Authors intending to submit to Advances in Community Services Research (ACSR) should review the current Aims & Scope, accepted manuscript types, section-specific manuscript requirements, official manuscript templates, separate Title Page requirements, peer-review process, publication ethics, Article Processing Charge policy, Open Access and licensing terms, and other applicable journal policies before submission.
ACSR accepts manuscripts written in English only. Authors should prepare original, academically rigorous, clearly written, and ethically compliant manuscripts that contribute substantively to the journal's recognized scholarly scope or demonstrate meaningful community-service activities, partnerships, outcomes, and impacts, as appropriate to the selected editorial section.
All formal submissions must be made through the official ACSR Online Journal System (OJS). Manuscripts submitted only through personal email, messaging applications, or unofficial communication channels do not constitute formal journal submissions.
ACSR publishes scholarly and community-service contributions within its recognized areas of community engagement, community partnerships, community services, and social sciences. Its scope includes communication, management, economics, culture, education, law, social health, hospital management, religion within its social context, and relevant interdisciplinary studies.
ACSR maintains exactly two OJS editorial sections, each with distinct manuscript classifications and submission requirements.
1. Article
This section accepts only Research Paper and Literature Review Paper manuscripts.
Research Paper presents original research using quantitative, qualitative, mixed-method, experimental, quasi-experimental, longitudinal, cross-sectional, comparative, archival, case-based, computational, or other defensible original-research designs. The manuscript should demonstrate appropriate theoretical or conceptual grounding, transparent methods, credible evidence, and a substantive scholarly contribution.
Literature Review Paper presents rigorous scholarly synthesis using an accurately identified narrative, integrative, systematic, scoping, structured, bibliometric, meta-analytical, theory-oriented, concept-oriented, or other defensible literature-review approach. The manuscript should provide meaningful critical synthesis, conceptual or theoretical insights, methodological understanding, and a focused scholarly contribution.
Research Paper and Literature Review Paper manuscripts must follow the Advances in Research Master Manuscript Template and are assessed using the journal's standard scholarly review form.
2. Community Partnerships and Impacts
This section accepts Community Service Article manuscripts documenting community engagement, community partnerships, service-learning, community-based interventions, implementation activities, program evaluation, outcomes, and demonstrated community benefits or impacts.
Community Service Article manuscripts must follow the designated New ACSR Template Submission and are assessed using the dedicated Community Partnerships and Impacts Review Form, consisting of 11 assessment components.
Manuscript Classification Principle: Authors must select the OJS section corresponding to the manuscript's principal purpose and evidence. Research designs, analytical techniques, and literature-review methods do not constitute additional OJS sections or independent manuscript categories. The Community Service Article classification is reserved for the Community Partnerships and Impacts section.
Before submitting a manuscript, authors must confirm compliance with the following requirements:
- The manuscript is written in clear and consistent academic English.
- The manuscript is original, has not previously been published as a journal article, and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal or publisher.
- The manuscript falls within the current ACSR Aims & Scope and has been submitted to the correct OJS section.
- The manuscript uses the official template corresponding to its selected editorial section and manuscript type.
- The submission includes two separate files: a Blinded Manuscript and a Title Page & Author Information Form.
- The Blinded Manuscript does not contain author names, affiliations, email addresses, identifying acknowledgements, or other information that could compromise anonymous peer review.
- The required manuscript files are submitted in DOC or DOCX format rather than PDF.
- The manuscript follows the applicable layout, typography, abstract, keyword, structural, and reference requirements.
- The manuscript has been checked for grammar, clarity, originality, similarity concerns, and citation-reference consistency.
- Applicable research ethics approvals, participant consent, community or institutional permissions, instrument-use permissions, and third-party material permissions have been obtained and reported accurately.
- The Title Page contains verified author information and applicable funding, conflicts of interest, CRediT contributions, acknowledgements, data availability, and Generative AI declarations.
- All authors have approved the submitted manuscript, acknowledged responsibility for its integrity, and reviewed the journal's publication and APC policies.
Manuscripts that do not satisfy essential submission requirements may be returned for correction or declined during editorial screening, depending on the nature and seriousness of the noncompliance.
Authors must prepare and submit two separate files: (1) Blinded Manuscript and (2) Title Page & Author Information Form. The files serve different editorial purposes and must not be combined.
1. Blinded Manuscript: This file contains the article title, abstract, keywords, manuscript type, main text, tables, figures, supporting materials where applicable, and references. It must not contain author names, affiliations, email addresses, identifying acknowledgements, or identifying document properties.
