AUTHOR GUIDELINES

Revised April 2020

Statement of policy

Welcome to the AJSW, a journal published by the National Association of Social Workers (Zimbabwe) since 1999. The journal’s definition of African social work, derived from the international definition reads as follows:

Social work is an academic discipline and profession that embraces and enhances long-held methods of addressing life challenges in order to achieve social functioning, development, cohesion and liberation using diverse African indigenous knowledges and values enshrined in the family, community, society, environment and spirituality (AJSW, 2020).

The African Journal of Social Work (AJSW) is a refereed journal that serves as a forum for exchanging ideas and knowledge and discussing issues relevant to social work practice, education and research in the African region. The journal is committed to reflecting culturally relevant and decolonised African social work. The AJSW uses a double-blind peer review process in addition to community review that each author must fulfill. We ask authors to value communities that they research by being open in dealing with them, including them in the review process, providing opportunities for co-analysis and co-authoring and providing them with results of our research in accessible formats. The journal prefers empirical papers but also accepts review, theoretical, historical, methodological or epistemological analyses. In addition to these articles, the journal is interested in brief notes and analysis of up to 1000 words on policy, programmes, legislations, organisations or interventions on social work that would be of interest to African social workers and the international social work fraternity. Other submissions may include book reviews, media reviews, published article commentary or replies, suitable bibliographies, curriculum development or teaching aids, students’ essays, think pieces, news from professional associations and professional interviews. Papers focusing on African or related communities in the outside of the continent are welcome. To help with our objective of decolonizing African social work, we anticipate that authors will have a majority of their citations from the continent including African books, articles, definitions, concepts, theories, frameworks and orature (oral literature) that is abundant in Africa but has not been tapped in social work.

Submission

Submit a single email attachment to jmugumba@uow.edu.au in Ms Word. Articles are to be written in English language but could have a second abstract in an African language of your choice. Name your document as follows: Surname_First Name_Short title of your manuscript

AJSW referencing, writing and editing guide (AJSW GUIDE)

Editing and formatting information

• Not more than 5000 words including references, abstract and title.
• No foot notes
• Times New Roman font throughout, including figures (tables, charts etc)
• Font size 10 throughout
• Single-spacing throughout
• Headings in capital letters, bold
• All text aligned left
• No unnecessary capital letters, bold, italics, spaces
• Each table or figure number with appropriate title on top
• Figures must not be too many or too large, each should not be longer than half a page
• Subheadings should only have a capital letter at the beginning, and every other word must be in small letter unless it is a noun or abbreviation
• Headings and subheadings should not be numbered

Contents of front page

TITLE 

Not more than 15 words, capitalised and bold. Should fit the category of African Social Work and our journal policy described above.

ABSTRACT

An abstract is a summary of the main elements of your research. It is a shortened but succinct version of your research article. Should be 200 words in italics and in past tense.  Ensure all key words are included in abstract. Should be one standard paragraph. Include purpose of research and methodology, briefly and summarise all results, conclusions and implications. Must all be in italics, single spaced. An abstract, summarises everything about your research, and a reader must understand all your research is about from the abstract.

KEY TERMS

Put between 5 and 8 key terms. In italics. Ensure that each key term appears in the abstract, introduction and that your main key terms appear in the title.

AUTHOR/S

SURNAME, First name, Other name (clan name, praise name or respect name); Qualifications; Department; Institution; Contact email; Phone numbers. Unless otherwise indicated, the first author shall be the corresponding author. 

Contents of main text

INTRODUCTION

An introduction is a welcome. That is, you are welcoming people to your research article or report. Should be one standard paragraph of between 8 and 15 lines. Ensure that all key words are included in introduction. Include purpose of research and methodology, briefly. The final sentence must tell us what to expect, i.e., how the paper is arranged. The introduction closely resembles the abstract but they are different in that the introduction does not tell you everything about the research. An introduction is mainly about what to expect.

BACKGROUND

Here you provide background to your research and the problem or social issue. Your background should use subheadings to illustrate the following:

• The problem or social work issue
• The theories (how theories explain this problem. Prioritise African theories).
• The literature (for most manuscripts literature review is not possible, but literature scoping, which is a quick check on what authors have said about the problem). If your whole article is based on literature review, then please read section about LITERATURE REVIEW below.
• The gaps in literature (there is no need to study what is already known unless you are challenging it in some way).
• Your research aim, objectives and questions (to fill the existing gap)
• Justification and motivations. Is it part of a larger research project, do you have any personal or community motivations, what is your expertise and that of your team members?

