Author Guidelines

The Nigerian Journal of Mathematics and Applications publishes original research in all areas of mathematics and its applications. Before preparing a submission, please read our Aims & Scope statement in full: it lists the subject areas we cover, the methods we accept and, importantly, the kinds of manuscript that fall outside our remit. It is the same statement our editors apply when deciding whether to send a manuscript out for review.

Papers that combine sound mathematical concepts with applications, and mathematics motivated by the prospect of potential application, receive higher recognition from the editors. Pure mathematics is welcome on its own terms.

We accept three types of manuscript:

Limits exclude the reference list. A manuscript that exceeds its limit may be returned for shortening before it is assessed. If your paper needs more room for a good reason — long tables of numerical results, an extended proof — say so in the comments box when you submit, and the editor will decide.

Every manuscript must be original, written in English, and neither published nor under consideration anywhere else. Submitting the same work to two journals at once will end consideration here.

Manuscripts are uploaded as a Microsoft Word .docx file of not more than 10 MB. This is the only format the submission system accepts; PDF and LaTeX source files are not accepted at submission, although we ask for LaTeX source once a paper is accepted (see After Acceptance).

Anonymity — read this first

Review is double-blind. Your manuscript file must not identify you. Before uploading:

• Remove all author names, affiliations, correspondence addresses, email addresses and ORCID identifiers from the file. You will enter these separately on the submission form, where the editorial office — but not the referees — can see them.
• Remove acknowledgements, funding statements and grant numbers. Add them back at the proof stage if the paper is accepted.
• Cite your own earlier work in the third person, exactly as you would cite anyone else's: Rauf et al. (2018) established…, never in our earlier paper we established…
• Clear your name from the Word document properties (File → Info → Check for Issues → Inspect Document → remove Document Properties and Personal Information).

Structure

Arrange the manuscript in this order:

1. Title — specific enough that a reader can tell what was done.
2. Abstract — not more than 250 words, in a single paragraph, with no citations, no displayed equations and no undefined symbols. State the problem, what you did and what you found.
3. Keywords — three to six, separated by semicolons.
4. Mathematics Subject Classification — a footnote on the first page giving the primary and secondary 2020 MSC codes for the paper. The classification is freely searchable through the American Mathematical Society and zbMATH Open.
5. Introduction — the problem, its context, what is already known, and what this paper adds.
6. Materials and methods, where the paper has any — preliminaries, definitions, notation, the data and its source, or the design of the study.
7. Main results — theorems, schemes, derivations, numerical experiments or analyses, with proofs given in full.
8. Discussion — what the results mean, how they compare with the published alternatives, and what their limitations are.
9. Conclusion.
10. References — see the next section.

Formatting

• A4 page, 12-point Times New Roman, 1.5 line spacing, margins of 2.5 cm, pages numbered.
• Number sections and subsections in decimal form (1, 1.1, 1.2, 2…).
• Number equations by the section they appear in: equation (3.11) is the eleventh numbered equation of Section 3, (4.12) the twelfth of Section 4. Number only the equations you refer to.
• Set equations with the Word equation editor or MathType. Do not paste equations in as pictures — they cannot be edited, they degrade in the published PDF, and they are invisible to search engines and to Crossref.
• Define every symbol at its first appearance, and keep notation consistent throughout. State theorems, lemmas, propositions, corollaries, definitions, remarks and examples in numbered environments.
• Figures and tables go in the body of the file, in the place where they are discussed, each numbered and carrying a caption — captions above tables, below figures. Figures must be legible in greyscale at 300 dpi. Every figure and table must be referred to in the text.
• Use SI units, and a full stop as the decimal separator.

Manuscripts that ignore these requirements are returned to the author before assessment rather than sent to referees, which costs you weeks.

NJMA uses an author–date citation style. Cite in the text by author and year, and list all references alphabetically by the first author's surname in the Reference section. Do not number the references, and do not order them by first appearance.

