AUTHOR DIVERSITY POLICY  

Social Work/Maatskaplike intends that the Editor-in-Chief ensures a diverse geographic and institutional affiliation distribution of published articles, aiming for a 35%/65% affiliation distribution per year.  The purpose of this policy is to encourage co-authorship and collaboration between institutions. This aligns with the Journal's focus, scope, mission, vision, and the recommendations of DHET and SciELO SA for best practices in author diversity.

Guidelines for affiliation percentage

  1. The percentage applies to a volume (the whole year), not issues within the volume.

  2. 35% refers to articles in a volume from authors of only one organisation.
    • The rule encourages journals not to publish more than 35% of original articles from a single institution in a single volume.
    • When an article is published by one or more authors from the same institution, then it counts as one article for that institution, i.e., it does not count as two or more articles from that same institution.
  1. 65% refers to articles from other institutions, as well as articles co-authored by authors from more than one organisation.
    • The rule encourages that 65% of contributions published in the journal must emanate from multiple institutions.

The Editorial Team reserves the right to postpone publications should there be a high submission rate from one institution. Thus, after being provisionally accepted, the final editing process could take longer than 12 months, but articles will still be published within 24 months of the original submission, as per our Submission to Publication Timeline Policy.