METHODOLOGY

This is a story about the practical aspects of your research. It is a unique story or journey starting with how you identified the problem, what you did to research it and ending with how you disseminated findings to the community that you researched about. In the AJSW, we allow first person narrative. Should be no more than 3 standard paragraphs. Unlike a research report, in journal manuscripts, subheadings are not recommended for the methodology. Ethics should not be superficial – include how you obtained local consent from local, community or traditional leaders. Was your research application reviewed by a university ethics committee or other committee, please name the committee and provide review number if available. Tell us how you obtained community feedback on your results, and what the feedback was. More importantly, tell us how you reported the results in ways that are accessible, including language and publications accessible at community level. In Africa, we are interested in the role that the community play in reviewing your work not just peer and editorial review. It is unethical to not make results of our research available to communities concerned or involved. The ethics are generally in what you did, that is they are buried in your methods, not in the headings that you reproduce from text books or other articles.

We have very few reviewers for quantitative manuscripts, so you are encouraged to use qualitative methods.

LITERATURE REVIEW

What if I am doing a literature review only paper?

At times, authors are submitting an article based solely on a review of literature. This is possible. In your methodology, tell us how you did the review, where you got the papers to review, inclusion/exclusion criteria, the list of papers you included etc. The rest of the manuscript will be similar to a field research paper/report.

Here are some types of literature reviews:

1. Scoping literature review: this is what most writers provide in their articles. It is not comprehensive but based on literature available to the writer at the time. This can also include literature already cited in books. It starts with a research question/s, followed by gathering available literature, reading the literature and picking themes, writing key themes and making conclusions then reporting (the methodology followed, the literature reviewed, key themes, conclusions and implications).
2. Systematic literature review: this is more comprehensive and it involves collecting all literature that is available at a particular place, library or database about a particular topic covering a defined period. It has a specific research question/s. For example: What are the decolonization themes in articles published in the African Journal of Social Work (AJSW) between 2013 and 2020? Or instead of AJSW, it could be articles in the Library of University of Lagos or in the African Journals Online (AJOL) database. You could also include multiple libraries and databases in one review. In this type of review, you do not include literature cited by others, you need to get hold of the articles you are reviewing and read them yourself. The process starts with a research question/s, followed by gathering available literature in a systematic manner (specific year, library or database), reading all the literature and picking themes, writing key themes and making conclusions then reporting (the methodology followed, number of articles found and included, key themes, conclusions and implications).
3. Meta-analysis: a type of systematic literature review that use statistical methods (quantitative) to analyse findings of different researches. For example, you could review the different rates of HIV infection provided in 300 journal articles. When you put these rates together, you could generate statistical data including means, mode, variations, quartiles etc. You could do a lot of things with that data and make conclusions.
4. Meta-synthesis – a type of systematic literature review that uses narrative analysis (qualitative) to integrate data from multiple researches. For example, you could collect 30 articles that describe stigma in HIV/AIDS and derive common themes.
5. Review of reviews – this is a systematic review of existing reviews. For this to happen, you need to know the reviews that have been done. Can be quantitative and qualitative in orientation, or mixed.

FINDINGS/RESULTS

This section shows us the new data that you obtained from the research. Start with a short summary of key results using dot points or a list separated by commas or semi-colons. Then present each result under headings and sub-headings. It is recommended to transform your research questions or objectives into headings. Others want to discuss results here, that is ok, as long as your results can be clearly identified.

DISCUSSION

This section reviews your new data in relation to your background information, theory and literature. Do not add new data when discussing. If you discuss in the findings/results section, you do not need a separate discussion section.

CONCLUSIONS

These should be concluding statements to your research objectives or answers to your research questions. It shows new knowledge your research is contributing to the social work community. Conclusions must not be long because the discussion section provides all the explanations. Dot points are allowed. This is not a conclusion of the research report or article.

RECOMMENDATIONS AND/OR IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK

Make clear statements (3-5) about what is the usefulness of your results in relation to social work in your country and in Africa, and of course globally. What needs to be done by social workers, policy makers, service users, students, communities etc. What are future research gaps? What methods of research do you recommend in future? Why? Dot points are allowed. You would normally start by saying, Based on our finding that…..Following our conclusion that says…. In this section, it’s about your own voice, speak your mind, provide your expertise here but link to your findings. Contribution of your research or analysis must be clear: new theory, new definition, new model, new framework, new definition, new concept, new solution, new gap, threat or problem discovered, new policy proposed or new educational tool.

