This resource is for students and those who are new to publishing, especially in journals. Publishing has its own vocabulary, and knowing these terms makes it easier to follow author guidelines, understand a reviewer’s comments, and take part confidently in the review and publication process, whether as an author, a reviewer, or someone considering an editorial path.

People and roles

Author — the person or people credited with producing the manuscript.

Co-author — a person who contributed significantly to the manuscript and is credited alongside the lead author.

Corresponding author — the author designated as the main point of contact with the editor and publisher, responsible for communication throughout submission and after publication.

Ghost author — a person who contributed substantially to the research or writing but is not credited as an author, a form of malpractice.

Editor — the person responsible for a journal or book’s overall standard, direction and publication decisions.

Peer reviewer — an independent expert who assesses a manuscript’s quality before publication.

Affiliation — the institution or organisation an author is associated with, listed alongside their name on a manuscript.

The review and production process

Peer review — the process of an independent expert assessing a manuscript’s quality before publication.

Blind review — a review process in which the author’s identity is withheld from the reviewer, distinct from double blind review, in which neither party knows the other’s identity.

Proofreading — a final check of a typeset manuscript for errors introduced during layout, carried out after copy editing.

Track changes — a word processing feature used to mark edits and suggestions visibly on a manuscript.

Rebuttal — an author’s formal response disputing or clarifying a reviewer’s comment.

Submission portal — the online system through which authors submit manuscripts and track their progress through review.

Declaration — a formal statement accompanying a manuscript covering matters such as ethics, consent, funding, and conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest — any personal, financial or professional relationship that could compromise an author’s, reviewer’s or editor’s objectivity, and must be disclosed.

AI use acknowledgement — a required statement disclosing whether and how AI was used in preparing a manuscript, confirming it did not replace the author’s own critical thinking.

Journal timelines — the expected time a manuscript takes to move through each stage of the publishing process, from submission to publication. These vary by journal, but common benchmarks include:

Editorial check: 1 to 15 days
Editorial review: 15 to 30 days
Peer review: 30 to 90 days
Editorial decision: 1 to 30 days
Author revision: varies, often 14 to 60 days depending on the extent of changes requested
Copy editing and typesetting: 30 to 90 days
Overall, submission to publication: commonly 4 to 12 months for a journal article, and often a year or more for a book

Manuscript types

Manuscript — a written work submitted for publication, before it has been accepted or formatted for print.

Article — a manuscript that has been accepted and published in a journal.

Paper — a general term for a manuscript or article, used interchangeably with both.

Preprint — a manuscript shared publicly before undergoing peer review.

Original research (article) — a manuscript reporting new, previously unpublished findings from the author’s own study, including its methods, results and analysis.

Scientific (article) — a manuscript reporting research conducted using a formal, systematic method, typically involving data collection, analysis and evidence based conclusions, including qualitative, participatory and orature grounded methods, not only quantitative approaches.

Review (article) — a manuscript that synthesises, evaluates or critiques existing literature on a topic, rather than reporting new original data.

Brief paper — a short manuscript reporting a smaller scale study, a preliminary finding, or a focused observation, usually shorter than a full original research article.

Policy paper — a manuscript analysing a policy issue and offering evidence based recommendations, intended to inform practice, government or institutional decision making rather than to report original empirical research alone.

Manuscript parts and conventions

Abstract — a short summary of a manuscript’s aim, method and findings, able to stand on its own.

Key words — a short list of terms attached to a manuscript to reflect its topic and aid discoverability.

References — the list of sources cited in a manuscript. Mtandao’s journals expect a minimum of 75 percent African sources, prioritising the Global South for the remainder.

Citing — the practice of formally acknowledging a source used within a manuscript.

Formatting — a manuscript’s layout and style, following a journal or publisher’s required conventions.

Template — a pre-set document structure authors or reviewers use to ensure consistent formatting.

Masthead — the section of a journal listing its editor, editorial board and publishing details.

Volume — a journal’s yearly or numbered grouping of issues.

Issue — a single published instalment of a journal within a volume.

Journal identity and quality markers

Journal — a regularly published collection of articles within a discipline or field.

Indexed journal — a journal listed in a recognised database, improving its discoverability and credibility.

Accredited journal — a journal formally recognised by a national or institutional accreditation body.