In the text

One author: Rauf (2012) proved… or …as has been shown (Rauf, 2012). Two authors: Rauf and Omolehin (2012). Three or more: Rauf et al. (2018). Several works at once, in date order: (Lanczos, 1956; Adeniyi and Onumanyi, 1991; Rauf et al., 2012). Two works by the same author in the same year take letter suffixes: Rauf (2012a), Rauf (2012b).

In the reference list

Give every author, the year in brackets, the full title, and the volume, issue and page range. Follow these patterns exactly.

Journal article

1. Rauf, K., Ponnusamy, S. and Omolehin, J. O. (2012), On Generalization of Hardy-type Inequalities. The Australian Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Application, 9(1), article 14, 1–21.
2. Salman, M. F., Yahya, L. A., Yusuf, A., Ahmed, M. A. and Ayinla, J. O. (2012), Effect of Behavioural Objective Based Instructional Strategy on Senior Secondary School Students' Academic Performance in Mathematics in Omu-aran, Nigeria. Journal of Education and Learning, Toronto: Canadian Center of Science and Education, 1, 121–127.
3. Adeniyi, R. B. and Onumanyi, P. (1991), Error Estimation in the Solution of ODE with the Tau Method. Computer Math. Applic., 21(9), 19–27.

Book

1. Lanczos, C. (1956), Applied Analysis. Prentice Hall, New Jersey.
2. Rauf, K. and Omolehin, J. O. (2012), Weighted Hardy-Type Inequalities. Lambert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-659-11245-4.

Chapter in an edited book

1. Author, A. B. (Year), Title of the chapter. In: Editor, C. D. (ed.), Title of the Book, Publisher, Place, pages.

Thesis, preprint or online source

1. Author, A. B. (Year), Title of the Thesis. PhD thesis, Department, University.
2. Author, A. B. (Year), Title of the preprint. arXiv:0000.00000.
3. Author, A. B. (Year), Title of the page. Available at: full URL (accessed DD Month YYYY).

Include the DOI at the end of a reference wherever the cited work has one. Every work in the reference list must be cited in the text, and every citation in the text must appear in the reference list — referees check this, and it is one of the most common reasons a manuscript comes back for correction.

All submissions are made through this website. Manuscripts sent by post are not considered, and manuscripts emailed to an editor are redirected to the website.

1. Create an author account, or sign in if you already have one, using the Sign In link at the top of any page. Use an institutional email address where you have one.
2. Choose Submit Manuscript and complete the submission form: title, abstract, keywords and article type.
3. Enter every author — full name, email address and affiliation for each — in the order they are to appear on the published paper, and mark the corresponding author. This is where author details belong; they must not also be in the manuscript file. The list you enter here is the list that will be published, so check the spelling of names and the order before you submit.
4. Upload the anonymised manuscript as a .docx file of not more than 10 MB.
5. Confirm the four declarations: that the work is original and unpublished, that it is free of plagiarism, that copyright will transfer on acceptance, and that you accept the submission terms.
6. Pay the review fee from the Payments page of your account. A manuscript is not sent to referees until this is confirmed — see Fees and Charges.

You can follow your manuscript at any time through Track Submission in your account, which shows its current stage and any decision or request for revision. Editorial correspondence goes to the corresponding author's email address, so keep it current in your profile and check your spam folder during review.

If you have difficulty with the submission system, write to krauf@unilorin.edu.ng and describe what happened.

NJMA operates double-blind peer review. Referees are not told who the authors are, and authors are not told who the referees are. This is why the manuscript file must carry no identifying information — see Preparing Your Manuscript.

The stages

1. Editorial assessment. The Editor-in-Chief or a handling editor checks the manuscript against the Aims & Scope statement and against these guidelines. Work outside the journal's remit, or so far from the required format that it cannot be refereed, is returned at this stage without external review. This is not a judgement on the mathematics; it is faster for you than a rejection three months later.
2. Similarity screening. Every manuscript is screened for text overlap before it goes out.
3. Referee assessment. The manuscript is sent to at least two independent referees with expertise in its area, who are asked to report within 21 days. Referees advise on originality, correctness, the soundness of the proofs or numerical analysis, the adequacy of the comparison with existing work, the clarity of the exposition and the appropriateness of the references.
4. Decision. The handling editor weighs the reports and recommends one of four outcomes: accept, minor revision, major revision or reject. The referees' comments are sent to the corresponding author with the decision, anonymised.
5. Revision. Where revision is asked for, upload the revised manuscript through your account together with a point-by-point response saying what you changed for each comment and, where you disagree, why. A revision returned without a response letter is sent back. Major revisions normally go back to the original referees.
6. Final decision. The Editor-in-Chief takes the final decision on every manuscript.

