Editorial Policy
General
African Human Mobility Review (AHMR) is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open access academic journal accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The AHMR is jointly hosted by the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC). The journal seeks to continually reflect its regional character, which means that papers from a diversity of countries are represented in each edition.
Aim and Scope
The aim of the AHMR is to encourage and facilitate the study of all aspects (socio- economic, political, legislative and developmental) of human mobility in Africa. It is published three times per year in April, August and December and is available both in print and online. Through the publication of original research, the AHMR provides a comprehensive forum devoted exclusively to the analysis of contemporaneous trends, migration patterns and some of the most important migration-related issues. Full research papers can be either theoretical or empirical, and include methodological detail, theoretical and/or literature review material and a clear argument, as relevant. The journal welcomes commentaries (both commissioned and unsolicited) and book reviews and also publishes occasional special issues.
All submitted manuscripts must be original. Manuscripts which have already been published by another journal or are being considered for publication will not be accepted. By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) acknowledge that the paper in question is not under consideration by another journal, and will not be submitted to such a journal until and unless a final written rejection decision from the AHMR has been received.
Authorship
The authorship listing should include the ‘lead’ author as well as all individuals who have contributed directly to the production of the work at intellectual and conceptual levels. Other individuals who have made additional contributions to the paper can be listed in the Acknowledgment section. Acknowledgment of funding sources and possible conflict of interest must also be made explicit.
The AHMR welcomes manuscripts on the various aspects of human mobility in Africa and the mobility of Africans across the world. Contributors are requested to submit their manuscripts in English (US) to the Editor- in-Chief. Manuscripts should be anonymized and uploaded electronically in Microsoft Office Word as an attachment using the available online system. Authors are requested to prepare their manuscripts as per the style of the journal and read the detailed Author Guidelines for the AHMR. Manuscripts which do not satisfy all the specific requirements for submission will be returned to the author(s) for modification and resubmission.
Conflict of interest
Any potential or real conflict of interest must be declared to the editors. Papers received by editors of the journal or Board Members will be handled transparently and in the most appropriate way to avoid any possible bias in the review process. Editors will avoid making decisions on manuscripts that conflict with their own interest, or those addressing an issue in which they stand to gain financially. If they may have a perceived or possible conflict of interest, they should delegate handling of any decision to other editors.
Misconduct, correction and retraction of articles
Misconduct (e.g. presentation of data, graphs or figures already published elsewhere, inconsistent data sets, plagiarism) constitutes violation of this editorial policy and can lead to the retraction of articles. Corrections of articles, when necessary, will be published both online and in the print version as Errata or Corrigenda. Post- publication changes will be made only where the error affects the discoverability, visibility and citability of the article. If a post-publication change is made, the online version of the article will be replaced and a note will be made on the following issue to highlight the amendment that was made. Please note that in some cases it will not be possible to correct any print versions.
Proof
Authors are sent page proofs by email as PDF files. All PDF proofs should be returned to the publishers within 2 working days. The process is intended to catch errors in the galley's formatting and other important errors (authors’ names, affiliation, etc.) but not to make discretionary content, language and reference changes. Such changes/corrections risk to revert copyediting changes and, therefore, AHMR reserves the right to reject them.
Manuscripts are first reviewed by the editorial office to check if they are in line with the scope of the journal and if they meet all its specific requirements. Once a manuscript successfully completes the editorial office review process it is sent for blind peer reviewing to two anonymous reviewers who have expertise and special knowledge of the subject area of the manuscript. The peer review system is double-blind so that both authors’ and reviewers’ identities are concealed. As per the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review, editors will approach peer reviewers “who have not previously co-published extensively with the author(s), who are for this and other reasons free of known bias in relation to the subject matter, the author(s) and/or their institutions, and who can cover, from a position of authority and peer expertise, the topic(s) dealt with in the paper concerned.” Reviewers are invited to review the manuscript by sending them the abstract of the manuscript. Upon acceptance to review the manuscript, the full text of the manuscript is sent to the reviewers after the author(s) have been concealed. Reviewers are required to provide a report in writing with clear recommendations for acceptance of the paper, with or without any revision, or rejection. If the two reports differ widely, the editor may invite a third reviewer. The reviewing process relies on the availability of qualified and expert reviewers and it may take up to 6 to 8 weeks to complete. The AHMR endeavors to have papers reviewed within a one to four week period where possible. The review process may, however, take longer than this. AHMR editors mediates the blind reviews with authors. All reviewers’ comments are sent to the author(s) who are requested to make the necessary adjustments and resubmit their manuscripts to the editors. The journal’s editors will check that all recommended changes have been substantively attended to. Authors are required to submit a report to the editors, documenting how they have responded to reviewers’ suggestions and recommendations, using the online submission online submission system.
