How to Start and Sustain an Academic Journal – 10 steps?

An academic, scholarly or scientific journal is a book that contains a collection of independent articles. It is published periodically and can be a hard-copy or digital. An academic journal is a mouthpiece of research. The articles are mainly written by experts who are usually academics but the trend is changing, community members who are not professionals but have expertise of lived experience can write in journals. Historically, Africa has been a consumer of articles written and published outside it but the trend is shifting towards locally generated and published knowledge. This process is called decolonisation. Everyone can contribute to this new trend and process – one way is to start an academic journal. But how is a journal started and sustained?

Why is it important to start academic or scholarly journals in Africa?

• Decolonising publishing – most journals are published outside Africa, therefore African knowledge is not valued as much as Western and Eastern knowledge
• Giving a voice – African writers, editors and reviewers are very few, and their ideas are not cited as much as others
• Increase access – upcoming academics and students have limited access to publishing, therefore increasing the number of journals solves this problem
• Successful projects e.g. journal in South Africa, Nigeria and Zimbabwe and Egypt
• Export – very often we import ideas, publishing locally allows for an export or exchange of ideas, it should not be one way
• Build an industry – the publishing industry can generate a lot of money and contribute significantly to economies
• Opening Africa publishing to the world – so that Western and Eastern writers can also write in Africa journals, and get reviewed by African reviewers
• Sustaining knowledge production – having local journals provides an opportunity to pass on the knowledge and skills of publishing to younger generations
• Increase Africa content – this allows students and researchers access to more content for essays, literature reviews and practice
• There are many journals out there that purport to be African but they are not, actually they perpetuate the colonisation of African knowledge
• Reduce or eradicate the cost of open access publishing

Steps to start, launch and sustain a journal

1. Identify a gap

As a journal creator, the first thing you need to do is to identify a gap in publishing. There is gap if no literature exist in an area of study, where colonial literature exist, where misinformation exists, where local orature has not been recognised or it has not been brought in the public, teaching and learning domain. More importantly, there should not be other journals addressing the same gap.

2. Create a journal concept draft

A journal concept is a summary of ideas about a proposed journal. It contains:

• Proposed name of the journal
• Potential or actual affiliate institution, association or publisher
• Policy summary, that is, the knowledge area the journal will cover; philosophical approach e.g. decolonial or indigenising; types of manuscripts accepted; and review process
• Frequency of publishing e.g. two times a year, three, four, six or 12 times
• Type of management e.g. Chief or Executive Editor; Editorial Board/Committee/Team, Advisory Board or International Advisory Board
• Whether you want to be national, regional, continental or global, and the area of research is specific or broad
• Publisher model – whether you are creating a new publisher or working with existing ones and also whether you will publish one or more journals. Joining existing publishers in Africa has advantages, however, joining global publishers can work against decolonisation
• Format of publishing, which can be:
  • Print or hard-copies
  • Portable document format (PDF)
  • Web page content (normally called HTML pages, similar to the page you are reading now). This requires a website. You can create a new website or use journal hosts such as Open Journal Systems (OJS) for a fee. Databases such as AJOL can provide you with a website for free.
  • A combination of the above formats. This requires a website.

3. Share the concept and get feedback

This is important. Share with potential editors, board members, writers and readers. Also share with potential publishing institutions. and journal managing institutions like ASWNet.

4. Create journal proposal

When the journal has gained acceptance, change the concept to journal proposal. You do this by expanding the concept and adding the following policies, procedures and guidelines:

• Quality assurance policy
• Copyright policy
• Decolonisation policy
• Peer review policy and procedures
• Access policy e.g. open access or pay-to-access
• Fees policy e.g. is it free-to-submit, fee-to-submit do people have to subscribe to read. All these policies are acceptable. Others
• Archive policy
• Submission policy and procedures
• Submission guidelines
• Sustainability plan
• Language policy – it is important to promote Africa languages

Get final approval of your proposal.

5. Create journal images and templates

Create the front and back covers, sample table of contents and manuscript template. Also important to create social media images at this stage. and, if needed, a website or webpage. The images and templates are the first thing readers and the public see, so they must be well done and reflect your journal philosophy. Not a good idea at all to copy and paste images from the internet, creativity is crucial.

Put quality assurance mechanisms in place

• Get an International standard Serial Number (ISSN). This is optional but useful. There should not be any payment to get an ISSN, it is a free service.
• Apply for indexing. This is optional but useful. Start with indexing in your discipline, then country, continent and then outside as follows:
  • Discpline – get endorsement from your professional association
  • Country – get endorsement of a local library and national research board if it is available, for example the South Africa Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) indexes journals
  • Continent
    • African Journals Online (AJOL) indexing
    • ASWNet indexing
    • Society of African Journal Editors (SAJE)
    • Africana Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database
    • Others
  • Global – there are many indexers, some are free and some charge a fee. It is not necessary to pay for indexing. Examples are:
    • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
    • Digital Object identifiers (DOI)
    • SCOPUS (Elsevier’s abstract and citation database)
    • Asian Digital Library (ADL)
    • China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI)
    • Journal Publishing Practices and Standards (JPPS)
    • EBSCO

6. Develop a marketing plan

Develop a plan to market, and then notify potential writers and readers using the communication channels identified.

• Create a mailing list but never do intrusive advertising
• Social media presence (not always useful but becoming necessary these days)
• Posters and institutions
• Sessions or posters at conferences
• Special issues

7. Recruit human resources

Many people are involved as follows:

• Journal manager
• Editor; Editor-in-Chief, Chief Editor or Executive Editor
• Assistant editor
• Reviewers
• Proofreader
• Copy editor
• Layout editor
• Designer
• Marketing person; Social media person
• Print person
• Distribution person
• Board members

Many of these roles can be shared, and in most cases work is voluntary.

8. Launch

Set a date for publishing the first issue, create an email address to receive manuscripts, send out a call for manuscripts, create a list of reviewers, receive the first manuscript and start reviewing.

Launching a journal is a big step, and others fail here. If you succeed, then think about sustaining it.

9. Activate your sustainability plan

• Get institutional affiliation
• Secure institutional funding
• Archive all documents, especially final approved manuscripts and data sets if they have been made available. The best way to archive is to give all final copies to an indexer, for example, AJOL puts articles on its website for free
• Involve young people in your journal management
• Respect African values, knowledge and histories
• Adhere to ethics and ensure that researchers adhere to ethics
  • Submitted manuscripts are based on research actually done
  • Ensure all research published has ethics clearance or advice. The Africa Independent Ethics Committee provides advice if you do not have access to an ethics board
  • Avoid intrusive marketing
  • Support decolonisation, colonisation is unethical

10. Ensure continuous quality

• Improve quality of publications i.e articles
• Be consistent
• Regular meetings of staff
• CPD for staff
• Have a strong board, include women and young people
• Update websites and social media sites
• Check emails and respond in a timely manner
• Have a reasonable rejection rate

Examples from ASWNet hosted journals

Click image below to go to the journal website.

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Social Work Journals and Other Serial Publications in Africa (ASWNet Index)

Social Work Journals and Other Serial Publications in Africa (ASWDNet Index)

Final words of encouragement

It is possible for more journals to be published in Africa. The most concrete idea to achieve sustainability and quality for a journal is to think harder about the future, be confident, accept criticism and be creative. Avoid replicating what happens in the West or East but rather be Africa-centred.

Are you considering to start a journal, do you have questions? Are you running a journal, do you want to share your experience. If yes, please use the comment space below.