African Journal of Social Issues
Journal / African Journal of Social Issues / About the Journal

 

Publisher

African Journal of Social Issues (AJOSI) is an international peer reviewed journal of Development and Management Research Group (DMRG), a Professional Research Association aimed at providing an independent interdisciplinary forum for discourse on significant social sciences, cultural and humanities research and policy issues using Africa as its centre of focus. It deals with questions of social problems broadly defined. Articles discuss particular social sciences or humanities issues, review conceptual problems, present empirical reports and debate policy alternatives. It encourages authors to discuss their research experiences and debate whether these experiences feed into an increased understanding of the current research realm on Africa and Africa’s development.

Sources of Support

Source of support is mainly from sale of hard copies and subscriptions.  The University has once assisted publication financially.

Peer Review

Articles for publication are peer reviewed; they are sent to three different (independent) assessors in the discipline with Reviewer instructions. Peer review process takes not more than seven days of the receipt to be completed. Peer reviewers are advised to check for plagiarism of the papers being reviewed. If two of the assessments return positive, to the satisfaction of the Editorial Board, the article is accepted for publication after necessary corrections are made by the contributor(s). Contributors are also advised to check for plagiarism of their works before submission. The journal’s plagiarism tolerance limit is below 30% and authors can use any available online plagiarism-detection programme such as iThenticate, Turnitin etc. for their articles.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

All the papers published in this journal will adhere to the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0 License). CC BY.

Publication Scheduling

Publication, for now, is annual, preferably every December.

General

African Journal of Social Issues (AJOSI) is a publication outlet of DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT RESEARCH GROUP (DMRG), a registered Professional Research Association, an initiative of about seven (7) budding research group and academics in various institutions of higher learning across the globe. It has its location at the Federal University of Technology, Owerri Imo State, Nigeria. Its first journal outlet is INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT REVIEW (INJODEMAR) which is also indexed in African Journals Online (AJOL). The Association’s aims and objectives are clearly stated under its focus and scope. The membership has sporadically grown in leaps and bounds and the journals have attracted the attention of seasoned academics because of the insistence on quality academic papers and publication ethics.

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

African Journal of Social Issues (AJOSI) is a peer review international journal that not only upholds the ethics of publication as one of its core values but adheres strictly to internationally accepted publication ethics. In accordance to this, the Journal (AJOSI) insists on the double-blind peer-review process for all articles / papers reviewed. The rationale for double-blind peer review process is to validate the integrity and originality / novelty of the research work presented to it and to eliminate malpractice. This process adopted by the journal acts as a filtering / sieving ground and thus increases the quality of research submitted for publication. The process not only helps the author(s) to critically re-examine the submission(s) but assists to remove any errors or gaps in manuscript(s) mistakenly overlooked and included initially. It also assists in enriching the research work, thereby making it more applicable in real time as well as current.

The journal adopts the COPE guidelines on publication ethics.

To ensure the achievement of this in proper terms, there are responsibilities on all involved:

1. Authors’ Responsibilities that Must Be Adhered to:

• The submitted manuscripts must be the original work of the author(s). Author(s) should guide against plagiarism of any kind;
• Only manuscripts not submitted elsewhere should be submitted;
• Any conflict of interest must be clearly stated by the author(s);
• The author(s) should acknowledge sources of data used in the development of the manuscript(s);
• It is the responsibility of the author(s) to swiftly communicate to the Editor all errors discovered in the manuscript(s) after submission.

2. Reviewers’ Responsibilities

 

• Reviewers are expected to evaluate a manuscript for critical analysis, comparative analysis and for integrity and novelty / originality of the research work and to avoid malpractice.
• All individual manuscripts are reviewed fairly based on the intellectual content of the article without prejudice to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, language, citizenry or political values, ideology and inclination of author(s);

• Any observed conflict of interest during the review process must be promptly communicated to the Editor;
• All information pertaining to the manuscript is kept with utmost confidentiality;
• Any reason(s) for the rejection of a manuscript for publication must be communicated to the Editor.

3. Editors’ Responsibilities

• All individual manuscripts are evaluated fairly based on the intellectual content of the paper / article without prejudice to gender, race, ethnicity, religion, language, citizenry or political values, ideology and inclination of author(s);
• Information pertaining to manuscripts are kept with utmost confidentiality;
• Any observed conflict of interest pertaining to manuscripts must be disclosed to the author(s).

4. Editorial Responsibilities

• The Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject / accept an article / a paper when reasonably certain and convinced. Decisions for publication are based on the paper`s relevance to the journal`s scope, its academic quality, reviewers` objective judgments, the research`s innovation, originality, contribution(s) to knowledge and clarity of purpose, the experiment`s validity etc. The Editorial Board of the journal takes responsibility for taking final decisions for publication for submitted manuscripts based on the reviewers’ evaluation of the manuscript, policies of the journal’s Editorial Board and legal restrain on plagiarism, libel and copyright infringement.

• Editors and the editorial staff should guarantee the confidentiality of the submitted papers which should only be disclosed to the authors, the reviewers, the adviser from AJOSI Editorial Committee, and the publisher if necessary before publication. On no account should the submitted paper(s) be used for the editors` and the editorial staff`s own research without the authors` written authorization / permission.
• Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject / accept. The policy of reservation of anonymity of reviewers should be maintained at all times.
• Editors are to adhere to the double-blind review in the peer review process.
• When errors are found, the Editorial Board should promote publication of correction or retraction.

5. Publishing Ethics Issues and Malpractice Statement

• It is un-academic to condone plagiarism and use of fraudulent data.
• When a case of plagiarism and fraudulent data is formally exposed / observed after the paper`s publication in AJOSI, a preliminary investigation will be conducted by AJOSI, and the author(s) informed. If the plagiarism is confirmed, AJOSI will contact the author`s institution and/or funding agencies and will mark the plagiarism paper obviously on the PDF of the paper or formally retract the paper.
• Crosschecking and double-blind peer reviewing must be conducted for each paper to avoid academic misconduct and malpractice, and all the files related to each paper submitted should properly be preserved.
• The Editorial Board has the priority to monitor / safeguard publishing ethics.

6. Guidelines for Errata and Retracting Articles / Papers

• Errata and Retracting article will be considered if there is clear / established evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error), or if the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication), or if the paper constitutes plagiarism, or if the paper reports unethical research.
• The major purpose of errata or retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity rather than to punish authors who misbehave.
• The retracted paper will not be removed from the AJOSI online issues (and hard copies if already published). But notices of retraction will be promptly published and linked to the retracted article, accurately stating the information of the retracted article, the reason(s) for retraction, and who retracts the article, which will be freely available to all readers.
• Articles may be retracted by their author(s) or by AJOSI or issued jointly. AJOSI has the final decision about retracting articles. It will retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication themselves if the unethical behaviour is confirmed.

7. Maintenance of the Integrity of the Academic Record and Data Set Policy

• All the authors will make a commitment of the integrity of the academic record, including the integrity of the data and figures in the paper. The crosscheck and peer review will help the editors to verify the originality and integrity of the submitted paper.
• Business needs should be precluded from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• When an author discovers fundamental errors in the published works, it is the author`s obligation to notify the editor promptly by e-mail. The editors and the editorial staff should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Subscription information 
The journal only charges article processing, hard copies and subscription fees. No fee is charged for peer review of articles. Where an article has been certified publishable by the Editorial Board after correction by the author(s), the author(s) are then presented with the payment advice on article processing fee. Hard copies are always available for the authors(s)/contributor(s) and subscribers.