Instructions for Authors

About the Journal

The Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. It accepts the following types of articles: original articles, book reviews.

Please note that only manuscripts written in English are considered for publication.  

The Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies advances scholarship on a broad range of issues related to modern and contemporary Africa and their historical evolution. It is managed by the Africa Research Institute of Óbuda University in Budapest, and welcomes studies in the following subjects: human geography, history, historiography, literature, culture and anthropology, politics, conflict studies, ethnic studies, security studies, defense studies, migration, critical infrastructure and economy, development studies, and humanitarian management.

The journal is essential reading for all academics, decision-makers, and security specialists concerned with understanding issues related to modern and contemporary Africa. Besides, special focus is placed on all past, present, and future areas of shared concern in the African and Central and Eastern European contexts.

Open Access

You have the option to publish open access in The Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies. Publishing open access means that your article will be free to access online immediately on publication, increasing the visibility, readership and impact of your research.

Editorial Process

  1. Online Submission

The author should submit the manuscript through the journal’s online submission system, complying with the instructions for authors. The author receives an automatic acknowledgment by email confirming the article submission.

  1. First Check

The editorial staff will make a first assessment of the article submitted. Manuscripts that do not comply with the instructions for authors may be returned to the authors.

  1. Contact by Editorial Staff

The editorial staff will contact the author with a decision as to whether the manuscript will be considered for publication in the journal. 

  1. Peer-Review

Manuscripts will undergo a very stringent double-blind peer-review process, where both the identities of authors and reviewers remain undisclosed in order to guarantee the highest quality of the journal. All manuscripts (except for book reviews) will be sent out for review and two review reports per manuscript will be collected. All reviewers will be carefully selected by the journal’s editors for each submitted manuscript.

Reviewers will be asked to complete their review within two weeks, but are allowed to extend the review period in order to complete and submit their report. 

  1. Decision

After each round of peer-review, the editor(s) of the issue will be asked to assess the submitted manuscript and the peer-review reports collected. Decisions regarding each submission will be taken without exception by the editor(s), guaranteeing the excellence and high standard of our decision-making process. The editor(s) may decide between the following options:

  • Accept the submission: the manuscript is considered to warrant high quality and can be published in the journal.
  • Revisions required: authors are asked to perform revisions to their manuscript and, after resubmission, the manuscript is sent directly to the editor(s) for assessment and decision (accept submission, ask for further revisions, or decline the submission).
  • Decline submission: the manuscript is considered to have major flaws that could not be resolved by revision and resubmission.

In order to guarantee swiftness of the editorial process, each submission will only be allowed two rounds of review and revisions. Authors are thus urged to address all issues raised by the reviewers directly after the first round of peer-review.

  1. Copyediting

After the manuscript is accepted for publication it will undergo a first stage of copy editing where the editorial staff will correct any minor mistakes (such as punctuation or references) and check that all necessary information regarding the manuscript and authors has been provided.

Authors will receive an edited version of their manuscript for author copy editing after acceptance of the manuscript for publication. This is the last stage where any substantial copy editing changes to the text are allowed (the next stage – proofreading – is restricted to correcting typographical and layout errors).

  1. Proofreading

The editorial staff will create the final version of the manuscript in the journal’s template and the PDF proof will be sent to the author for final proofreading before publication. Authors should carefully check the proofs for typographical or layout errors, and use the sticky notes tool to mark and explain any changes necessary.

  1. Publication

After the final proofread manuscript has been received and the last corrections have been performed the manuscript will be published. The manuscript will be published in the issue, and the author will be promptly informed as soon as the article is available online. In some cases, the publication may be delayed in order to guarantee that all articles are published simultaneously.

Peer Review and Ethics

Peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review are of paramount importance. Once the paper has been assessed for suitability by the editor, it will be double blind peer reviewed by a minimum of two experts in the field of research.

Preparing Your Paper

Structure

Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).

Word Limits

Please include a word count for your paper. A typical paper for this journal should be no more than 10,000 words.

Format-Free Submission

Authors may only submit their paper in Harvard style. Manuscripts may be supplied as single or multiple files. These can be Word, rich text format (rtf) or open document format (odt). Figures and tables can be placed within the text or submitted as separate documents. Figures should be of sufficient resolution to enable refereeing.