An editor or referee who has a conflict of interest with a manuscript — a collaboration, a shared institution, a supervisory relationship or a competing paper — declares it and is replaced. Referees are asked to treat manuscripts as confidential and may not use or circulate unpublished results.

Review takes as long as it takes to find referees who will do the work properly. If you have heard nothing and your submission has been in review well beyond the referees' 21-day window, write to the editorial office and ask; that is a reasonable thing to do.

NJMA is open access: readers pay nothing, and there is no subscription or paywall. Publication is funded by author charges, levied in two stages.

Two points to be clear about:

• The review fee is not refundable, whatever the outcome. It pays for the assessment itself, which is carried out whether the manuscript is accepted or rejected.
• The review fee does not purchase publication. Paying it entitles a manuscript to be considered, not to be accepted. Manuscripts are rejected on their merits regardless of payment, and no referee is told what a manuscript's payment status is.

The publication fee falls due only after a manuscript has been accepted. An accepted manuscript is published in the next available issue once the fee is confirmed. There are no other charges — no page charges, no charges for figures or colour, and no submission charge beyond the review fee.

Both payments are made through the Payments page in your author account, which records the transaction and issues a receipt. If you pay by transfer, use only the account details displayed on that page and upload your proof of payment there. Treat any request to send money to details supplied privately, by an individual or in an email, as fraudulent, and report it to the editorial office.

NJMA follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Submitting to this journal commits you to the following.

Authorship

Everyone listed as an author must have made a substantial contribution to the work — to the mathematics, the modelling, the computation, the data or the argument — and must have approved the version submitted. Everyone who meets that description must be listed. Adding a head of department, a supervisor or a colleague who did not contribute is gift authorship; leaving out someone who did contribute, including a student, is ghost authorship. Both are misconduct.

The author list is fixed at submission. Any change — an addition, a removal or a change of order — requires the written agreement of every author, including the one being added or removed, sent to the editorial office by the corresponding author.

Conflicts of interest and funding

Declare any financial or personal interest that a reader might reasonably think could have influenced the work, and name any funder together with the grant number. Because review is double-blind, put these declarations in the comments box on the submission form rather than in the manuscript; they are added to the paper at the proof stage.

Data, code and reproducibility

Report enough for a competent reader to reproduce your results: the full statement of every theorem used, the parameter values, initial and boundary conditions and step sizes for a numerical experiment, the source and period of any real data, and the software used. Where a result depends on code, be ready to supply it to the editor on request.

Work involving people

Studies drawing on human participants — classroom experiments in mathematics education, questionnaires, surveys of students — must report the approval of the relevant institutional or school authority and confirm that participants took part knowingly. Report the population, the sampling method, the sample size and the instrument used.

Use of AI tools

Generative AI cannot be an author, and cannot be credited with a proof. If such a tool was used to draft, translate or edit any part of the manuscript, say so in the comments box at submission. The authors remain fully responsible for the correctness of every statement and every reference in the paper.

Corrections and retractions

If you find an error in your published article, tell the editorial office at once. Errors that do not affect the results are handled by a correction notice; errors that invalidate the results, and articles found to have been published in breach of these standards, are retracted. Corrections and retractions are published openly and linked to the original article, which remains available so that the record stays honest.

Every manuscript is screened for text similarity before it is sent for review, and again before publication. Manuscripts showing substantial unattributed overlap with published work are rejected, and the authors' institutions may be informed.

