About the Journal
Who we are:
We are a peer-reviewed, and open access academic research journal ( ISSN 2709-9997) that publishes research from African students and professional practitioners. At the student’s journal of health research Africa, we know that there are so many unique academic concepts that are developed by students in Africa and none of these get a chance to be known by other scientists across the world. Some of this work is health research with great potential to improve the quality of services that patients get but none of this information comes up to a common online library for discussion.
Being African, we understand the challenges an African student faces as they work towards achieving great things good science can bring. Our focused editorial system working closely with the peer reviewers of diverse expertise is well calibrated to bridge this knowledge gap in Africa.
The core vision of our efforts is to increase evidence-based decisions by improving research on the African continent. Through all of our endeavors we hope to display the conviction behind our beliefs with three major objectives;
- To promote research through reaching the health sciences students and professionals with genuine research ideas at all academic levels.
- To share good research with others across the world to assist in informing policy.
- To promote scientific freedom among Health science students
In January 2021, the Journal introduced Student’s Journal of Information Technology, Planning and Management to serve as an interdisciplinary setting for the dissemination of information technology, health policy and management research from students of different academic background. It brings together individual specialties from different fields into a dynamic academic mix. SJITPM is intended to enhance communication among health system researchers and administrators, policy and decision makers, legislators, practitioners, educators, students, and other types of professionals in the research that might have an effect on the healthcare delivery systems.
Open Access policy
Student’s Journal of health research Africa is committed to information sharing and transparency. Our policies help authors achieve a high level of openness with their research and support them to improve the quality of work they do. We have adopted an Open Access policy that enables the unrestricted access and reuse of all peer-reviewed published research.
Our Open Access policy contains the following elements:
- Publications are discoverable and accessible online.
Publications will be deposited in a specified repository(s) with proper tagging of metadata.
- The publication will be On “Open Access” terms.
Licensing policy
Student’s journals publish under the Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 international (CCBY-NC-ND 4.0) license which allows you to Share, Copy and redistribute the materials in any medium or format. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms;
- Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- Non-commercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Commercial use is one primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation.
- No Derivatives: if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
- No additional restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Peer review process and timeline:
SJHR-Africa’s process of peer review involves an exchange between a journal editor and a team of reviewers. After the referees receive a paper from the editor, they read it closely and provide individual critiques, usually within two to four weeks. In their critiques, they:
- Comment on the validity of the science, identifying scientific errors, and evaluating the design and methodology used.
- Judge the significance by evaluating the importance of the findings.
- Determine the originality of the work based on how much it advances the field.
- Reviewers also identify missing or inaccurate references.
- Recommend that the paper be published or rejected.
- Publications will be accessible and open immediately.
All publications shall be available immediately upon their publication, without any embargo period. An embargo period is a period during which the publisher will require a subscription or the payment of a fee to gain access to the publication.
Editorial process and timeline:
After a paper is submitted to SJHR-Africa, an immediate response is provided acknowledging reception of the paper in not more than 1hr from the time of submission. The editor-in-chief assigns the paper to the relevant Editor of the section in the Journal. The journal editor then screens the manuscript and decides whether or not to send it for full peer review. Only after clearing the initial screening is when the manuscript be sent to one or more peer reviewers. Finally, journal editors consider the peer reviewers’ reports and make the final decision to accept or reject the manuscript for publication.
During the initial screening, journal editors mainly check the following:
Editors go through the abstract and may even skim through the introduction, figures, and tables, or other sections of the paper to determine whether the manuscript passes the SJHR-Africa quality threshold.
Peer review
A minimum of 2 peer reviewers (up to 3) are chosen for the peer review. SJHR-Africa built a pool of peer reviewers that have a good track record of producing high-quality reviews. These have sufficient subject matter expertise to do justice to the manuscript and usually provide feedback in a period, not more than 4 weeks. Highly technical papers or papers from niche subject areas may take longer to review (about 2months), because it may take editors some time to locate appropriate reviewers from academic platforms in Africa.
The peer review is completed once all the reviewers send the journal a detailed report with their comments on the manuscript and their recommendations.
The double-blind peer review system
Double-blind review, in which the identities of the author and Editors are both hidden, making it easier for reviewers to focus on the paper itself without being swayed by any preconceived ideas about the author or their institution.
Final decision
The journal editor considers the feedback provided by the peer reviewers and arrives at a decision. The following are the most common decisions that are made at SJHR-Africa:
- accept without any changes (acceptance): the journal will publish the paper in its original form
- accept with minor revisions (acceptance): the journal will publish the paper and asks the author to make small corrections
- accept after major revisions (conditional acceptance): the journal will publish the paper provided the authors make the changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors
- revise and resubmit (conditional rejection): the journal is willing to reconsider the paper in another round of decision making after the authors make major changes
- reject the paper (outright rejection): the journal will not publish the paper or reconsider it even if the authors make major revisions.
Once approved, articles undergo proofreading, copy-editing, and typesetting processes.
- Editors identify what works, what doesn’t and evaluate a manuscript’s potential.
- Editors help the author make the manuscript better through revision guidance.
- Editors polish the writing and make it read as well as possible.
- Editors make sure the copy is correct and ready for publication.
