: Italics should be used for foreign or technical terms. All abbreviations must be fully defined upon their first mention in the manuscript.
  • Manuscripts not conforming to these requirements will be returned for revision before peer review.

* Click HERE to download DJL Sample Manuscript Template.