ISSN 1609-9982 printed version
ISSN 2074-7705 online version

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

• Basic Information
• Historic Overview
• Indexing Sources
• Copyright
• Peer Review
• Sponsorship

Verbum et Ecclesia is an international, South African open–access, peer reviewed and accredited, online journal. Only original research is considered for publication. This periodical is juridically connected to the Centre for Ministerial Development (Excelsus), located at the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria. English, Afrikaans and Sepedi are the languages of publication which makes the journal unique. In addition, articles are also published in German, Dutch and Flemish. Occasionally articles will be published in an indigenous South African language.

The journal seeks to create an intra– and interdisciplinary space for the conversation between theology and the sciences from a contextual perspective. It encourages research that challenges traditional discourses within and between the fields of biblical, religious, social and human sciences as well as the constructive engagement with the natural sciences. Verbum et Ecclesia is thus an instrument of engagement between theological disciplines, on the one hand, and theology and other disciplines, on the other.

The journal intends to publish research from an annual interdisciplinary congress at the Faculty of Theology with a special focussed theme.

The Editorial Board of Verbum et Ecclesia strongly encourages contributions from Africa, from women and young academics and from minority groups. Nascent global religious developments and especially reflection on these developments in the global South will be given preference. It impacts the methodology and thus the possibility that “texts” from these contexts can be engaged with.

Special editions or Festschrifts will appear occasionally. These editions will reflect an independent theological theme or own character of a specific theological discipline.

Only publications of the best academic quality will be considered for publication.

Submissions which do not comply with the abovementioned criteria will not be considered for publication. Criteria must be reflected in the abstracts of a submission to be considered for publication.

The journal publishes one issue a year with articles published online when ready for publication. On occasion an additional issue may be published for a conference, special theme or festschrift.

Its key abbreviated title is Verbum Eccles..

Verbum et Ecclesia was founded in 1980 and at the time was called Skrif en Kerk. The journal is owned, since 2000, by ‘the structures of ministerial education and development’ of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and is situated in the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria (UP). During the early period of the journal’s existence, Prof. Dr W.S. (Riempies) Prinsloo was its first Editor (1980–1995) and played a major role in building the journal’s national and international academic stature; his successor was Prof. Dr Cas J.A. Vos (1998–2001). In 2002, Prof. Dr Dirk J. Human took over as the Editor–in–Chief of Verbum et Ecclesia. The journal has operated under the auspices of two centres at the faculty, namely the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC) and the Institute for Ecumenical Research (IMER) from 2000–2007. Since 2008 the journal functioned under the newly founded Centre for Ministerial Development (CMD) at UP. The Lecturers’ Council at UP consists of professors linked to the Dutch Reformed Church who represent the Centre for Ministerial Development in cooperation with an international Advisory Editorial Board as managing body of the journal.

In view of the University of Pretoria’s policy of internationalisation and due to broader accessibility of the journal, its name was changed in 2001 from Skrif en Kerk to Verbum et Ecclesia. As a result, the journal grew in international stature and publishes one (and sometimes two) print editions annually, but individual articles are published on the website as soon as they are available.

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• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
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• Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1

The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.

Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.

AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Read more here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The authors retain the non–exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.

All manuscripts undergo a double–blinded review process.

The journal is affiliated to, and receives financial support from the Centre for Ministerial Development of the Dutch Reformed Church (Exelsus), University of Pretoria (South Africa)