ISSN 2411-6955 printed version
ISSN 2410-7972 online version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Journal Scope
• Editorial Policy
• Preparation and Style of Manuscripts
• Manuscript Submission

African Human Mobility Review (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.

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 endeavours 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 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).

Copyright and Licensing
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–in–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.

All manuscripts must be written in English (US), using Times New Roman font, size 12, single line spacing; indented paragraphs.

A manuscript should consist of the following components, each prepared as a unit on separate sheets, using MS Word:

1. Title page
   Title* (10–12 words)
   Name of author/s (no academic title/s)
   Institutional affiliation of author/s – full contact details: institutions' address and email address/es of author/s
   Abbreviated title (Running headline), not to exceed 50 letters, including spaces
   Name and full contact details of corresponding author
   * The title should grab the reader's attention, accurately and concisely describe the article's content, convey the importance of the research, and lead to the target audience clicking on the hyperlink to the full article. The title should not repeat a keyword/phrase more than twice – this comes across as a 'keyword stuffing.'


2. Keywords
   Keywords should not repeat terms used in the article title.
   Keywords should not exceed 80 characters, including spaces.
   This list should start with the highest priority keyword/phrase, followed by the next priority word/phrase, separated by commas, without a full stop at the end. Example of required format:
   Keywords: Female migrants, African diaspora, xenophobia, capabilities–aspirations, social inequality


3. Abstract*
   The abstract should consist of 250 words or less.
   The abstract should be written in complete sentences, without any citations.
   It should be intelligible without reference to the rest of the paper.
   It should succinctly state the objectives, the experimental design of the paper, and the principal observations and conclusions.
   * The abstract should answer these questions: What was done? Why was it done? What were the findings? Why are these findings useful and important?


4. Text
   The text comprises the following sections:
   Introduction
   Background/contextualization
   Literature review/theoretical/conceptual framework
   Methodology
   Result
   Discussion
   Conclusion and recommendation


5. Acknowledgment
   Authors acknowledge assistance and support received, such as, support from colleagues, cooperation of communities where research was conducted, donor funding for the research, writing and editorial support, and institutional support in the form of time off for doing fieldwork and writing.


6. Footnotes/endnotes
   Note markers in the text should be placed after full stops and commas; and before colons, semi–colons, and dashes.
   Examples:
   

   Migrant women are often victims of sexual and gender–based violence.1 Economic reasons fuel migration2; this is evident in...

   A key government respondent revealed the following3:

   Nkrumah's industrialization policy concentrated particularly in the south – Ghana's ˜golden triangle4 – resulting in...

7. References

   The sources cited should be listed at the end of the article, arranged alphabetically according to the surnames of the authors, and then chronologically.
   Where there is no author name available, use the name of the producer of the source,
   e.g. government department (Department of Home Affairs), organization (International Organization for Migration), newspaper (Mail and Guardian), etc.

   A reference list could be compiled manually, or by using a web–based reference managing program, which generates bibliographies, such as Refworks, Mendeley, A reference list should contain only the sources actually used/cited in the main text.

   The reference list contains the full range of sources used, including books, journals, academic reports, theses/dissertations, conference proceedings, governments statutes and publications, mass media and internet sources. There should thus be no separate headings for any specific categories of sources used.

   Avoid using ibid and op cit

   Provide the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), used to permanently identify a journal article or document and the link to it on the web. A DOI will help the reader to locate a document from the citation, with ease and reliability.

AHMR welcomes manuscripts on the various aspects of human mobility in Africa.

Contributors are requested to submit their manuscripts in English (US) to the Editor–in–Chief.

Manuscripts should be 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.