Authors who submit articles to Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk may not post their pre-peer reviewed manuscripts on preprint manuscripts servers, such as arXiv, personal blogs, subject or institutional repositories, or webpages prior to submission. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk can also not be cited to indicate that the article has been submitted, is under review, approved, or "in press", as this may compromise the double-blind peer review process.

The publication of an article in Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk must be the initial publication of the manuscript, as the Journal exclusively publishes original articles. Therefore, articles must not have been previously published in their current form or in a substantially similar form in another publication, including conference proceedings. However, academic theses, dissertations, and unpublished conference presentations are not considered as "other publications".

To avoid any confusion, authors must declare submissions resulting from preprints, theses, and dissertations on the Journal's specified details page when submitting an article and on the signed agreement form provided before publication.