S I J A G
The Editorial Board comprises experienced and competent academics, researchers, and professionals with relevant expertise in the journal’s subject areas, committed to maintaining high standards of academic quality, integrity, and scholarly publishing.
Editors shall:
A submission authored by an editor, Editorial Board member, publisher employee, close collaborator, family member or person from the handling editor’s institution shall be managed by an independent editor who has no relevant conflict. The conflicted individual shall have no access to reviewer identities, deliberations or the decision beyond what is available to any author. The published article shall disclose the independent handling arrangement.
SIJAG uses double-anonymised peer review, meaning that author and reviewer identities are concealed from one another during review. The journal cannot guarantee perfect anonymity because a manuscript’s topic, citations, data or preprint may indirectly reveal authorship. Authors should nevertheless remove names, affiliations, acknowledgements and directly identifying file metadata from the review version.
Each submission is checked for scope, basic quality, originality, ethical compliance, completeness and adherence to author guidelines. Editors may decline a manuscript without external review when it is out of scope, insufficiently developed, methodologically unsound, ethically problematic, excessively similar to existing work or unlikely to meet the journal’s threshold after reasonable revision.
Manuscripts that pass initial assessment are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise. Reviewers assess the importance and clarity of the research question; engagement with literature; appropriateness and transparency of methods; validity of analysis and conclusions; ethical conduct; presentation; and contribution to knowledge or practice. An editor may seek additional review when reports conflict, specialist expertise is required or a revised manuscript raises new issues.
Decisions are based on the manuscript, reviewers’ reports and the editor’s independent judgement. Possible outcomes are:
A request for revision is not a guarantee of acceptance. Authors must submit a clean revised manuscript, a marked version where requested and a point-by-point response explaining how each comment was addressed or respectfully rebutted. The Editor-in-Chief or a delegated editor makes the final decision.
Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential, provide timely and constructive reports, support significant criticisms with reasons or evidence, avoid personal remarks, disclose relevant competing interests and refrain from using unpublished material for personal advantage. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts to public or third-party generative-AI systems or other services that compromise confidentiality. Suspected misconduct should be reported privately to the editor and not investigated independently.
SIJAG aims to complete initial editorial screening within 10 working days, communicate a first decision after external review within 6–10 weeks, and complete production within 4–6 weeks after acceptance. These are service targets rather than guarantees. Authors will be informed when material delays occur.
Authors should follow recognised reporting guidance appropriate to their design, such as PRISMA for systematic reviews, CONSORT for randomised trials, STROBE for observational studies, COREQ or SRQR for qualitative research, and relevant EQUATOR Network guidance. Use of a checklist does not replace methodological judgement.
Quantitative studies should report sampling, variable construction, missing-data treatment, model assumptions, uncertainty and robustness checks. Qualitative studies should explain case selection, researcher position where relevant, data generation, analytic procedure, reflexivity and evidentiary support. Mixed-methods studies should state the rationale for integration and show how strands inform one another. Review articles must provide a reproducible search and selection strategy appropriate to the claimed review type.
Authors should distinguish confirmatory from exploratory analyses, disclose material deviations from preregistration or protocol, and avoid presenting statistical significance as the sole measure of importance. Effect sizes, uncertainty intervals and substantive significance should be reported where appropriate.
Research involving human participants, identifiable personal data or vulnerable groups must comply with applicable laws and recognised ethical standards. Authors must identify the approving or exempting ethics body, approval/reference number and date in the manuscript. If formal review was not required or available, authors must explain the ethical safeguards used and the basis for that determination; an editor may request further evidence or decline the work.
Free and informed consent must be obtained where applicable, including specific consent for publication of identifiable information or images. Extra care is required in research involving children, displaced persons, conflict-affected populations, persons with limited decision-making autonomy or communities exposed to legal, social or security risks. Authors must minimise harm, protect privacy, explain compensation or incentives and describe secure data handling.
For research involving animals, authors must report approval and compliance with relevant welfare standards. The journal reserves the right to reject work that is legally compliant but ethically unacceptable.