2. Title Page & Author Information Form: This separate file contains verified author names, affiliations, email addresses, corresponding-author details, ORCID information, CRediT contributions, funding, conflicts of interest, data availability, acknowledgements, research ethics and consent information where applicable, Generative AI disclosure, third-party permissions, and applicable publication declarations.
The corresponding author's ORCID is required. Other authors should provide their ORCID where available. Author information entered through OJS must be consistent with the separate Title Page.
Authors must ensure that the correct section-specific Blinded Manuscript template is used. The Article and Community Partnerships and Impacts sections do not share the same manuscript template.
All manuscripts must follow the template applicable to their selected OJS section. Manuscripts must be written in academic English using Calisto MT, 11 pt for the main text, A4 page size, a single-column layout, and single spacing, unless a section-specific template provides a more precise formatting instruction.
The article title must contain no more than 20 words. The abstract must not exceed 200 words, and manuscripts must provide 1–6 relevant keywords. Authors must retain only the instructions and sections applicable to their manuscript type.
Article Section: Research Paper and Literature Review Paper manuscripts must use the current Advances in Research Master Manuscript Template. Authors must select the appropriate research or review structure and remove unused template instructions.
Community Partnerships and Impacts Section: Community Service Article manuscripts must follow the designated New ACSR Template Submission. This template is specifically intended for community-service reporting and must not be replaced by the general Research Paper or Literature Review Paper template.
The existing ACSR submission-template reference is retained below. Authors should ensure that the file they use is the current New ACSR Template Submission designated by the Editorial Office.
Separate Title Page: Authors in both editorial sections must prepare a separate Title Page containing accurate author information and the required publication declarations.
The abstract must be written in English, follow the structure required by the selected manuscript template, and contain no more than 200 words. It should communicate the manuscript's principal objective, method or implementation approach, substantive findings or outcomes, implications, and contribution without excessive numerical details.
Article — Research Paper: Use the structured labels Purpose; Research Methodology; Results; Research limitations/Implications; Originality.
Article — Literature Review Paper: Use the structured labels Purpose; Review Methodology; Findings; Research limitations/Implications; Originality.
Community Partnerships and Impacts — Community Service Article: Follow the abstract structure of the designated New ACSR Template Submission, addressing Purpose; Implementation Method; Results and Discussion; Implications as applicable to the community-service work reported.
Detailed coefficients, p-values, test statistics, model-fit indices, bibliometric counts, and other numerical outputs should normally be presented in the main text rather than the abstract. Authors must not exaggerate the strength, significance, generalizability, sustainability, or community impact of their findings.
A Research Paper submitted to the Article section should follow the current Advances in Research Master Manuscript Template and normally use the structure Introduction → Review of Literature → Research Methodology → Results and Discussion → Conclusion.
1. Introduction: Establish the state of the art, scholarly context, research problem, research gap, novelty, objectives or research questions, and theoretical, methodological, practical, or policy significance. Authors should explain why the research matters and what distinctive contribution it seeks to make.
The Introduction should provide a coherent progression from the existing state of knowledge to the research gap, originality, research questions, objectives, and significance. Authors are encouraged to explain how their research responds to the identified problem and contributes to the relevant scholarship.
2. Review of Literature: Critically evaluate and synthesize relevant theories, concepts, and empirical evidence. Identify agreements, disagreements, unresolved questions, and scholarly gaps. Develop the appropriate conceptual framework, research model, propositions, or hypotheses where justified. The literature review should advance a coherent scholarly argument rather than merely describe previous studies.
3. Research Methodology: Describe the research design, unit of analysis, population, sample or case selection, research context, data sources, data collection, measurement, analytical techniques, validity or reliability procedures, software, and ethical safeguards where applicable. Report only procedures genuinely undertaken. This section must explain the methodology rather than present the research findings.
4. Results and Discussion: Present the empirical evidence and its scholarly interpretation as distinguishable functions within the main section.
4.1 Research Results: Present relevant descriptive, statistical, qualitative, comparative, model-based, experimental, or other research evidence accurately and transparently. Include material findings that do not support the proposed hypotheses. Tables, figures, and analytical outputs should support the findings without unnecessary repetition.
4.2 Discussion: Interpret the substantive meaning of the findings in relation to the research problem, theoretical or conceptual framework, prior scholarship, and relevant social, organizational, institutional, or community context. Discuss expected and unexpected results, limitations, contributions, and relevant theoretical, methodological, managerial, practical, or policy implications.
