About the Journal

NJAS Logo

The Nordic Journal of African Studies is an interdisciplinary open access journal published by the Nordic Africa Research Network and affiliated with the Forum for Africa Studies (Uppsala University). We are a fully free, "diamond" open access journal, with no fees charged to authors or readers.

Our Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement (PEMS), including all the information about our journal and its ethical practices, can be downloaded as a single pdf document by clicking on the link.

NJAS is listed and/or indexed by DOAJ, LingOA, Scopus, Web of Science (coming soon) and Sherpa Romeo. NJAS has been awarded the DOAJ Seal in recognition of our best practices in open-access publishing.

Correspondence

All correspondence concerning general journal matters should be sent to the Editors-in-Chief, whose addresses are given below. Manuscripts for publication and all related communication should be sent via our online platform (OJS). Before sending any material, please read the instructions to authors.

Dr. Thera Crane and Dr. Jonna Katto

email: thera.crane(at)helsinki.fi and jonna.katto(at)helsinki.fi

History of the Journal

NJAS was founded in 1992 by Prof. Arvi Hurskainen of the University of Helsinki. Prof. Hurskainen also served as the journal’s first Editor-in-Chief In the early years, two issues were published per year. From 2000–2004, three issues were printed annually. Since 2004, the journal has been purely electronic, and a new online issue appears four times per year. Between 1992 and 2017, the journal was published by the Nordic Association of African Studies - NAAS. In 2018, publication of the journal was transferred to NARN, the Nordic Africa Research Network. In 2023, the journal became officially affiliated with the Forum for Africa Studies at Uppsala University.

Editorial History

Governing Body and Editorial Team

Journal management comprises one or two Editor(s)-in-Chief; an Editorial Collective consisting of the Editor(s)-in-Chief and one responsible subject editor from each section of the journal; an Editorial Board consisting of the Editorial Collective, the Associate Editor, if appointed, all other subject editors, and other stakeholders as designated by the Editor(s)-in-Chief; and the journal Advisory Board, consisting of external experts. The journal may also employ an editorial assistant. The editorial board (with contact information) and advisory board are listed at https://njas.fi/njas/about/editorialTeam; the responsible section editor from each section is listed first.

Open Access Statement and Copyright Restrictions

NJAS is an open access journal following the diamond-standard model. This means that all content is freely available immediately upon publication, without charge to the author, the user, or the user’s institution. In accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access, users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking for permission from the publisher or the author. In all cases, credit must be given to the articles’ authors. The user may not print or otherwise redistribute any of the articles for commercial purposes, as stated in the Creative Commons CC BY license. All articles published in NJAS starting with the third issue of 2023 will be published with the CC BY license. All prior articles are published under the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC license. Licensing information is indicated on each article. Unless otherwise specified, this copyright license is granted to the author(s) of the article. If authors would like portions of their articles published under more restrictive licenses (e.g., original artwork), they can contact the editorial team and we will work out an article-specific plan. As of the third issue of 2023, images and figures are copyrighted as indicated in their captions (no copyright information indicates that the copyright is the same as rest of the article).

Authors grant NJAS the right of first publication of their work. We encourage authors to distribute and publicize their work widely and to deposit versions of their work (submitted version, accepted version, published version) in repositories, with no embargo period. See Sherpa Romeo for our repository policy. As the copyright holders to their works, authors are furthermore permitted to enter additional, non-exclusive agreements for the publication of their work, provided that these additional publications contain clear acknowledgement that the work was first published in NJAS. Such acknowledgement must include all relevant publication information (full citation information and/or original DOI). The same conditions apply to later commercial publication of works that were originally published in NJAS and to which authors hold the copyright.

Author Fees

No author fees are charged.

Publishing Schedule

We publish at least four issues each year, typically appearing in March, June, September, and December.

Archiving

Our articles are archived under the PKP Preservation Network to ensure perpetual access to their contents.

Revenue Sources

This publication has regularly received financial support on an annual basis from the Nordic Committee for the Publication of Periodicals in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOP-HS), our current source of funding for publication costs. The Editorial and Advisory Board work on a volunteer basis.

Advertising and Direct Marketing

We do not allow advertising in our journal or on our website. We may share relevant information about (e.g.) books and events via our social media channels.

We have a mailing list to alert authors, readers, and reviewers when new issues are published. (See our privacy statement.) At our discretion, we may directly solicit papers for regular or special issues, although this is not our regular practice.

Peer Review Process

At NJAS we use independent, double-blind peer review to ensure that the articles we publish are of a high international standard. Receipt of manuscripts will be acknowledged by email. The editor-in-chief assigns articles to the relevant subject editors, and may issue desk rejects if articles clearly fall outside the journal’s scope or other requirements. Articles that are considered by subject editors to be of sufficient quality and relevance to consider for publication will be sent out for peer-review. Articles accepted for publication will have been reviewed by at least two expert readers, one of whom may (but need not) be a member of our advisory board. Final acceptance of articles is conditional upon suggested revisions being satisfactorily executed, and a second round of review may be required. Each article's responsible subject editor(s), in consultation with the journal's Editor(s)-in-Chief and other Editorial Board members, are responsible for the final decisions on that article, after taking external reviewers’ reports into account. Authors (and not NJAS, associated organizations, or the article's reviewers) are responsible for the contents of their articles and for the accuracy and completeness of reference lists.

Book reviews and introductions to special issues or sections will not be subject to the peer-review process. If the peer review process differs from the above description for other articles, we will note this difference in the final publication.

The full editorial procedure and publication workflow are described at https://njas.fi/njas/about/submissions.

Statistics for 2023

These statistics are approximate and do not include information from special issues.

Submissions received: 117

Desk rejection rate: 79%

Reviews requested: 101

Reviews received: 67

Acceptance rate (total, for papers with final decisions): 20%

Average time between submission and publication (for published articles submitted in 2023): 276 days – including all review and revision stages