Authorship is reserved for individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions to the work, participated in drafting or critically revising it, approved the submitted version and accept accountability for their contribution and the integrity of the work. Acquisition of funding, routine data collection, general supervision, status or administrative authority alone does not justify authorship.
Every submission must include a contribution statement using the CRediT taxonomy where appropriate. The corresponding author confirms that all authors meet the criteria, that no eligible contributor has been omitted and that all authors approved the submission. Contributors who do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged with their permission.
Requests to add, remove or reorder authors after submission require a written explanation and the agreement of all affected authors. After acceptance, changes will be permitted only in exceptional circumstances and may be documented in the published record. Ghost, guest and gift authorship are prohibited.
Authors, editors and reviewers must disclose relationships or circumstances that could reasonably be perceived to influence their work. These may be financial, professional, institutional, personal, political, ideological or intellectual. A competing interest does not necessarily prevent publication; transparency allows readers and editors to assess possible influence.
Authors must disclose all funding and material support, identify funder grant numbers where applicable and describe the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, writing and the decision to submit. If the funder had no role, this should be stated. Where no relevant interests or funding exist, authors must provide explicit “none declared” statements.
SIJAG supports research transparency while recognising legal, ethical, security and contextual limits on data sharing. Authors should deposit the data, code, instruments, protocols and other materials needed to evaluate or reproduce reported findings in a trusted repository whenever lawful and ethically appropriate. Persistent identifiers should be cited in the article.
Every empirical article must contain a Data Availability Statement specifying where materials can be found, the conditions for access, or why public sharing is not possible. Valid restrictions may include participant confidentiality, indigenous or community data governance, contractual limits, national security and credible risk of harm. “Available on request” should be used only when a repository cannot reasonably be used and must state from whom and under what conditions access may be obtained.
Editors or reviewers may request confidential access to underlying material for verification. Fabrication, falsification, selective destruction or unjustified withholding of evidence may lead to rejection, correction, retraction or notification of relevant institutions.
Submissions must represent original work. Properly attributed quotation, paraphrase and reuse must comply with copyright and scholarly conventions. The journal may use similarity-detection software as a screening aid; similarity scores are interpreted by editors and are not automatic findings of plagiarism.
Authors must disclose related manuscripts, working papers, reports, conference papers, theses, preprints and prior publications that overlap materially with the submission. Reanalysis of an existing dataset may be publishable when the new question and contribution are substantial and transparent. Fragmenting one study into minimally distinct papers, duplicate submission, duplicate publication, text recycling without disclosure and citation manipulation are unacceptable.
Posting a manuscript on a recognised non-commercial preprint server, institutional repository or personal academic website does not normally preclude submission. Authors must disclose the preprint and provide its DOI or URL. If the article is accepted, authors should link the preprint to the version of record where the platform permits.
A thesis, dissertation, conference abstract or unpublished working paper is not normally treated as prior publication, but it must be disclosed and cited where appropriate. Publication of substantially identical content in a report or book chapter requires editorial assessment and permission from the relevant rights holder.
Artificial-intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility, approve publication or manage competing interests. Authors remain fully accountable for the accuracy, originality, citations, permissions and integrity of all submitted content.
Material use of generative AI in drafting text, translating, generating or modifying images, coding, analysing data or conducting literature searches must be disclosed in the manuscript, identifying the tool, version where known, purpose and human verification undertaken. Routine spelling, grammar and reference-formatting assistance need not normally be disclosed. Authors must not enter confidential, personal, copyrighted or sensitive research material into a system unless they have lawful authority and adequate data-protection safeguards.
AI-generated or altered images and data are not permitted where they misrepresent evidence. Editors may request prompts, outputs, code or validation records when relevant to research integrity. Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts to external AI systems. The journal may use secure editorial tools for administrative screening provided that confidentiality, human oversight and data protection are maintained.
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, undisclosed conflicts, authorship abuse, peer-review manipulation, citation manipulation and interference with editorial independence are treated seriously. Readers, authors, reviewers, institutions and whistle-blowers may report concerns through the Research Integrity form on the journal’s Contact page. Anonymous concerns will be considered when they include sufficient specific and credible evidence.