5. Conclusion: Answer the research objectives, summarize the principal contribution, explain the most important implications, acknowledge relevant limitations, and provide focused future-research directions. The Conclusion must not simply reproduce the Abstract, Results, or Discussion.
Evidence Placement Principle: Research Methodology explains what was done; Research Results reports what the evidence shows; Discussion interprets what the findings mean; and Conclusion identifies what the study establishes. These functions must remain distinct and avoid unnecessary duplication.
A Literature Review Paper submitted to the Article section should normally follow the structure Introduction → Review Methodology → Review Findings / Literature Synthesis → Discussion → Conclusion.
1. Introduction: Establish the scholarly problem, review context, state of the literature, knowledge gap, review objectives or questions, significance, and intended contribution. Explain why the review is needed and what it seeks to synthesize, clarify, extend, or critically evaluate.
2. Review Methodology: Accurately identify the review design and describe how the literature was identified, selected, organized, evaluated, and synthesized. Information sources, databases, search strategies, eligibility criteria, screening procedures, duplicate handling, analytical methods, and software should be reported where genuinely applicable to the review design undertaken.
3. Review Findings / Literature Synthesis: Present substantive synthesis through meaningful themes, concepts, theoretical perspectives, research streams, debates, methodological patterns, chronological developments, or scholarly gaps. Relevant quantitative or bibliometric findings should be presented accurately. Avoid purely descriptive study-by-study listings without critical synthesis.
4. Discussion: Interpret the accumulated evidence at a higher scholarly level. Explain what the literature establishes, where contradictions or limitations remain, how the synthesis develops or challenges existing knowledge, and what theoretical, methodological, institutional, practical, or policy implications follow.
5. Conclusion: Answer the review objectives, synthesize the principal insights, clarify originality and contribution, acknowledge limitations, and provide a focused future-research agenda supported by the reviewed evidence.
Review Integrity: Authors must not claim systematic-review, PRISMA-based, scoping, bibliometric, meta-analytical, database-search, screening, or other specialized procedures unless those procedures were genuinely performed. Bibliometric mapping or descriptive classification alone is insufficient when substantive scholarly synthesis is required.
A Community Service Article submitted to the Community Partnerships and Impacts section must follow the current New ACSR Template Submission. This section documents community-service initiatives, engagement activities, collaborative implementation, evaluation, and demonstrated community outcomes.
The community-service manuscript structure addresses the Introduction; Literature Review; Implementation Method; Results and Discussion; Program Evaluation and Sustainability; Conclusion; Acknowledgment where applicable; and References, following the headings and instructions provided in the current section-specific template.
Introduction: Explain the community context, identified needs or problems, participating communities and partners, program objectives, rationale, and intended contribution. Where relevant, explain how community members participated in identifying problems and developing the proposed initiative.
Literature Review: Present relevant scholarly, conceptual, institutional, or practice-based foundations supporting the community-service initiative. The literature should clarify the intervention's rationale, relevant evidence, and relationship to existing community-engagement knowledge.
Implementation Method: Describe the community setting, target participants, collaborating institutions or partners, implementation stages, materials, activities, methods, instruments, evaluation procedures, and relevant permissions or ethical safeguards. The description must accurately reflect the activities actually undertaken.
Results and Discussion: Present the implemented activities, observed outcomes, participant involvement, relevant documentation, evaluation findings, and evidence of practical contribution. Interpret the results in relation to the program objectives, community needs, and available scholarly or practical evidence.
Program Evaluation and Sustainability: Explain the evaluation process, outcome indicators, limitations, follow-up arrangements, community capacity, sustainability considerations, and potential continuation or development of the initiative where supported by available evidence.
Conclusion: Summarize the principal community-service outcomes, contributions, practical implications, limitations, and relevant recommendations. Conclusions must be proportional to the documented implementation and evaluation evidence.
Acknowledgment and References: Acknowledge relevant community partners, institutions, and contributors where appropriate and consistent with anonymous-review requirements. References must support the reported activity and follow the journal's applicable citation standards.
Community Impact Integrity: Authors must distinguish implemented activities, measured outcomes, participant feedback, anticipated benefits, and longer-term impacts. Claims of effectiveness, sustainability, behavioral change, or community transformation must not exceed the actual evidence. Community-service manuscripts are reviewed using the dedicated 11-component Community Partnerships and Impacts Review Form.
Tables and figures should be relevant, accurate, clearly numbered, appropriately titled, and placed near their first substantive discussion. Tables and figures must be numbered separately and consecutively. Table and figure titles should appear above the corresponding items, while sources, notes, and explanatory information should appear below.