Turnitin (checked for plagiarism)
Papers will be checked for plagiarism using Turnitin if editors detect potential plagiarism problems. Authors are fully responsible for any plagiarism, and should check their own papers before submission. By submitting a paper to the journal, authors agree that the journal’s Chief Editor may check the paper via Turnitin if necessary. Besides, authors must obtain permission for all graphics and extensively used citations before submitting the paper to the AHMR, should these not be original work.
Accessibility
The AHMR is an open access journal, available at no charge and the PDF versions of all papers are available on the journal’s website https://epubs.ac.za/index.php/ahmr/issue/archive The AHMR is also distributed via scholarly websites such as Google Scholar, Google Books, ResearchGate, Facebook, SIHMA (http://sihma.org.za/journal#) and UWC networks, which enhances its distribution globally. ISSN 2410-7972 (online) ISSN 2411-6955 (print).
Archiving policy
It has been ensured under the digital archiving policy of AHMR that despite any accidental loss of data in our personal archival records, the published scholarly content remains available to the scholarly community in the PKP Preservation Network (PN). The PKP Preservation Network (PN) provides free preservation services for any journal managed and operated through Open Journal System (OJS).
Report and term of office
The Editor-in-Chief should provide an annual report on the AHMR and its publication to the Board Members, the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC). The Editor-in-Chief would normally serve a six-year term of office. This term of office can be renewed by the Board Members, the Scalabrini Institute for Human Mobility in Africa (SIHMA) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC).
Articles and reviews in AHMR reflect the opinions of the contributors. AHMR allows the author/s to retain full copyright in their articles. This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Articles are made available under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-4.0). Authors who have published under a CC BY 4.0 licence may share and distribute their article on commercial and non-commercial websites and repositories of their choice. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author/s provided the author/s is correctly attributed. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access. This policy is recorded in Sherpa Romeo - Sherpa Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis.
Editorial office
The editorial office consists of the Editor-in-Chief, Editors and other administrative staff members of the AHMR. Their duties and responsibilities are described below:
Editor-in-Chief: is entrusted with the overall responsibility for the management of all aspects of the AHMR journal. The Chief Editor provides leadership pertaining to the journal’s content, editorial policies and editorial decisions. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for: liaising with the peer reviewers who comment on the suitability of manuscripts for publication; working closely with a professional language editor to ensure the integrity of the technical aspects of the publication process; liaising with the journal’s readers, the scientific community, and the public as a whole; clarifying the journal’s policies on authorship criteria; providing guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts; assigning papers for review appropriate to each reviewer’s area of interest and expertise; establishing a process for reviewers to ensure that they treat the manuscript as a confidential document and complete the review promptly; treating all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency; protecting the confidentiality of every author’s work; establishing a system for effective and rapid peer review; making editorial decisions with reasonable speed and communicating, and establishing a procedure for reconsidering editorial decisions; describing, implementing, and regularly reviewing policies for handling ethical issues; informing authors of solicited manuscripts that the submission will be evaluated according to the standards and requirements of the journal and the DHET.
Editors: are responsible to managing the day-to-day operation of the journal’s online database; processing correspondence to and from the editors; maintaining adequate files and records; participating in AHMR meetings as required. They are also responsible to assign papers to reviewers who have the appropriate knowledge and skill to evaluate them, responsible to monitor the quality of the reviews prepared, and replace editors whose reviews are inadequate or untimely; ensure that the review process is completed in a timely way and that authors receive constructive feedback about papers submitted; ensure that the papers published are consistent with the editorial mission; responsible for making the decision to publish any thematic issues of the journal and for recruiting the papers to be published; recommend to the publisher that a special issue be published in addition to the regular issues of the journal. Editors are in charge for providing the manuscripts are complete, including illustrations, references, and contact information for the authors. Editors provide a direct assistance and administrative support to the Editor-in-Chief, deputizing for the Editor-in-Chief, when required, being point of contact for authors; keeping databases, spreadsheets and other records up to date; reading and copy-editing documents; proofing and editing online text, including social media. The Editors reports directly to the Editor-in- Chief.