The journal will conduct a proportionate preliminary assessment, preserve confidentiality, give affected parties an opportunity to respond, seek expert advice where needed and coordinate with employers, institutions, funders or regulators when they are better placed to investigate. The journal does not promise absolute confidentiality when disclosure is legally required or necessary for a fair investigation. Retaliation against good-faith complainants is unacceptable. Outcomes may include no action, revision, rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, reviewer or author restrictions, and notification of relevant bodies.
The version of record will not be silently altered. Minor typographical changes that do not affect meaning may be corrected transparently in the online version. Errors that affect interpretation, attribution or part of the findings will normally require a linked correction notice.
An article may be retracted when findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct, the work is redundant or plagiarised, the research is unethical, or publication seriously compromises participant safety or legal rights. A retraction notice shall be clearly identified, linked bidirectionally to the article, state the reason and initiator, and remain freely accessible. The original article will ordinarily remain available and be clearly marked as retracted to preserve the record; removal is reserved for exceptional legal, privacy or safety circumstances.
An expression of concern may be issued when substantial doubt exists but an investigation is incomplete or inconclusive. Retraction and correction decisions are made on the integrity of the record, not as punishment. Authors may request withdrawal before acceptance with reasons. After acceptance or publication, removal is exceptional and the appropriate correction mechanism will apply.
An author may appeal a rejection by submitting a concise, evidence-based statement through the Appeals and Complaints form within 30 calendar days of the decision. The appeal must identify a material error in the review or decision process; disagreement with editorial judgement alone is insufficient. An editor not previously responsible for the decision will assess the appeal where practicable. Normally one appeal is considered per manuscript, and the appeal outcome is final within the journal.
Complaints about process, conduct, delay, discrimination or policy implementation should be submitted through the Appeals and Complaints form. Complaints concerning the Editor-in-Chief are referred directly to the publisher’s designated governance officer and handled independently of the journal’s editorial leadership. The journal will acknowledge the complaint, investigate proportionately and communicate an outcome and reasons. Complaints will be handled separately from the scholarly assessment of a manuscript and will not disadvantage a complainant acting in good faith.
Authorship or institutional disputes that require factual investigation may be referred to the relevant institution. The journal will correct the record when a competent finding affects a publication.
Authors retain copyright in their work. Upon acceptance, authors grant SIJAG and Sahel Academic Publishing Ltd. the non-exclusive right of first publication and the right to publish, distribute, preserve and identify SIJAG as the original place of publication.
Unless otherwise stated, articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). This licence permits sharing and adaptation for any lawful purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is supplied and changes are indicated. Material not owned by the authors may be subject to separate terms identified in the credit line.
The copyright holder and licence shall appear on every article landing page and full text. Authors are responsible for securing written permission for third-party material not covered by an applicable exception or compatible licence.
All SIJAG research content is freely available online immediately upon publication, without subscription or registration barriers. Readers may access and use articles in accordance with the stated licence.
SIJAG does not charge a submission or peer-review fee. An article processing charge may be payable only after a manuscript has successfully completed peer review and received formal acceptance. The applicable amount, currency, services covered, payment procedure and any taxes are stated on the Fees and Waivers page and are visible to authors before submission. Charges do not influence editorial decisions.
Full or partial waivers may be granted to authors who lack institutional or grant support and to eligible authors from low-income settings. Waiver requests are handled confidentially by the publisher and are not disclosed to the editors or reviewers responsible for the manuscript. No fee that was not disclosed before submission will be imposed.
Authors may deposit the submitted manuscript, accepted manuscript and published version in institutional or subject repositories, personal websites and funder archives, subject to the article’s licence and correct citation of the version of record. No embargo applies to an article published under CC BY 4.0.
SIJAG maintains digital-preservation arrangements designed to keep published content accessible over the long term. Article metadata and landing pages are maintained as part of the permanent scholarly record. If the journal ceases publication, preserved content and essential bibliographic records will remain accessible through the journal’s designated preservation service where technically and contractually possible.
Special issues and supplements are subject to the same standards of peer review, editorial independence, ethics, conflicts disclosure and correction as regular content. A proposal must define its scholarly rationale, scope, timetable and proposed guest editors. The Editor-in-Chief retains oversight and final decision authority.