Figures, diagrams, conceptual frameworks, community-program illustrations, evaluation charts, and other visual materials must accurately reflect the research design, community-service implementation, underlying evidence, and findings. Raster figures should preferably have a resolution of at least 300 DPI where applicable.
Authors must obtain and document necessary copyright permissions for reproduced or adapted tables, figures, photographs, instruments, datasets, and other third-party materials. Photographs or records involving identifiable participants must comply with applicable consent, confidentiality, and publication-permission requirements.
ACSR accepts submissions in English only. Manuscripts must demonstrate appropriate grammar, academic tone, clarity, readability, terminology consistency, paragraph coherence, and international scholarly readability. Authors should use inclusive and bias-free language.
Language editing and proofreading must preserve the scientific meaning, research evidence, program implementation details, documented findings, and community-service outcomes. Authors are not required to purchase a commercial language-editing service as a condition of consideration or acceptance.
All in-text citations and reference-list entries must follow APA Style, 7th edition. Manuscripts should include at least 25 references, with at least 80% drawn from journal articles, while respecting any additional requirements of the designated manuscript template. Authors should prioritize relevant and recent scholarship, generally from approximately the last ten years, while retaining important foundational studies where academically necessary.
Literature Review Papers must draw on a sufficiently broad and defensible body of scholarship appropriate to their review objectives and methodology. Community Service Articles must use relevant literature to support their community context, implementation rationale, evaluation, and discussion. Minimum reference counts do not replace the need for appropriate source quality or substantive literature engagement.
Every work cited in the manuscript must appear in the reference list, and every reference-list entry must be cited in the manuscript. Authors must verify author names, publication years, article titles, journal names, volume and issue details, page ranges, DOIs, URLs, and other bibliographic metadata.
References must be genuine, traceable, relevant, and accurately represented. Fabricated, fictitious, hallucinated, materially inaccurate, misleading, or unverifiable references are not permitted. Sources must not be cited as supporting claims that they do not substantiate.
APA 7th edition uses the author-date citation system. Examples include a single author (Ward, 2012), two authors (Tirdasari & Dhewanto, 2012), three or more authors (Alias et al., 2016), and multiple sources within one parenthetical citation (Ward, 2012; Tirdasari & Dhewanto, 2012). These examples illustrate citation format and do not substitute for verified references in a submitted manuscript.
Authors are encouraged to use reference-management software such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote. The corresponding author and all coauthors retain responsibility for the accuracy of the reference list, citation reconciliation, and scholarly integrity of the submitted work.
All listed authors must have made appropriate contributions, approved the submitted manuscript, agreed to the authorship order, and accepted responsibility for the integrity of the work. Authorship must reflect genuine contribution rather than honorary, guest, gift, or unsupported authorship arrangements.
The corresponding author's ORCID is mandatory. Other authors should provide their ORCID where available. Author contributions must be reported using the current CRediT contributor-role framework, accurately reflecting each author's actual contributions.
The separate Title Page & Author Information Form must include the final article title, selected OJS section and manuscript type, manuscript identification number where already assigned, author names without academic titles or ranks, complete institutional affiliations, email addresses, corresponding-author information, ORCID details, and applicable CRediT contributions.
Authors must accurately complete applicable declarations concerning research ethics, institutional or organizational approvals, informed consent, publication consent, community-partner permissions, instrument-use permissions, data availability, confidentiality, funding, conflicts of interest, acknowledgements, Generative AI use, third-party materials, originality, concurrent submission, and final manuscript approval.
Ethics approvals, consent statements, authorization numbers, funding information, community participation, data-access claims, author contributions, and other publication declarations must not be invented or presented inaccurately. Where a declaration does not apply, authors must report its status truthfully.
The separate Title Page incorporates the normal author-confirmation process. A separate author statement letter is not required in the standard workflow unless specifically requested by the Editorial Office. Author-identifying declarations must remain outside the Blinded Manuscript during anonymous peer review.
Generative AI systems and AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for originality, accuracy, scholarly integrity, ethical compliance, or the final published record.
Authors remain fully responsible for manuscript content, research or implementation design, data, analysis, interpretation, community-service outcomes, citations, references, confidentiality, ethical compliance, originality, and final scholarly claims. AI-generated or AI-assisted text, calculations, citations, summaries, figures, code, and interpretations must be independently checked before inclusion.
Substantive use of Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies must be disclosed accurately where applicable through the designated Title Page or declaration process. Confidential information, identifiable participant data, unpublished third-party materials, or otherwise protected content must not be uploaded to external systems where appropriate authorization, confidentiality, and data protection cannot be assured.
