About the Journal
ABOUT THE JOURNAL
The Abyssinia Journal of Culture and Indigenous Knowledge (AJCIK) is newly established African scientific journal publishing from Wollo University, Ethiopia. It is an international, peer-reviewed and an open access scientific journal publishes original empirical studies, literature reviews, theoretical articles, methodological articles, book reviews, synopsis of major research, short communications, commentaries, and other relevant issues in the area of local languages, culture, indigenous knowledge, local arts and allied disciplines. The Journal uses Amharic and English as a main language of publication. If the manuscript of a research uses English language, the abstract shall be bilingual in its form (Amharic and English).
Date of Publishing: Every year first issue in June and second in December.
Submission Deadline: Date of manuscript submission is open. Authors can submit their manuscripts at any time. Editorial board will process their manuscript for future volumes/issues.
JOURNAL POLICY
This policy describes guidelines in the publication process of our journal
- Contents of the article
AJCIK publishes articles dealing with the indigenous knowledge concepts. Articles to be published in AJCIK should describe original research findings that add knowledge significantly to works already published, or open a new area of research in indigenous knowledge concepts. The articles should be new and of interest to the community and have sound motivation and purpose.
- Originality of the article
AJCIK would not accept either published papers or in press papers. Authors should authenticate in the cover letter that their manuscript or content of their manuscript has not been submitted or published elsewhere. Articles presenting ambiguous information and presenting only incremental progress of the work without producing any significant advancement in their research field will not be accepted for publication.
The journals may accept a paper that has been published which is not available for wide range of audience, such as proceedings from national and international conferences. In fact, the author(s) should mention the pertinent details in the reference section of the manuscript and must also provide the same details in the cover letter with reprint(s) attached.
- Confidentiality
All manuscripts intended for publication in the AJCIK are assessed without any bias and also evaluated objectively by peer reviewers. Evaluation is based solely on its scientific and social contribution without discrimination to race, gender, religion and influence of any kind of authority. Confidentiality is maintained until submitted manuscripts are published.
- Authors and coauthors
Researchers who have made significant contributions to the research work may be listed as authors and coauthors. In case the manuscript has multiple authors, one of the authors should act as corresponding author to communicate with the editors. The corresponding author needs to be decided before submission of the manuscript and should remain as corresponding author throughout the review and publication process. The corresponding author is responsible to represent all coauthors involved in the work. In addition to this, financial contributions to the work should be acknowledged clearly by the authors and should state any potential conflict of interest.
Authors will transfer copyright of their work to Wollo University. Submission of a manuscript to this journal indicates that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the copyright letter.
In submitting a manuscript to these journals the corresponding author agrees to the following:
- The content of the article is the original work of the listed authors.
- All significant investigators should find a place as authors and all should agree to submit the manuscript to this journal
- The submitted manuscript has not been published or submitted to other journals for publication.
- The authors accept the manuscript review procedures established by the AJCIK.
- Ethical Approvals
Compliance with publication ethics ensures the integrity of scientific publishing and confidence in published articles. Therefore, AJCIK expects all authors to adhere to ethical requirements in the preparation of their manuscript. For investigation on human subjects (for both journals) or on animals (for AJCIK), it is a prerequisite to provide a formal approval by a proper institutional review board or ethics committee, which should be documented in the paper.
- Errata and Corrections in Published Articles
Authors and readers are encouraged to inform the Editor-in-Chief if they find any kinds of errors in published content, authors’ names and affiliations or if they have any kind of concern over the legitimacy of a publication. In such cases, the journals prefers to publish an the corrected version after consulting the Editor-in-Chief and authors of the article and the same can be reported in future volumes of the journals.
- Permission for reproduction
Authors should reproduce published material after getting written permission from the copyright holder and written permission should be forwarded to the Editor-in-Chief in case of acceptance of the article for publication.
- Disclaimer
Wollo University makes every sincere effort to ensure the accuracy of all the contents published in these journals. All opinions and views expressed in the research articles published in these journals are the opinions and views of authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Wollo University. Wollo University shall not be liable for any claims whatsoever or howsoever arising out of the use of the content.
AJCIK is committed to prompt evaluation and publication of fully accepted papers. To advocate high quality publication, all submissions undergo a rigorous review process through double blind peer-review procedure. Reviewers of these journals play a vital role in maintaining the high standards of the AJCIK and peer review procedure outlined below.
Initial review
All manuscript submissions are subjected for initial review to verify the completeness and adherence to the Guidelines for Authors. After satisfactory report of initial review, the manuscripts are transferred to the Editor in chief for the peer review process. Manuscript rejection at the initial evaluation stage will normally be informed to authors within 1 week of receipt.
Editor-in-chief evaluation
The Editor in chief decides whether the manuscript warrants peer-review or if it should be rejected without review. A manuscript is rejected if it is insufficiently original, has serious flaws from a conceptual and/or methodological point of view, has poor grammar or usage of English language, or is outside the aims and scope of the journal. The corresponding author receives information normally within 2 weeks of assignment to the Editor in chief if the manuscript is rejected at this stage.
Peer-review process
AJCIK employs a double-blind peer-review, where both the reviewer and the author remain anonymous throughout the process. Reviewers are selected according to their expertise and our reviewer database is constantly being updated.
Reviewers are asked to evaluate a manuscript for:
- Originality and significance of contribution
- Interest to investigators
- International relevance
- Coverage of appropriate existing as well as recent literature
- Adequacy of methodology, analysis and interpretation
- Clear, concise and jargon-free writing style
- Organization of the manuscript
Reviewers' comments are considered as anonymous comments to the author and also provision is made available to reviewers for providing confidential comments to the editor. Reviewers are not expected to correct or copy edit manuscripts. Language correction (if any) are carried out by authorized language experts. Authorized language experts are also responsible for translating the abstract from English into Amharic (Ethiopian working language). Generally, the manuscript review process takes four weeks. Another four weeks are required in case of contradictory review reports.
Changes to authorship
After acceptance and before publication: Any requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the order of author details, must be communicated to the Editor-in-Chief from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript along with statement of a valid reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and undersigned declaration in the form of scanned copy through e-mail or consent letter from all authors stating that they agree with the rearrangement, addition or removal. In the case of addition or removal of authors also insists on the confirmation from the author being added or removed. Editor in chief suspends the publication of the accepted manuscript until the authorship issue (addition, rearrangement or deletion) is resolved.
After the publication: Any request from corresponding author to add, delete, or rearrange order of author names in an article already published in an online issue will follow erratum publication in the future issue of the publication.
Plagiarizing is defines as:
- to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
- use (another's production) without crediting the source
- to commit literary theft
- present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
Thus, AJCIK identifies the following different kinds of plagiarism:
- Without proper acknowledgement, reproduction of words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own
- Self-plagiarism is a kind of text recycling, whereas author uses former publication content in prospective publication without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source
- Poor paraphrasing is a copying of complete paragraphs and replacing the synonyms of respective words without altering the structure of the original sentences in one way and in other way altering the structure of the sentence but not the words
- Precise copying of text without any quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author
- Properly mentioning original work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is reflected as unintentional plagiarism. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in either or both cases, acknowledgement to the original source is a must.
- Higher similarity in different content of the manuscript such as abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections denotes that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. However, authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript on their own. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore, editors should review these sections carefully before making any decision.
- Please do report plagiarism if any, E-Mail to editor.ajcik@wu.edu.et