Guest editors must disclose conflicts and shall not handle their own papers or submissions from close collaborators. The journal will not guarantee acceptance of a predetermined number of articles. Sponsorship or funding must be disclosed, and the source of funding shall not control editorial decisions. Special-issue articles will be clearly labelled and integrated into the journal’s permanent archive and metadata.
Advertising and sponsorship decisions are separate from editorial decisions. Acceptance of an advertisement does not constitute endorsement. Advertising must be lawful, identifiable, relevant to the journal’s audience and free from misleading claims. The journal will not permit advertising targeted to the content of individual editorial decisions or based on confidential manuscript information.
Direct-marketing messages shall be accurate, professional and sent only to appropriately identified recipients in compliance with applicable data-protection and electronic-communications law. Communications must not make deceptive claims about indexing, impact metrics, editorial-board membership, peer-review speed or guaranteed publication.
Personal information supplied to the journal will be used only for legitimate editorial, publishing, integrity, preservation and communication purposes, or as required by law. Access is limited to persons and service providers who need the information for these purposes and who are subject to appropriate confidentiality and security obligations.
The journal website shall publish a full privacy notice identifying the data controller, categories of data collected, purposes and lawful bases, retention periods, processors or international transfers, security measures, user rights, cookie practices and a contact for privacy enquiries. Authors must not submit personal data that they lack authority to disclose.
Manuscripts, reviews and editorial correspondence are confidential. Confidentiality may be limited where disclosure is necessary to investigate misconduct, protect participants, comply with law or correct the scholarly record.
Editorial decisions are made without discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, religion, political belief, socioeconomic status, institutional prestige or career stage. The journal seeks geographic, disciplinary and gender diversity among editors and reviewers while appointing individuals on relevant expertise and integrity.
Authors should report demographic variables respectfully and explain why they are relevant to the research question. The journal aims to provide accessible web pages and article files, including logical headings, readable tables, alternative text for meaningful images and colour choices that do not carry information alone. Requests for reasonable accommodation may be submitted through the Contact page.
The journal will present metrics responsibly and will not advertise fabricated impact factors, misleading rankings or unverified indexing. Any listed abstracting and indexing service must be current and link to the service’s journal record. Article-level metrics, when displayed, are indicators of attention or use and not direct measures of research quality.
SIJAG registers complete and accurate article metadata, including author names and ORCID iDs, affiliations, abstracts, references, funding, licences, corrections and related research objects. Metadata is updated whenever the publication record changes. The journal lists an indexing or discovery service only after its inclusion has been formally verified.
The views expressed in SIJAG are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the editors, Editorial Board, reviewers, Sahel Academic Publishing Ltd. or affiliated institutions. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their data, citations, analyses and statements. Publication does not constitute endorsement of a product, policy, organisation or political position.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the journal and publisher are not liable for loss arising from reliance on published content. This disclaimer does not limit responsibilities that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Editorial Office
Sahel International Journal of Administration and Governance
(SIJAG)
Sahel Academic Publishing Ltd.
All correspondence is acknowledged through the email address supplied by the sender. Authors should include the manuscript identification number in correspondence about an existing submission.
These policies have been structured to reflect widely recognised principles for transparent and responsible scholarly publishing, particularly the COPE Core Practices, the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, relevant DOAJ application guidance and Crossref metadata best practices. They should be reviewed periodically against changes in applicable law, technology and publishing standards.
Committee on Publication Ethics. (n.d.). Core practices. https://publicationethics.org/core-practices
Committee on Publication Ethics, Directory of Open Access Journals, Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association, & World Association of Medical Editors. (2022). Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing (Version 4). https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.12
Creative Commons. (n.d.). Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Crossref. (n.d.). Metadata best practices. https://www.crossref.org/documentation/principles-practices/best-practices/
Directory of Open Access Journals. (n.d.). Guide to applying. https://doaj.org/apply/guide/
EQUATOR Network. (n.d.). Reporting guidelines. https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/
National Information Standards Organization. (2021). CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy. https://credit.niso.org/
These policies are reviewed at least annually and whenever a material legal requirement, technology or scholarly-publishing standard changes.