CONCLUSION

A conclusion is a goodbye. Summarise what the research report/article covered. This is not the same as STUDY/RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS. Make this part between 8 and 12 lines. It is written in past tense.

DECLARATIONS

Include a declaration on conflict of interest, ethical approval, funding sources, acknowledgements, a statement indicating the originality of the work and confirmation that the work submitted to this Journal shall not be submitted to another publication unless rejected or withdrawn. Whilst the author shall retain copyrights; he/she must also indicate that this Journal gets the sole and exclusive right to publish the work for the full length of the copyright period. Permissions for reproduced work must be indicated. A declaration must also be made to the effect that co-authors took part in the research process, and that their inclusion to the publication has been gained and that they are not ‘ghost’ writers. Whilst all the declarations mentioned here are important to achieving quality research, the ones indicated in italics are compulsory. 

REFERENCES

See notes below

Citing and references list

Key issues

1. Prioritise African literature, definitions, ethics and theories. in your background, literature review, methodology and discussion.
2. We understand there is a lot of oral literature (orature) for African social work, please cite and reference it.
3. Follow our referencing guide word for word, comma for comma, colons, dots, full stops, italics etc.
4. References should be less than one page in length or not more than 15 references or authors.
5. Cite no less than 8 but no more than 15 sources.
6. We expect more than ¾ of these to be peer reviewed journal sources not less than 10 years old.
7. Unnecessary citations must be avoided and only works of value to your paper must be cited.
8. Ensure you have edited your list of references as indicated below. Any paper that does not meet this standard will not proceed for review.
9. Use New Times Roman, Font size 10, Single space, No bold or Underlining.
10. No numbering or bulleting of your sources.
11. Put all reference details for same author/authors in a single line.
12. Only book titles and journal names (including volume and issue numbers) should be italicised.
13. For online references, use Available at: www…. (Accessed: 28 January 2020).
14. Put year of publication in brackets/parenthesis.
15. Remove all highlights and links (especially for internet references).

Examples

Journals

Mugumbate, J., and Nyanguru, A. (2013). Exploring African philosophy: The value of ubuntu in social work. African Journal of Social Work, 3(1), 82-100.

Books

Samkange, S. and Samkange, T. M. (1980). Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwean indigenous political philosophy. Harare: Graham Publishing.

Edited book

Mupedziswa, R., Rankopo, M. and Mwansa, L. (2019). Ubuntu as a Pan-African Philosophical Framework for Social Work in Africa. Social Work Practice in Africa Indigenous and Innovative Approaches. Eds J. M.  Twikirize and H. Spitzer. Kampala: Fountain.

Institution/organisation

Make sure you write the name of the organisation in full, then show the abbreviation.

Council of Social Workers (CSW) 2012. Social workers code of ethics. Statutory Instrument 146 of 2012.

Document

Simba, J.  (2014). Social work in east Africa. Document. Makerere University, Uganda.

Newspaper

Mahoso, T. (2013). Ngozi. Sunday Mail Newspaper, 14-20 July 201,3 p. D2. Zimbabwe.

Nehanda Guardian Newspaper (2012). BUSE students commemorate first ever Social Work day in Zimbabwe. Nehanda Guardian Newspaper, 23 April, p. 1.

Online

Make sure you add a web link and date you accessed the content.

United Nations (UN) (2013). Zimbabwe HIV/AIDS Estimates 2013 Report. Retrieved on 12 December 2019 from https://www.medbox.org/zimbabwe-national-hiv-andaids estimates pdf.

Government policy or document

South African Government; (1996). White Paper on Welfare. Government Gazette Number 16943.

How to cite a proverb, song, forklore

Shona people. ‘Mwana asingachemi anofira mumbereko’ (A baby who does not cry does not get the mother’s attention). Proverb: Zimbabwe. (Please note that no year is required because this is a timeless resource).

How to cite a popular saying

Mandela, Madiba Nelson. ‘Ubuntu is peace’. South Africa. (You can add a year if you know it).

How to cite your personal experience or experience of someone you know

Surname, Names. ‘Title of your experience’. Country (use this format to cite your personal experience.

How to cite an artist (musician, sculptor, actor etc)

Surname, Names. Year. Title of artwork. Description of artwork. Publisher, Country.

