African Journal of AIDS Research

Instructions for Authors 

African Journal of AIDS Research (AJAR) publishes papers that make an original contribution to the understanding of the social dimensions of HIV and AIDS in African contexts. AJAR will publish research articles of 5 000 to 7 500 words and short communications of 2 000 words. Review papers will be considered only if they make an original conceptual or theoretical contribution to the field. Invited book reviews are also published.

Editorial policy: Submission of a manuscript implies that the material has not previously been published, nor is it being submitted elsewhere for publication. Contributions are accepted with the understanding that the authors have the authority for publication. Submission will be taken to imply transfer of copyright of the material to the publishers. NISC (Pty) Ltd. Contributions must conform to the principles outlined in Ethical Considerations in Research Publication available for download below.

Papers submitted to AJAR will be reviewed by two appropriately qualified and experienced referees to ensure that all articles accepted for publication are methodologically and conceptually sound and make an original contribution to the field. The journal adheres strictly to a double anonymized review process. The final decision to accept a manuscript rests with the Editor-in-Chief. Queries regarding manuscripts can be addressed to the Editorial Office at ajar.editor@nisc.co.za.

Submission: Manuscript submissions should be made online at the African Journal of AIDS Research ScholarOne Manuscripts site. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site, submissions should be made via the Author Centre. Manuscripts must adhere to the format criteria described below, and papers failing to do so will be returned to authors to be corrected before being reviewed. Authors can make use of a language editing service to ensure that the presentation of their work is of an appropriate standard for submission.

Manuscript presentation: Submitted manuscripts should contain the following sections, each in separate files:

Title page: The title (max. 20 words) should be a concise description of the article content. Author names must appear only on the title page. This page should also include each author’s names (full first name and surname), each author’s full institutional affiliation, the e-mail address of the designated corresponding author. Recommended, but not required, are short biographical notes for the authors (highest academic degree, work experience, research interests) and/or any acknowledgements.

Abstract: This should include the title of the paper and an abstract. The abstract is a concise statement of the scope of the work, the principal findings and the conclusions and should not exceed 250 words. It should not contain references. Below the abstract, up to eight additional keywords or phrases (which are not already given in the title) should be listed in alphabetical order. Short communications also require brief abstracts (max. 150 words).

Main text: All papers should include Introduction and Conclusions sections, but given the diverse range of papers that might be published in AJAR, we do not prescribe a standard format for the middle section.                                                                                                                                 Format – Manuscripts should be prepared in MSWord. The headings and text should be presented in 12-point Arial or Calibri font. The text should use 1.5 line spacing, with no extra line spacing, and should not include text columns, creative formatting or additional fonts. Headings should be sentence case and never numbered. There should be no more than three heading levels: (1) bold, (2) bold italics, (3) italics. Endnotes, not footnotes, may be used sparingly. Tables and figures (graphs, photographs or scanned images) should not be part of the text but prepared as separate files.                                                                                                                                                        

Editorial style – Manuscripts should be written in clear English (UK spelling). Consult the Oxford English Dictionary for spelling, capitalisation, hyphenation and abbreviation conventions. Consult a copy of the journal for general style conventions. Double quotation marks and regular font should be used to designate material quoted directly from other texts. Direct speech should be italicised. Use single quotation marks to signify a quote embedded within another quotation. Double quote marks and italic font should be used to denote informants’ quotes. The period (.) must be used as the decimal indicator, and ‘thousands’ should be designated by a space rather than a comma (Example: 1 500 000). Conventions on presenting mathematical and statistical data are outlined in Guidelines for the presentation of mathematical and statistical data available for download below.        

Referencing: Use APA 6 author–date style. Multiple citations in the text must be separated by semicolons and cited chronologically in the form (Habib, 1998, 2005; Bwanika & Davis, 2000; Ministry of Health, 2011). If there is more than one citation with the same publication year, these should be listed alphabetically. If previously published work is quoted directly, the citation must include the author, year of publication, and page number as in (Ajulu, 1999, p. 63). If more than five authors are cited in a reference, use only the name of the first author followed by ‘et al’. The reference list should be in alphabetical order by first author, and include all the authors of a given reference (do not use “et al.” in the list); likewise, use full journal titles. URLs may be cited only for references that are not available in print (such as a webpage) or ones that link to hard-to-find sources (e.g. municipal document), and these URLs must be up-to-date at the time of submission. Include DOIs for articles where possible.

Example reference list:    

Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Cockerham, W. C. (2000). The sociology of health behaviour and health lifestyles. In Bird C, Conrad P, & Fremont A. (Eds.), Handbook of Medical Sociology. (pp. 159–172). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Klopper, C., Stellenberg, E., & van der Merwe, A. (2014). Stigma and HIV disclosure in the Cape Metropolitan area, South Africa. African Journal of AIDS Research, 13(1), 37–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/ 16085906.2014.886606

Bicego, G., Nkambule, R., Peterson, I., Reed, J., Donnell, D., Ginindza, H., … Justman, J. (2013). Recent patterns in populationbased HIV prevalence in Swaziland. PLoS One, 8(10), e77101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0077101

World Health Organization. (2014, May). Swaziland: health profile. http://www.who.int/gho/countries/swz.pdf?ua=1 (accessed Jan 17, 2014).

Tables and Figures – Tables and figures should contain only information directly relevant to the content of the paper. Each table and figure must include a full, stand-alone caption, and each must be sequentially mentioned in the text. Highly stylised formatting should be avoided. Tables may use thin, horizontal lines but should not include cells with shading. Authors must ensure that their figures conform to the style of the journal. Pay particular attention to line thickness, font and figure proportions, taking into account the Journal’s printed page size. Costs of redrawing figures may be charged. Please refer to Figure Guidelines for Authors: format, style and technical considerations available for download below. For digital photographs or scanned images the resolution should be at least 300 dpi for colour or greyscale artwork and a minimum of 600 dpi for black line drawings. These can be saved (in order of preference) in PSD, JPEG, PDF or EPS format. Graphs, charts or maps can be saved in AI, PDF or EPS format. MS Office files (Word, Powerpoint, Excel) are also acceptable but DO NOT EMBED Excel graphs or Powerpoint slides in a MS Word document, rather send the original Excel or Powerpoint files. More detailed technical information is given in Figure Guidelines for Authors.

Open access: The African Journal of AIDS Research is a hybrid journal which allows authors the option of publishing their article Open Access for a set fee. Further details are given on the Open Access at NISC page.

Electronic reprints: Authors will be notified when their article is available for download from the journal website.

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