  • There are no strict formatting requirements, but all manuscripts must contain the essential elements needed to evaluate a manuscript: abstract, author affiliation, figures, tables, funder information, and references. Further details may be requested upon acceptance.
  • Harvard style referencing is applied in the journal (if you need help in referring in Harvard, use this free generator). Where applicable, author name(s), journal title/book title, article title/chapter title, year of publication, volume number/book chapter, pagination, and DOI should be included. In addition to other references, the submitted article must contain at least ten references with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) or similar digital identifier. The inclusion of DOIs is highly recommended to ensure references are citable and discoverable. DOI may be included in a weblink form (e.g.: https://doi.org/10.59569/jceeas.2021.1.1-2.14). Please also make a list of references and attach it in a separate file in bibtex, Endnote, RIS, Zotero or RDF format.
  • Spelling can be US or UK English as long as usage is consistent.
  • All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the first page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCIDs.  If you do not have an ORCID yet, you can register here. You can read more about the registration process here. One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted. 
  • Please supply a short biographical note for each author. This could be adapted from your departmental website or academic networking profile and should be relatively brief.
  • Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for color, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: EPS, PDF, PS, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, XLS, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX) files are acceptable for figures that have been drawn in Word. 
  • Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.
  • All manuscripts should contain an abstract of max. 200 words.
  • All manuscripts should have between min. five keywords. 

Note that, regardless of the file format of the original submission, an editable version of the article must be supplied at the revision stage.

Plagiarism Policy

Authors must ensure that they submit a completely new publication containing their own work. If they have used the work, ideas, or intellectual properties of others, this must be appropriately cited or referenced.
The Journal is strictly against any unethical act of copying or plagiarism in any form. All manuscripts submitted for publication to JCEEAS are cross-checked for plagiarism in a three-step method using different software.

Plagiarism is considered any case where the author presents the published or unpublished written works, words, or ideas of others without attribution or permission, and presents them as new and original.

Manuscripts found to be plagiarized during the initial stages of review are out-rightly rejected and not considered for publication in the Journal.
Manuscripts that consist of more than 25% of texts imported from elsewhere, based on the software check, will be rejected without further consideration, even if the text refers to the other work (with the exception of critical reprints of source texts).
Publications may contain no more than 15% of referenced content taken from elsewhere. Similarity per each detected reference must also be a maximum 2%.
Manuscripts that, consisting of between 15-25% of referenced texts imported from elsewhere, based on the software check will be sent back to the author for further content revision.

Funding details

Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows: For single agency grants: This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx]. For multiple agency grants: This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].

Disclosure statement

This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. 

Data availability statement

If there is a data set associated with the paper, please provide information about where the data supporting the results or analyses presented in the paper can be found. Where applicable, this should include the hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). 

Using Third-Party Material in your Paper

You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission. 

Submitting Your Paper

This journal uses Open Journal System (OJS) to manage the submission process. At The Journal of Central and Eastern European African Studies, papers are screened for unoriginal material. By submitting your paper to the journal you are agreeing to originality checks during the peer-review and production processes.

Data Sharing Policy

Authors are encouraged to share or make open the data supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid privacy or security concerns.

Authors are encouraged to deposit the dataset(s) in a recognized data repository that can mint a persistent digital identifier, preferably a digital object identifier (DOI) and recognizes a long-term preservation plan. 

Authors are further encouraged to cite any data sets referenced in the article and provide a Data Availability Statement.

At the point of submission, you will be asked if there is a data set associated with the paper. If you reply yes, you will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-registered DOI, hyperlink, or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). If you have selected to provide a pre-registered DOI, please be prepared to share the reviewer URL associated with your data deposit, upon request by reviewers.

Where one or multiple data sets are associated with a manuscript, these are not formally peer reviewed as a part of the journal submission process. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure the soundness of data. Any errors in the data rest solely with the producers of the data set(s).

Publication Charges

There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.

Copyright Options

Copyright allows you to protect your original material, and stop others from using your work without your permission. A number of different license and reuse options are offered, including Creative Commons licenses when publishing open access. 

Complying with Funding Agencies

We will deposit all National Institutes of Health or Wellcome Trust-funded papers into PubMedCentral on behalf of authors, meeting the requirements of their respective open access policies. If this applies to you, please tell our production team when you receive your article proofs, so we can do this for you. 

Article Reprints

You will be sent a link to order article reprints via your account in our production system. For enquiries about reprints, please contact us at … You can also order print copies of the journal issue in which your article appears.

Queries

Should you have any queries, please visit our Author Services or contact us.