Aims and Scope
One of the challenges facing land governance relates to knowledge generation, documentation and sharing. The African Journal of Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) will be critical in advancing Africa’s research agenda on land. It will be a central outlet for high quality articles on land policy development; land administration and land information systems; monitoring and evaluation; gender, women and land; land and natural resources; prevention, management and resolution of land related conflicts; land, settlement and urban development; land and youth; and migration trends. It will bring together an array of research perspectives, provide perspectives to increase understanding about land tenure dynamics, and communicate progress being made towards achieving sustainable land governance practices. On the other hand, the geospatial sciences including geographic information sciences, Satellite imagery, LIDAR, mapping, Global Navigation Satellite Systems, and Web mapping are affecting all process of land governance at the policy, legal and institutional levels. Indeed, the Journal will also play a major role in promoting progress and development of geospatial technologies related to land governance paradigms. The AJLP&GS has the aim to boost and develop a strong body of researchers who understand and are willing to share knowledge on land governance and geospatial sciences.
In order to meet the above requirements and respond to the stakeholders needs, the Editorial Team has decided to ensure regular publishing of the Journal issues. Indeed, the AJLP&GS shall publish: - Two regular issues per year respectively in March and September. - Two special issues per year respectively in January and June.
Readership
The African Journal of Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) will be a major knowledge-sharing platform for researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the land sector. Contributions in the journal will range from conceptual and theoretical explorations to policy-related analysis, case studies and programmatic reports. Therefore, papers will be of interest to a broad readership. The multidisciplinary nature of the journal will endear it to scholars and policy makers with interest in land administration, geography, economics, sociology, forestry, urban development, law, environmental sciences, geospatial technologies, Artificial Intelligence, and other disciplines that study ‘land’ in one way or another.
ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES
African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences is a free access journal.The journal doesn't charge any submission or articles processing charges.
Peer Review
The African Journal of Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences is an international, peer-reviewed journal, which publishes original research contributions that address land policy concerns and geospatial sciences’ innovation related to land governance in Africa. All contributions are subject to initial appraisal by the Editors and selected Editorial Board members. If the contribution is suitable for further consideration, it will be subject to peer review by independent, anonymous expert referees. All peer review will be blind and will endeavour not to suppress innovative and/or experimental ideas.
Ethics
Knowledge production and learning in The African Journal of Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) - a peer-reviewed publication - will be enhanced through professionalism in its delivery and the quality of authors published. Authors will be expected to adhere to high standards of ethical behaviour in their articles. The standards will be guided by the following general principles:
- Authorship: Authorship will be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, interpretation or wiring of the manuscript.
- Acknowledgements: All sources will be properly acknowledged.
- Disclosure of conflict of interest: Submission of an article will include disclosure of all relationships (if any) that might be viewed as a conflict of interest.
- Data access and retention: The Editor(s) may request access to an article’s raw data for review and the author(s) should be prepared to provide public access.
- Multiple or concurrent publication: The author(s) shall generally not publish manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. AJLP&GS does not view the following uses of work as prior publication: publication of abstract; publication of an academic thesis; publication as an electronic preprint.
- Significant error or inaccuracy: When an author identifies a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s responsibility to notify the Editor or publisher and to cooperate in retracting or correcting the paper.
- Free, Prior Informed Consent: It is the responsibility of the author to get free, prior informed consent for publishing of content that may require it.
DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY AND NO PLAGIARISM
The author (s) shall ensure that the manuscript is original and where the works and/or words of others have been used, they have been appropriately cited or quoted. The Author (s) shall declare that heir manuscript is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and has not been copied or plagiarized totally or partially from other works. Regarding, the adopted publishing policy, the journal has no tolerance policy towards plagiarism and copyright violations. A text similarity of less than 15% is acceptable by the journal. However, if the identical text is one continuous paragraph of copied materials, it shall be considered as plagiarized text of significant level. The text similarity due to the commonly used phrases, terminologies, and/or methods in a manuscript are obviously not considered as plagiarism. Authors are invited to ensure that all used materials are properly in-text citations and their reference lists are correctly declared. If a percentage of similarity more than 25% of the manuscript content is detected, this is considered as high percentage of plagiarism. If such score of plagiarism is observed at any step of publishing/reviewing process, the concerned submission may be excluded.
Copyright Notice
The African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Authors with free access retain the copyright of their manuscripts. All open access manuscripts are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc. in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that applicable laws and regulations do not protect these names. Even though the advice and information in this journal are true and accurate as of the date of its publication, neither the authors, the editor, nor the publisher can assume any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions.
The Editorial Team
The African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) has an Editorial Board, Scientific Reviewers Committee, and Editorial Staff members. The Editorial Team focuses on orientations of the Team in order to give precision to the functions of the Editorial Board, the Scientific Review Committee and the Editorial Staff.
The Editorial Board
The Editorial Board are peers whose judgements are highly valued and will set the policy and guidelines of AJLP&GS. Board members provide oversight, prestige and visibility of the Journal in academic and policymaking institutions. They will also endorse the Journal to authors, readers and subscribers and provide support and advice to the Editorial Staff. They determine the purpose of the journal and its administrative structure. They shall advise the Editor-in-Chief on trends of editorial policy and suggest overall operational guidelines for improving the content of the Journal. The Editorial Board shall meet at least once a year, if practicable once at each Conference on Land Policy in Africa. The Board Chair and Editor in Chief select and choose eminent experts at the National, African, and International level to be editors or part of the Scientific Committee of the journal. The Editors are responsible for rejecting and accepting original manuscripts. They should have no conflict of interest regarding the contributions they reject or accept.
Scientific Review Committee
The Scientific Review Committee is composed of African and international experts in the field of land policy and geospatial sciences. The Committee members discuss the guidelines, general rules and topics of the Journal. They are part of the review process and are responsible for encouraging and motivating potential authors to submit papers to the Journal.
The Scientific Review Committee members ensure a rigorous process so that any scientific material published has the appropriate level of scientific merit regarding the topics of the African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences.
The Scientific Review Committee members could be selected for one or several issues of the Journal including the special issues.
Editorial Staff
The Editor in Chief is the head of the Editorial staff. He works with the Editorial Team to develop operational tools for the Journal. Among other responsibilities, Editor-in Chief and his team develop a framework to deliver each Issue of the Journal. This will involve decisions and activities related to:
- manuscript submissions and solicitation of content;
- peer review selection;
- enforcement of professional and editorial standards;
- handling of manuscripts and conformity with established guidelines;
- standards to be used in judging articles for inclusion;
- format of the Journal;
- hosting/printing of the Journal and the accompanying MoU that spells out expectations;
- Obtaining the ISSN from the Library of Congress ISSN website;
- Terms of agreement with authors.
Hosting of the Journal
The Journal is hosted by the Institut Marocain de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (IMIST) and edited by the North African node of the Network of Excellence on Land Governance (NELGA) at the Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine. The node has shown that it is proactive and has the requisite drive and infrastructure to deliver a high quality journal. The Northern Africa NELGA Node collaborates with the currently established NELGA Nodes in Africa. They are: Central Africa (Yaoundé 1 University, Cameroun); Eastern Africa (Ardhi University, Tanzania); Northern Africa (Institut Agronomique et Veterinaire Hassan II, Morocco); Southern Africa (Namibia University of Science and Technology, Namibia); West Africa (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana), Western Africa Francophone Node (University of Gaston Berger of Saint Louis, Senegal).