ACSR applies double-anonymous peer review. Author identities are not disclosed to reviewers, and reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors. The separate Title Page remains outside the Blinded Manuscript for confidential editorial administration and author verification.
Manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening for scope relevance, correct OJS section, manuscript type, template compliance, originality, scholarly or community contribution, methodological or implementation adequacy, research integrity, citation accuracy, anonymization, similarity concerns, and applicable submission requirements.
Manuscripts that pass screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant subject or methodological expertise. Reviewers submit independent assessments and recommendations using the review form assigned to the corresponding OJS section.
Article: Research Paper and Literature Review Paper manuscripts are evaluated using the standard scholarly review form.
Community Partnerships and Impacts: Community Service Article manuscripts are evaluated using the dedicated Community Partnerships and Impacts Review Form containing 11 assessment components.
Authors may be requested to revise their manuscripts and provide accurate responses to reviewer and editorial comments. Revised manuscripts are evaluated to determine whether substantive concerns have been adequately addressed and whether unresolved scientific, methodological, ethical, evidentiary, or research-integrity problems remain.
Reviewer recommendations are advisory rather than automatically binding. Final scientific-editorial responsibility remains with the authorized academic editor and, where applicable, the Editor-in-Chief. Manuscripts failing essential scholarly, ethical, methodological, community-service, or submission requirements may be declined during initial editorial screening without external peer review.
ACSR provides immediate Open Access to published articles without subscription charges. Authors retain copyright, and published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), subject to the attribution and reuse requirements of the license and applicable third-party rights.
For an accepted manuscript where at least one author is institutionally affiliated with an institution in Indonesia, the current standard ACSR Article Processing Charge is IDR 750,000 per accepted manuscript.
Where all authors are institutionally affiliated exclusively with institutions outside Indonesia, the manuscript receives a full APC waiver / IDR 0. Eligibility is determined by institutional affiliation rather than nationality, citizenship, country of birth, residence, or another personal characteristic.
The same APC and affiliation-based waiver policy applies to both Article and Community Partnerships and Impacts.
No APC is payable before final scientific-editorial acceptance. APC or waiver administration begins only after acceptance. Where payment applies, the ACSR Editorial Office issues an official invoice containing authorized payment instructions. APC payment, ability to pay, and waiver status do not influence editorial screening, reviewer selection, peer review, revision requirements, or scientific-editorial decisions.
ACSR does not charge a mandatory submission fee, peer-review fee, page charge, color-figure charge, mandatory language-editing fee, or separate withdrawal fee. Optional commercial or editorial services do not provide guaranteed acceptance or publication.
Previously issued official invoices and agreed payment terms remain subject to their applicable historical arrangements. Authors should consult the current APC Policy for details concerning waiver verification, invoices, payment security, withdrawal, and refunds.
Advances in Community Services Research (ACSR) publishes one volume per year consisting of exactly two regular numbered issues under a biannual publication schedule.
The journal's regular publication periods are Issue No. 1: September–February and Issue No. 2: March–August. The September–February period spans two calendar years. Both editorial sections operate within the same publication schedule.
Publication Ethics: Authors must comply with ACSR policies concerning originality, authorship, contributorship, research and community-service ethics, informed consent, conflicts of interest, data integrity, confidentiality, citation integrity, Generative AI use, independent peer review, corrections, Expressions of Concern, retractions, and other matters affecting responsible scholarly publication.
Before submitting to ACSR, authors should verify scope eligibility, select the correct OJS section and manuscript type, use the applicable section-specific template, prepare the Blinded Manuscript and separate Title Page, verify the abstract and keywords, reconcile citations with references, confirm the accuracy of research or community-service evidence, and complete applicable ethics and publication declarations.
Authors should ensure that all coauthors have approved the submission and authorship order, that the manuscript is not simultaneously under consideration elsewhere, and that relevant institutional, community-partner, participant, instrument-use, and third-party permissions are in place where applicable.
Principal Editorial Contact: Scientific-editorial matters may be directed to the Editor-in-Chief, Muhammad Ridwan Manulusi, through the journal's official editorial correspondence channels.
Journal & Administrative Support: Questions concerning manuscript submission, template requirements, editorial correspondence, OJS access, APC administration, and publication procedures may be directed to the Managing Editor, Muslim Muslim, at advancesresearch@gmail.com.
Administrative WhatsApp: +62 821 9454 8786. Administrative communication does not replace formal OJS submission, independent peer review, or scientific-editorial decision-making.