Authors Guide
Monday 20th of January 2025 295 Published Books

Publishing with this journal
The African Review of Economics and Finance has no publication fees (article processing charges or APCs) and we do not charge page fees.

Instructions for Authors

AREF distinguishes itself as the number one journal in Africa and leading platform for engaging critically on matters of developmental concern. Authors of submitted papers will normally hear back from AREF within 6 weeks of submission or less. Invitations to revise and resubmit present choices and ideas, not mandates (limited exceptions). As part of the submission process, authors are required to familiarise themselves with the mandate and mission of the journal from here, check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines. A potentially publishable paper in AREF should meet the following criteria:

  • The motivation for the paper should be clear and compelling. Typically the motivation will include a clearly specified research question and a statement as to why this question is interesting. However, a paper whose primary motivation is to synthesize or even survey earlier work might also be publishable.
  • The analysis in the paper should be correct and should be appropriately rigorous given the research question.
  • The paper must be sufficiently original to warrant publication. Typically, this originality arises from new theoretical results or new empirical findings, but it may arise from new interpretation or synthesis of known material, too.
  • The paper should be well written. In particular, the logical structure of the paper should be clear, and the paper should be relatively free from errors of grammar and usage.
  • Word Count: No first submission must exceed 8,000 words. Ideally, articles must be 7,000 words in length.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Checklist: What to include in your submission

A potentially publishable paper in AREF should meet the following criteria:

  • Author details. Please ensure all listed authors meet the Porthologos Press authorship criteria. All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCiDs and Google Scholar handles.
  • Abstract of about 300 words
  • At least 5 keywords.
  • Funding details. Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies.
  • Disclosure statement. This is to acknowledge any financial or non-financial interest that has arisen from the direct applications of your research. If there are no relevant competing interests to declare please state this within the article, for example: The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.
  • Ethical considerations: AREF adhere to Committee on Publication Ethic (COPE) guidelines and policies regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. Authors using AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in this section how the AI tool was used, and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.
  • Authors may submit their manuscript files in Word (as .doc or .docx) or LaTeX (as .pdf), format. Word files must not be protected.
  • Data availability statement (DAS). Authors are required to provide a data availability statement, detailing where data associated with a paper can be found and how it can be accessed. If data cannot be made open, authors should state why in the data availability statement. The DAS should include the hyperlink, DOI or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s), or information on how the data can be requested from the authors.
  • Supplemental online material. Supplemental material can be a video, dataset, fileset, sound file or anything which supports (and is pertinent to) your paper.
  • Figures. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX).
  • Tables. 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.
  • Equations. If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that the equations are editable.

Abstracting and indexing

We strive to have all Porthologos Press journals indexed by all top databases, including Web of Science, Scopus, DHET, ABDC, ABS, Google Scholar, Repec, Journal Citation Reports, DOAJ, Econlit, AREFLiT. This ensures that papers published in Porthologos Press journals receive maximum exposure and citations.

The African Review of Economics and Finance is archived in EBSCO and Portico. The journal if Ranked across the world, among others, by the South African Department for Higher Education and Training (DHET), the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC), and the Publication Forum of Finland (JUFO). Application for inclusion in Scopus, DOAJ and ABS is in process.

References

Alphabetical order, Unnumbered. Cite properly using the following as a guide.

Journals:

Obeng-Odoom, F. (2012). Problematising the resource curse thesis. Development and Society 41(1), pp.1-29.

Adu, G. and Marbuah, G. (2011). Determinants of inflation in Ghana: an empirical investigation. South African Journal of Economics 79 (3), pp. 251-269

Alagidede, P., Panagiotidis, T and Zhang, X. (2010). Causal Relationship between stock prices and exchange rates Journal of International Trade and Economic Development 20(1), pp. 67-86

Books:

Levin, A. and Lin, C. (1993). The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Market, 2nd edn. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Baah-Boateng W. (2012). Labour Market Discrimination in Ghana: A Gender Dimension, LAMBERT Academic Publishing, Germany

Edited books:

Moyo, S. and Yeros, P., (eds.). (2005). Reclaiming the Land: The resurgence of rural movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Zed Books Ltd. and David Philip, London and Cape Town.

Chapters in Edited books:

Goodhart, C., Ito, T. and Payne, R. (1996.). One day in June 1993: a study of the working of the Reuters 2000-2 electronic foreign exchange trading system, in The Microstructure of Foreign Exchange Markets, 2nd edn (Eds) J. A. Frankel, G. Galli and A. Giovannini, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 107–79. Baah-Boateng, W. and Turkson, E. F. (2005). Employment, in Globalisation, Employment and Poverty Reduction: A Case Study of Ghana, (Ed) E. Aryeetey, ISSER publication, University of Ghana, pp. 104-139

Working Paper:

Pedroni, P. (1995). Panel cointegration; asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests, with an application to the PPP hypothesis. Indiana University, Working Papers in Economics No. 95-013. University of California, San Diego

Discussion Paper/Unpublished Paper

Levin, A. and Lin, C. (1993). Unit root tests in panel data: asymptotic and finite-sample properties. Discussion Paper/Unpublished Paper No 34-7, mimeo, University of California, San Diego.

Conference Papers:

Mills, E. (1971). City sizes in developing economies, paper presented at the Rehovot Conference on Urbanisation and Development in Developing Countries, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, 16-24 August.

Website:

Rimes, K. J. (1999). Global Investments Prospects Assessment (GIPA) Report. Available at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals (accessed 2 July 2007).

Online content:

SARS Expert Committee, SARS in Hong Kong : From Experience to Action. Hong Kong SARS Expert Committee, 2003. Available from: http://www.sars-expertcom.gov.hk/english/reports/reports.html. Cited journals should be abbreviated according to ISO 4 rules. For examples, see http://www.issn.org/services/online-services/access-to-the-ltwa/.

Proceedings:

Cox, D. R. (1961). Tests of separate families of hypotheses, in Proceedings of the Fourth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability, Vol. 1, University of Berkeley Press, Berkeley, CA, pp. 105–23.

English Editing

English Editing In order to speed up the peer review process, we encourage non-native English-speaking authors to send their manuscript to a native English speaker or an English editing company for polishing before submitting to our journal.

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