Journal Policy

Aim

People centred – The Journal of Development Administration publishes papers that have implications for African development. The journal focuses of people centred approaches to development. This is development with a human face. By putting people at the centre of development, practitioners, governments and agencies have greater chances of taking people out of poverty. This bottom-up approach to understanding poverty, planning against it and implementing poverty reduction strategies is seen as the best recipe for development. 

Scope

The Journal considers articles focusing on the administration of development in Africa. Specific areas covered include but are not limited to development management; resource mobilisation and fundraising; inclusive development; sustainable development; disability and development; gender and development; poverty; sustainable development; social services and development; human development; HIV/AIDS; child development; counselling; rural development; governance; disaster management; agriculture and livelihoods; and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

Types of manuscripts

The Journal accepts manuscripts in the form of original research reports, research summaries, book reviews, literature review articles including systematic reviews, think pieces, reports of practice and original frameworks. Other forms of papers may be published at the discretion of the Editor.

Screening and editorial review

All submitted manuscripts undergo screening and initial editorial review as follows:

• Manuscripts are screened for meeting the journal policy and guidelines, and for plagiarism. If the manuscript does not meet our policy or is plagiarised, it can be rejected and if it does not meet the requirements it is returned to writers to improve.
• Editorial review focuses on the contents of the manuscript and its suitability for peer review. The editor will make a judgement to send the manuscript for peer review or returning to writers with feedback.

Peer review process

The JDA uses a double-blind peer review process for all its content. Reviewers are experts in the field of development administration. No manuscript is guaranteed for acceptance at submission. All manuscripts will be peer reviewed and only after peer review are we able to make a decision to accept submitted work.

Suitable manuscripts will be send to two reviewers. The manuscript will be anonymised, and the reviewers will not be known to each other and to the author.

Authorship and contributorship

We make every effort to avoid multiple submissions, redundant publications and ghost/guest writers. A declaration must be made by authors 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’ or ‘guest’ writers.

Open access

The journal is open access and therefore freely available online through ASWNet, African Journals Online (AJOL) and other sites. This means that readers are not required to pay a fee or to subscribe to read our articles. Articles will be open access immediately after being published. Authors are required to agree with this open access policy which enables unrestricted access and reuse of all published articles. Users are allowed to copy and redistribute the material in printed or electronic format and build upon the material, without further permission or fees being required, provided that appropriate credit is given.

Readers have immediate free access to articles, permitting them to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose as recommended by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Publishing schedule

The journal is published 4 times a year.

Archiving

We deposit our main articles with the ASWNet for electronic backup and preservation in the event a journal is no longer published shall be clearly indicated.

Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit their published articles in their institutional (academic or professional) repositories that promote open access.

Author fees and revenue

There are no fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal. The journal is financially supported by the Institute of Development Administration.

Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources

Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Plagiarism will not be tolerated and will be checked electronically or manually.

Data sharing and reproducibility

Authors should be prepared to make data available when requested to help with the review process. We encourage the use of reporting guidelines and registration of reviews and other study designs according to standard practice in the field.

Intellectual property

The editor will be alert to intellectual property issues and work with their publisher to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions.

Copyright and licensing

The author holds copyright to their published work. Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions. The author can re-use the published article for their future research, use the article for teaching, presentations or deposit in a repository (institutional or other) or non-commercial archives.

The author guarantees the publisher that they have submitted original work, the work has not been submitted elsewhere or will not be submitted elsewhere in future for publishing, it is not a product of unethical practice and all third part information included has been acknowledged appropriately.

The author licenses the publisher to edit, publish in any media, reproduce, distribute the article, translate, edit, adapt and enforce copyrights on behalf of the author.

Our content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License which allows others share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) but not to make commercial use of it (non-commercial). Appropriate credit must be given (attribution), a link to the license provided, and changes indicated if any.

Submission Instructions

Detailed submission guidelines are available here. Submit your manuscript to asw@africasocialwork.net as a single page containing:

Title

Abstract

Key words

Author names and affiliations

Body of the manuscript

List of references

Declarations (see below)

Declarations

We ask writers to declare conflict of interest, authorship, ethical approval and funding sources and also to include acknowledgements, a statement indicating the originality of the work and confirmation that the work submitted shall not be submitted (or has not been submitted) to another publication unless rejected or withdrawn. 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’ or ‘guest’ writers.

Advertising and Marketing

We do not take adverts in the journal or web page of the journal. We market our journal through a newsletter and the website. Our marketing is not related in any way to editorial decision making and is kept separate from the published content. At times we send emails to market the journal. We use an existing email list and we do not send inappropriate messages to solicit for manuscripts. Our marketing is well targeted, and unobtrusive. Any information that we provide is vetted to ensure that it is truthful and not misleading for readers or authors.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement is available on this webpage.