The Journal of African Policy Studies invites you to submit your article for publication consideration. The journal is an independent peer-reviewed publication concerned with global, regional and domestic policy issues relating to Africa. Articles published in the journal deal with a wide range of public policy topics, including foreign policy, economic issues, environmental issues, governance and democratization issues, development, military policy, social policy, population policy, health issues etc. It also focuses its publication agenda on works that research and assess institutions, processes, and policy impacts in Africa. 

The journal has published works by leading scholars on Africa, like Ali Mazrui, Goran Heyden, John F. Clark, Earl Conteh Morgan, Edmond J. Keller, etc. 

 Submit your articles electronically to: jamin1@udayton.edu. 

Visit us on the web at: journalofafricanpolicystudies.org.

Initial Submission

– Articles should be research pieces of high quality that exhaust the topic under consideration and make major contributions either to understanding public policy in Africa, or as relates to Africa, including policy processes, institutions, and impacts; or they are articles that make major contributions in assessing the level to which policy debates of relevance to Africa are or ought to be shaped and informed by research and the existing academic and scholarly literature. Manuscripts should be typed double-spaced and should not exceed 10,000 words on a 12-point font, including notes.

– All manuscripts are peer-reviewed. Let a colleague or two, someone knowledgeable of the topic or your line of research read through and give you feed back before submission. This will enable you to clean and refine your manuscript to enhance the chances of it going pass the first phase of the review process. 

– Before submitting an article for publication consideration, authors should note that the operation of JOAPS is conducted in Microsoft Word for Windows software, and that if their article is accepted for publication, they will be required to prepare the final copy using that software. It is therefore recommended that while the initial submission need not be prepared in Microsoft Word for Windows software, it would be better to do so to make things easier if the article were accepted.

–  Include 300 words abstract of the manuscript.

– Note that we require you to use footnotes and not endnotes or in-text citation in the final copy of your article if it is accepted.

–  Avoid self-identification by including a separate title and address page, including e-mail. 

–  Include a declaratory and signed statement that the manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not being considered for publication by other journals at the time of submission. 

• The citation format that we use is the Chicago Manual of Style. 

• You should not use the superscript in numbering the footnotes.

• A period should follow each footnote number.

• Indent the first line of each footnote three spaces from the margin using a tab set at 0.2.

• Allow a single space between notes. 

▪ Use italics for the titles of books, journals, and newspapers as illustrated below.

Examples of Acceptable Footnote Formats

1. Vincent B. Khapoya, The African Experience(Upper Saddler River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998), 20-45. 

(As you can see, there is no “p.” before page numbers)

2. Virginia Delancy, “Agricultural Productivity in Cameroon,” in Political Economy of Cameroon, Michael G. Schatzberg and I. William Zartman, eds. (New York: Praeger, 1987), 136-155. 

(As you can see, the editors’ names come after the title).

(As you can also see, the title of the article is closed by inverted commas) . 

 (Also note the position of the comma after Cameroon in the title of the chapter).

For a book downloaded from a library or a bookseller make sure to identify the format at the end of your citation such as: Kindle edition, PDF e-book, Microsoft Reader e-book, Palm e-book, CD-ROM etc.

For an article in a journal:

3. Goran Hyden, Peter Koehn, and Turhan Saleh, “The Challenges of Decentralization in Eritrea,” The Journal of African Policy Studies 2, no.1 (1996): 31-50.

(As you can see, there is a colon after the date and not “p.”).

(Again, note the use of inverted commas to enclose the title of the article).

(Also note how the comma after Eritrea is inside and not outside the right inverted comma).

For an article in a newspaper:

4. James C. McKinley, “Weary Africa Braces for More Extremes,” New York Times (December 1, 1997 9D).

(As you can see, there is no “the” before New York Times; the date should be included, and so should page number).

Repeated footnote References

Do not use “ibid” and “op. cit.” for repeated references. Instead use the author’s last name followed by a comma, a short title, and page number.

Examples:

5. Khapoya, The African Experience, 20.

6. Delancy, “Agricultural Productivity in Cameroon,” 136. 

7. Hyden, Koehn, and Saleh, “The Challenges of Decentralization in Eritrea,” 35.

For other types of works not listed, see the Chicago Manual of Styles (current edition).

· Alphabetize your bibliographic entries.

· Set the bibliography with a hanging indentation.

Here are some examples:

Ake, Claude, ed. Political Economy of Nigeria. London and Lagos: Longman, 1985.

Delancy, Virginia. “Agricultural Productivity in Cameroon.” In Political Economy of Cameroon, edited by Michael Schatzberg and I. William Zartman. New York: Praeger, 1987. 

Hyden, Goran, Peter Koehn, and Turhan Saleh. “The Challenges of Decentralization in Eritrea.” The Journal of African Policy Studies 2, no. 1 (1996): 31-50.

Khapoya, Vincent. The African Experience. Upper Saddler River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. 

African Business. March 1989

West Africa. No. 3917, October 12-18, 1992.

New York Times. December 1, 1997

When an author has more than one bibliographic entry to be listed, you should use a long dash in place of the author’s name after the first entry. However, if the author wrote another work with another person, you must list the two names again.

· For other types of works not listed, see the Chicago Manual of Styles (current edition).

· Use the column feature to set up your table instead of the preset table features. We require tables without lines. Make your tables as manageable as possible. You should insert the table where you want it in the text.

· Use diagrams sparingly and you must place them where you want them in the text.

· Diagrams must be reduced to the dimension of the journal, which again is: 4.5″ by 7.5″

Mathematical Formulas

· We want our manuscripts to be reader friendly. So, we request that you use formulas only if you must, and in that case, sparingly. You should translate your formulas if possible, to lay- person’s term. 

Before Sending the Final Version of the Manuscript to Us

· Run the spell check feature of your computer.

· Proofread the manuscript carefully as spell check will not pick up mistakes for which it was not designed.