Submission Preparation Checklist

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.

• 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.

Author 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.

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).

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