Predatory journal — a journal that charges fees without providing genuine peer review or editorial standards.

High ranking journal — a journal with strong measures of citation impact and academic standing within its field.

Journal quartiles — a ranking system dividing journals into four bands based on citation impact, from Q1, the highest, to Q4.

h-index — a measure of a researcher’s academic impact, based on the number of their publications and how often each is cited.

Impact factor — a measure of how often a journal’s articles are cited on average, used as an indicator of its influence.

Identifiers, access and cost

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) — a permanent unique code assigned to a published article for reliable citation and retrieval. A DOI is usually issued once an article is published rather than during submission or review, and not every journal or publisher assigns one, so its absence at manuscript stage, or even after publication in some smaller or newer journals, is not always necessary and should not be read as a sign of low quality.

Database — a searchable collection of published research, such as African Journals Online or the Directory of Open Access Journals.

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) — a unique code identifying a journal or serial publication.

African Journals Online (AJOL) — a major database and indexing platform for African journals.

ejournal — a journal published and accessed digitally rather than in print.

Print journal — a journal published as a physical printed publication.

Licences — the legal terms under which published work may be reused, shared or adapted, such as Creative Commons licences.

Author fees — charges some journals require from authors to publish, sometimes called article processing charges.

Open access — a publishing model making an article freely available to readers without a subscription or paywall.

Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) — a free, unique digital identifier for researchers and authors, used to distinguish one author’s work from others with similar or identical names and to link an author’s publications across different journals and databases over their career. Some journals ask authors to provide an ORCID iD alongside a submission, but it is not always necessary, particularly for early career researchers, first time authors, or those submitting to journals that do not require it, and its absence should not affect how a manuscript is reviewed or assessed.

Research integrity

Plagiarism — presenting another person’s work or ideas as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.

Falsifying — manipulating, fabricating or misrepresenting data or findings, a serious form of research malpractice.

Retraction — the formal withdrawal of a published article, usually due to serious error or malpractice.

Decolonised and African approaches

Decolonised research — research that centres African and locally relevant ways of knowing across every stage: planning, methodology, philosophy, methods, ethics, literature, theory, analysis and reporting.

Ubuntu research — research grounded in Ubuntu philosophy, engaging with its five levels: family, community, society, environment and spirituality.

African research methods — research approaches developed from or adapted to African contexts, rather than imported without adaptation.

Decolonising Ubuntu — the ongoing work of protecting Ubuntu from being reduced to a single phrase or stripped of its full philosophical depth when used in research and publishing.

Indigenising — the process of adapting research, theory or practice to reflect local Indigenous knowledge and context.

San Code of Research Ethics — an ethics code created by the San people of South Africa, in response to decades of research that humiliated, deceived and failed to benefit them. Endorsed by Mtandao for use by all researchers, in any discipline, it is built around five principles: respect, honesty, justice and fairness, care, and process.

Sankofa — an Akan value and adinkra symbol from West Africa meaning to go back and get it, encouraging researchers and reviewers to look back to the literature, written or oral, before moving forward.

Orature — oral forms of knowledge such as proverbs, idioms, songs and stories, treated as legitimate, citable evidence.

Editorial decision outcomes

Acceptance — a decision that a manuscript meets the required standard and will be published, with or without minor changes.

Conditional acceptance — a decision that a manuscript will be published once specific, usually minor, changes are made and confirmed, without a further full round of review.

Minor revisions — a decision requesting small changes, such as clarifications or additional references, that do not require a further full peer review before acceptance.

Major revisions — a decision requesting substantial changes to theory, methods, analysis or argument, usually requiring the manuscript to be reviewed again before a final decision.

Revise and resubmit — a decision indicating a manuscript is not ready for publication in its current form but may be reconsidered if substantially reworked and submitted again as a new submission.

Rejection — a decision that a manuscript does not meet the journal’s required standard and will not be published, whether due to poor fit, weak quality, or serious flaws in theory, method or ethics.

Desk rejection — a rejection made by the editor at the editorial check stage, before the manuscript reaches peer review, usually because it falls outside the journal’s scope, fails basic policy requirements, or shows clear quality problems.

Withdrawal — the author’s own decision to remove a manuscript from consideration, whether during review or after a decision has been issued, distinct from a rejection made by the editor.

Glossary of Publishing Terms

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