Publication of approved papers:
SJHR-Africa publishes articles every quarter. A complete issue is usually made up of 5-100 articles.
Preservation and Archiving policy:
SJHR-Africa uses the CLOCKSS and LOCKSS systems allowing libraries to collect, preserve and provide our readers with access to material published on our Website. Our main goal is digital preservation.
Repository Policy:
SJHR-Africa allows authors the use of the published version of an article for self-archiving on either the author's personal website or archiving in a University repository. This can be done as soon as after publication without any embargo period. The published source must be acknowledged and a link to the journal home page or articles' DOI must be set.
Journal Charges:
Being an open access journal, we do not charge fees to publish or access content published by the journal. This is so because we believe that in order to promote research freedom among African Students, Publications should not be influenced by the author's ability to pay. The journal is able to facilitate its editorial process through donations, and the manuscript handling fee of 146,000UgX, (40 US dollars).
Waiver policy:
At the students’ journal of health research Africa, we understand that most African students may have limited funding for their research activities. Thus, we have instituted a generous waiver system that may ease the payment of the manuscript handling fee when they choose to publish their manuscripts in our journal. Because our editorial decisions are never influenced by the author’s ability to pay, we ensure that editors are not involved in correspondence with authors regarding payment of manuscript handling fees. The automatic waiver system will be managed by administrative staff not involved in decisions regarding article acceptance. We ask authors not to discuss any issues concerning payment with editors since it will not help.
The authors from the following countries may be granted up to 100% waiver if the application is successful,
- Angola
- Benin
- Botswana
- Algeria
- Burkina Faso
- Burundi
- Cameroon
- Cape Verde
- The central African Republic
- Chad
- Comoros
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo
- Republic of the Congo
- Djibouti
- Egypt
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- Gabon
- The Gambia
- Ghana
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau
- Ivory Coast
- Kenya
- Lesotho
- Liberia
- Libya
- Madagascar
- Malawi
- Mali
- Mauritania
- Mauritius
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Namibia
- Niger
- Nigeria
- Rwanda
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Senegal
- Seychelles
- Sierra Leone
- Somalia
- South Africa
- South Sudan
- Sudan
- Swaziland
- Tanzania
- Togo
- Tunisia
- Uganda
- Zambia
- Zimbabwe
Membership:
Our electronic journals offer unrestricted, unlimited, free access to any reader, with no subscription or registration required. Our members support the project through the payment of annual membership fees, allowing them to submit an unlimited number of manuscripts for consideration. All manuscripts undergo a meticulous and stringent double-blind peer review process, and only manuscripts deemed of sufficient quality and relevance will be accepted for publication. For each journal, we aim to publish the most relevant research and to guarantee the highest visibility of all articles by including our contents in the most important academic indexing and abstracting databases.
SJHR-Africa Institutional Membership:
Institutions interested in supporting open access and increasing the proportion of their publications available to the broad public are welcome to join Student’s Journal of Health Research Africa institutional membership. The institutional membership benefits all affiliated researchers with the possibility of unlimited submission and can be pursuit by an annual flat fee based on the number of students and staff of the institution who choose to publish with us.
For a membership quote please contact us at membership@sjhresearchafrica.org
Why become a member?
- You are supporting a not-for-profit, open-access organization
- No further costs or processing charges are required.
- Complete access to the up-to-date status of each manuscript submitted
- Authors retain the copyrights of their published work
Benefits of our membership:
- Unlimited sharing of knowledge among the academic community is assured.
- Students get to work directly with our expert editors at all stages of the research project development.
- Demonstrate our professionalism with guidance and resources
- Widen your network and share your ideas with our community
- Students access academic content and information to build knowledge and expertise
- A journal correspondent is assigned to the research office to assist in promoting good research.
- Capacity building at the selected departments.
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES:
These online publications may not match identically with the information contained in the print versions, and to the extent that such differences exist the online editions of all journals officially published by the SJHR-Africa are the versions of the record.
These publications are provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. Descriptions of, or references to, products or publications do not imply endorsement of that product or publication.
In no event shall SJHR-Africa be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages of any kind arising out of or in connection with the use of the articles or other material derived from these journals, whether or not advised of the possibility of damage, and on any theory of liability.
SJHR-Africa is under development, and changes may be made in these publications and programs at any time. All advertising appearing in the SJHR-Africa is the sole responsibility of the advertiser. SJHR-Africa does not endorse or warrant any product advertised or any statements made in any advertisements.
Company’s Terms and Conditions/Refund/Cancellation Policy:
Refundable items
The Journal only publishes scholarly materials for an international readership. It does not have any other items it deals with indirectly.
The refund/Cancellation process
The Journal billing office will only invoice an author who has successfully met the set standards for the journal and has responded to all comments from the peer-review stages to the expectations of the peer-reviewers and section editors where the article will be published. Once the author makes payment and later wishes to withdraw his/ her scholarly material before the publication date, they should bring this to the attention of the Journal editor 30 days before the publication date on editor@sjhresearchafrica.org.
Once a request to withdraw an article is received, the journal editor will examine the application and recommend a refund to the author in a period not exceeding 3 months from the period the approval is provided. Typically, the money will be refunded back onto the credit or debit card the customer paid with.