In mathematics, plagiarism is not only a matter of copied sentences:

• A theorem, proof, algorithm or numerical scheme taken from another paper must be attributed, even when you have rewritten it entirely in your own words and notation. Reproducing someone else's argument without a citation is plagiarism regardless of the wording.
• Standard material may be reproduced — definitions, classical theorems, textbook preliminaries — but it must be cited to a source, and it does not count towards the originality of your paper.
• Reusing your own published text or results without citing them is self-plagiarism. Cite your earlier work like anyone else's, in the third person.
• Splitting one piece of work into several thin papers to raise a publication count is not acceptable. If two submissions share a substantial part of their content, tell the editor at submission.
• Fabricating or manipulating numerical results, data or figures is the most serious form of misconduct here and leads to rejection and, after publication, to retraction.

Some overlap in the preliminaries is normal and expected in mathematics; the test is whether the contribution the paper claims as new is genuinely new, and whether everything else is properly attributed.

On acceptance, copyright in the article transfers to the Mathematical Association of Nigeria as publisher of the journal. You confirm your agreement to this when you submit, and the corresponding author signs on behalf of all authors.

The journal then publishes the article open access: free to read, download, print and share from the day it appears, with no subscription, no paywall and no embargo period.

As an author you keep the right, without asking us, to:

• use the article in your own teaching, lectures and further research;
• include it in a thesis or dissertation;
• deposit the published version in your institutional or subject repository; and
• post it on your personal or departmental web page and on scholarly networks.

In every case, cite the published article in full — journal, volume, issue, year, pages and DOI — and link to it where the medium allows.

Articles published from Volume 36 (2026) are assigned a DOI and deposited with Crossref, which registers the article's metadata and its reference list permanently and makes both discoverable to indexing services. The journal's back catalogue is being digitised and added to this site volume by volume.

The authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to reproduce any figure, table or extended extract that belongs to someone else, and for citing its source.

When your manuscript is accepted you will be notified through your account and by email, and the publication fee falls due. What happens next:

1. Send the source file. The journal prepares accepted papers from TeX, LaTeX or AMS-LaTeX source wherever the authors can supply it, and we ask for it at this point together with any figure files. Typesetting mathematics from LaTeX source produces a better paper than typesetting it from Word, and it removes a whole class of transcription errors from your equations. If you prepared the paper in Word, send the final Word file instead.
2. Restore what was removed for blinding. Author names, affiliations and correspondence addresses, acknowledgements, funding statements and conflict-of-interest declarations are added back now.
3. Check the proof. You will receive a typeset proof to check. Read the equations, the numbers in the tables, the spelling of every author's name and every affiliation with particular care. Corrections at proof stage are limited to typesetting errors and factual corrections — the proof is not an opportunity to rewrite the paper or add new results. Return it by the date given; if we hear nothing, the paper is published as it stands.
4. Publication. Once the fee is confirmed and the proof is returned, the article is scheduled for the next available issue. On publication it is assigned a DOI, deposited with Crossref and made freely available on this site, and the corresponding author is sent the link.

Additional printed copies of the issue may be purchased from the publisher; write to the editorial office for the current price.

Appeals

If you believe a decision on your manuscript rests on a factual error or on a serious misunderstanding of the mathematics, you may appeal. Write to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days of the decision, setting out specifically what you say the referee or editor got wrong and why, point by point. An appeal that only expresses disagreement with the outcome will not succeed. Appeals are considered by the Editor-in-Chief, who may consult a further referee; the decision on an appeal is final. Appealing does not free the manuscript for submission elsewhere while the appeal is pending.

Complaints

Complaints about the conduct of review, about an editor or referee, or about a published article should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief and will be acknowledged and investigated. Where a complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief, write to the Mathematical Association of Nigeria at the address below.

Contact

The Editor-in-Chief
Nigerian Journal of Mathematics and Applications
Mathematical Association of Nigeria (MAN)
c/o Department of Mathematics, University of Ilorin
P.M.B. 1515, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

Email: krauf@unilorin.edu.ng
Telephone: +234 803 396 5848

For questions about a manuscript already under consideration, use the Support section of your author account rather than email, so that your query is attached to the submission it concerns.