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African Journal of Food Agriculture Nutrition and Development, Vol. 5, No. 2 , 2005 Editorial Overcoming challenges: the case of the young scientists in Africa Code Number: nd05020 This Editorial is Available in both ENGLISH and FRENCH [select the link for the respective language] As we prepare our 10th issue of the journal, we feel compelled to prepare and send out fresh supplementary instructions to our authors, reviewers and general readership. Starting this journal was, I feel, one of the best professional decisions I made in my life. Even as I became busier as a politician, I have continued to serve as Editor-in-Chief of the journal. I founded it, have steered its growth against all odds, and have remained a float, thanks to the support of the so many friends who continue to render their selfless and tireless support. There have been many challenges but probably the most profound one of all has been lack of resources to run the journal. That forced us to stop physical hard prints and to go strictly online. There are those who have been apprehensive about this. It is a decision I had to make as founder and Editor-in-Chief and as the publisher as well (Rural Outreach Program- ROP), an NGO which I founded as well, is the publisher. I had to make the singular decision to either go electronic completely or close down. The amount of work, and the goodwill that had gone into this project could not let me close it. Besides, the capacity building principle behind the whole project is what drives me. I use graduate students to assist with the conveyor bet part of the management process and experience has shown that they become better writers and better analysts themselves after six months or so. The whole aspect of free access very much informed what we are doing. I told myself "It would be absurd for an African Journal to be closed when so many international, better known journals are offering free access to scholars on the continent. Besides, the difficulties of accessing relevant scientific information, and limited opportunities to publish, formed the starting of this journal in the first place". Another good decision I thought I made was to broaden the title and the content base of the journal. As a result, we have many manuscripts, a lot of manuscripts and limited by human resources to manage the production process. We continue to make it a hands-on learning experience for budding researchers and professors. Achievements so far:
As we line up our articles, special preference is given to our reviewers, and articles referred by them not for publication parse, but in terms of starting to go through the review process. NO PAPER gets published without the endorsement of at least 2 reviewers. Some authors are good in that, when they send in their paper, they also send in their abstract already translated into French. We pay quite expensively for French translation. When an abstract comes in already translated, it still has to be checked by our professional translators. Let me give some reminders:
This time round, there will be a mandatory compliance. We receive a lot of communication and truly, we shall not allow our computers to be clogged by those who do not bother to comply with the guidelines. Please understand the various aspects of the checklist: abstract, key words, referencing etc. Finally, THIS IS INFORMATION TO AUTHORS:
Copyright 2005 - Rural Outreach Program |
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