About the Journal

Horn of Africa Journal of Social Sciences is an international, open access journal with rapid peer-review, which publishes works from a wide range of fields, including economics, Health, education, political science, psychology, social policy, social work, sociology and so on. 

This journal engages in a double-anonymous peer review process, which strives to match the expertise of a reviewer with the submitted manuscript. Reviews are completed with evidence of thoughtful engagement with the manuscript, provide constructive feedback, and add value to the overall knowledge and information presented in the manuscript.

Mission

The mission of the peer review process is to achieve excellence and rigour in scholarly publications and research.

Vision

Our vision is to give voice to professionals in the subject area who contribute unique and diverse scholarly perspectives to the field.

Values

The journal values diverse perspectives from the field and reviewers who provide critical, constructive, and respectful feedback to authors. Reviewers come from a variety of organizations, careers, and backgrounds from around the world.

Ethics

All invitations to review, abstracts, manuscripts, and reviews should be kept confidential. Reviewers must not share their review or information about the review process with anyone without the agreement of the editors and authors involved, even after publication. This also applies to other reviewers’ “comments to author” which are shared with you on decision.

Peer Review Process

HAJOS uses double-anonymous peer review: reviewers do not know the identity of the authors, and authors do not know the identity of the reviewers.

  1. Editorial screening. The editor checks each submission for fit with the journal’s aims and scope, originality and basic quality. Submissions that do not meet these standards are declined without review.
  2. Independent review. Each manuscript that passes screening is sent to at least two independent reviewers with expertise in the subject. Reviewers are asked to complete their review within four weeks.
  3. Editorial decision. Based on the reviewers’ reports, the editor decides to accept, request minor or major revisions, or reject the manuscript. Where reviewers disagree, the editor may seek an additional review.
  4. Revision. Authors respond to the reviewers’ comments and submit a revised manuscript, which the editor checks, and may return to the reviewers.
  5. Publication. Accepted articles are copyedited, assigned a DOI and published open access in the next issue.

Editors and editorial board members who submit their own work to HAJOS take no part in its handling or decision.

Open Access Policy

HAJOS is a fully open access journal. All articles are freely available to read, download, copy, distribute, print and link to immediately upon publication, without subscription, registration or embargo.

Licensing

Articles published in HAJOS are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Anyone may share and adapt the work for any purpose, provided the original authors and HAJOS are properly credited.

Copyright

Authors retain copyright of their work and grant HAJOS the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Self-archiving

Authors may deposit any version of their work (submitted, accepted or published) in institutional or subject repositories and on personal websites at any time, with a link to the published article and its DOI.

Publication Fees

HAJOS charges no fees for submission, processing or publication. Publishing in HAJOS is free for all authors.

Publication Ethics

HAJOS follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices. Authors, reviewers and editors are expected to act with honesty, fairness and confidentiality. Research involving people must have appropriate ethical approval and informed consent, which authors must state in the manuscript.

Plagiarism Policy

All submissions are checked for plagiarism before peer review. Manuscripts with plagiarism, duplicate publication or unacknowledged reuse of text, data or figures are rejected. If plagiarism is found after publication, the article will be corrected or retracted.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any financial or personal interests that could influence their work. Reviewers and editors must declare any conflict and withdraw from handling a manuscript where one exists.

Corrections and Retractions

Errors found after publication are corrected through a published correction notice linked to the article. Articles with serious errors or misconduct are retracted following COPE guidelines; the retracted article remains online, clearly marked as retracted, with a notice explaining the reason.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors must disclose any use of AI tools in preparing the manuscript (other than basic spelling and grammar checks) and remain fully responsible for its content. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts to AI tools.

Archiving and Persistent Identifiers

Every article receives a permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) with the prefix 10.70806 and remains permanently available on the journal website. Article metadata is openly available through the OAI-PMH protocol for indexing services.

Publisher

HAJOS is published by the Somali Researchers Association (SRA), Adani Tower, 5th floor, Maka Al-Mukarama Road, Hodan District, Mogadishu, Somalia.

ISSN: 2959-9156 (Online)  ·  DOI prefix: 10.70806  ·  Frequency: Quarterly