Editorial Policy

This is a summary of the journal’s Editorial Policies.  For more complete details, see our Policy Manual.  For the journal’s scope, see the About page.

 

The articles and reviews in African Christian Theology (ACT) reflect the opinions of the authors and reviewers and do not necessarily represent those of the Editors or of the publisher (ACTEA).

Unsolicited submissions are welcome, though not guaranteed of publication in the journal.  Abstracts should be between 100–150 words.  Articles should be between 5,000–6,000 words, inclusive of footnotes but exclusive of bibliography and abstract.  The editors reserve the right to publish articles outside of that range.  The editors reserve full rights to accept or reject submissions.  Submissions should not have been previously published or under consideration elsewhere for publication.  However, the editors reserve the right republish work at their discretion.

 

Publication Fees Policy:
There are no fees required to submit to the journal and no fees required to publish in the journal:  no submission fees, no page fees, no publication fees. 

 

Submission Process:
Manuscripts and reviews may be submitted on site or sent via email to submissions@AfricanChristianTheology.org.  Queries and other communications may be addressed to the managing editors at Editors@AfricanChristianTheology.org.  Please allow for two weeks for an initial response.  If the submission goes to peer review, allow for 3–5 months for a final decision.  The journal publishes two issues a year, in March and September. As accepted submissions are only published as part of a complete issue, the average time between submission and publication is highly variable.  In addition, submissions may be required to go through the review process more than once.

 

Review Policy
All submissions are subject to double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers.  The managing editor on duty anonymizes each submission and sends it to one of the other members of the editorial team (either another managing co-editor or one of the regional editors) for an initial “desk decision.” The assigned editor decides whether the submission should be declined or forwarded to reviewers. This is a double-blind decision.  In the review process, each submission is sent to at least two peer reviewers.  All reviews follow a double-blind policy.  In addition to commentary, reviewers return the review to the editorial team with one of five recommendations:

  • approved; 
  • approved pending minor corrections; 
  • approved pending major corrections; 
  • revise and resubmit;
  • decline.
When reviews are returned, one of the editors will evaluate the reviews. If two reviewers return completely disparate reviews, a third review is required.  A managing editor will make the final decision which is then returned to the author(s) of the submitted article.

 

Open Access Policy
Articles and book reviews are published in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.  Authors retain copyright of their work published in the journal but grant first publication rights to the journal; ACT retains publication rights for nine months after publication before authors can republish or reprint their material elsewhere.  Articles are free to use with proper attribution and licensing.

 

Ethics:
The journal abides by the standard ethical practices outlined by  COPE’s Core Practice guidance and COPE’s guidance.

 

Plagiarism Policy:
The journal, its editors, its editorial board members, and ACTEA forbid its contributors from taking part in misconduct and malpractice and do not knowingly allow malpractice or misconduct to take place.  Plagiarism is a form of academic malpractice.  Submissions found to include plagiarism or AI-composition will not be published.  Articles and reviews composed by AI (Artificial Intelligence) programs or apps or services should not be submitted; these are unacceptable.  Software may be used to detect plagiarism and AI composition.

 

Archiving Policy:
All issues of African Christian Theology are available at https://AfricanChristianTheology.org and are archived at AMRI Connect, https://www.amriconnect.net/.  Applications are pending for the journal to be archived at AJOL.info and EBSCOHost as well.

 

Repository Policy:
The journal both allows and encourages authors to deposit versions of their work, including the published version, in institutional or other repositories of their choice.