Dembo, Leonard Musorowenyoka. 1992. Chitekete. Song, Cassette. Grammar, Zimbabwe.

Submission checklist

#	Requirement	Summary	Yes or No
1.	There should be enough evidence that the manuscript was prepared for social work (e.g. family work, community work, environmental social work and spiritual social work), social development, and social services with implications for Africa – this is evidenced by author’s discipline or qualification, title, key words and implications and literature used.	My manuscript is relevant to social work
2.	Abstract must be 200 words maximum or very close to 200 – no references and subheadings in abstract. Abstract should ideally be a paragraph of six sentences covering the following: Social problem/issue followed by questions or hypothesis; Philosophy or philosophical approach that shaped the understanding of the problem and the approach to the study or thinking; Theory that shaped analysis and discussion; Methods used to bring out the data; Results/findings and conclusions; and Implications and recommendations. Please note: We openly, actively and proudly promote use of Africa philosophies and theories as a journal. We do this to revalue Africa knowledge that has for long been neglected or colonised. If Africa writers use Africa literature, theories and philosophies, this can be achieved easily.	My abstract meets the requirements of the AJSW
3.	Introduction – one paragraph only, no references, the final sentence must inform the reader what the article contains or how it is structured. About 10 lines of introduction required.	My introduction is one paragraph with no references
4.	Using minimum of 75% African references/authors/sources (includes orature)/databases in the background, literature review, methodology, discussion; implications for social work. Literature from the Global South should be prioritised where African (or Global South) literature is not available.	I have used a minimum of 7.5 out of every 10 references (75%)
5.	Prioritising African philosophy, theories, models and frameworks, and where these are not available, we request you to propose your own to guide your research or create your own after your research. Philosophies, theories, models and frameworks from the Global South should be prioritised where African (or Global South) ones are not available.	I have prioritised African philosophy, theories, models and frameworks
6.	If you have done a literature or orature review (narrative or traditional, rapid, scoping, annotated, systematic or meta synthesis), provide the review question and methods including list of all your sources (e.g. databases, libraries etc). Include a list of oral and non-published sources included. Use African libraries, sources and databases such as Africa Journals Online (AJOL). Provide a detailed table (or list) with all the literature included in the review, the authors, year published, database found and summary of data that was extracted to answer the review question. The data extracted from the sources must be synthesised and presented, this forms your findings.	Review questions/s included   Methods used to plan, source, decolonise, screen (include, or exclude), assess for quality, report, analyse etc are included   List of all sources/databases provided   List of all literature reviewed included   List of oral and non-published sources included   Findings presented
7.	Provide enough descriptions and attach evidence so that it is clear and convincing that data collection was done adequately, and to support that the methods described were actually followed. Providing relevant attachments is good practice, including photos, anonymised transcripts of data, ethics approval letter (eg from ASWDNet ethics board), permission letters etc	It is clear data collection was done, adequately
8.	Findings and Discussion must be separated into two different sections	Findings are separated from Discussion
9.	Your conclusion must be one paragraph, no references.	One paragraph, no references
10.	Length of manuscript must be 5000 words maximum.	Number of words (should be less than 5001)
11.	Follow ASWDNet formatting guide for headings, subheadings, citing and references.	ASWDNet style used
12.	Ensure that you read your paper more carefully before submission to get rid of minor errors.	Revised before submission
13.	Submit one manuscript document, do not put a separate cover page or letter.	How many documents are you submitting (should be one)?
14.	Did you receive ethics clearance or advice for your research, if not, please apply for ethics advice here https://africasocialwork.net/african-independent-ethics-committee/ (AIEC). We accept any of these (1) ethics clearance number from an Ethics Board – this is provided before the research (2) ethics advice number from the AIEC – this advice is provided before or after the research (3) a detailed personal statement about ethics that you use in your family or community and a reflection about how you applied these in the current research.	What ethics guidance do you have 1, 2 or 3? You need at least one of these.
15.	I will be invoiced if my manuscript is peer reviewed and accepted	I am aware of the open access fees
16.	Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy (read policy). AI must not be used to create content and replace the authors’ role of problem identification and solving, idea generation, creativity and critical thinking roles. AI can’t replace sources, and it can’t be referenced as a source. All submitted manuscripts must be cleaned of all AI content by the author, editors and reviewers will check for inappropriate AI content and manuscripts that are based on AI content will be rejected. Where used, AI must be acknowledged in writing.	I have provided an acknowledgement of AI use, reasons and a list of how AI was used