Information For Authors

Submissions

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online manuscript tracking system or email address for submission. Only electronic Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) files are acceptable 25-page limit. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review.

Terms of submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the submitting author’s responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. All inquiries concerning the publication of accepted manuscripts should be addressed to editorial@afropolitanjournals.com.

Article types

The journal will consider the following article types:

Research Articles

Research articles should present the results of an original research study. These manuscripts should describe how the research project was conducted and provide a thorough analysis of the results of the project. Systematic reviews may be submitted as research articles.

Reviews

A review article provides an overview of the published literature in a particular subject area.

Formatting

An optional research article manuscript template can be downloaded here. We recommend that all manuscripts include line numbers and follow the structure below:

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included:

  • Manuscript title
  • Full author names
  • Full institutional mailing addresses
  • Email addresses

Affiliations. Afropolitan Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in institutional affiliations. Responsibility for affiliations ultimately rests with the author, although Afropolitan Publications may request changes be made to countries listed in affiliations to ensure consistency across published output (for indexing and discovery reasons).

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained, citation-free, and should not exceed 300 words.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods

The methods section should provide enough detail for others to be able to replicate the study. If you have more than one method, use subsections with relevant headings, e.g. different models, in vitro and in vivo studies, statistics, materials and reagents, etc.

Afropolitan Publications journals have no space restriction on methods. Detailed descriptions of the methods (including protocols or project descriptions) and algorithms may also be uploaded as supplementary information or a previous publication that gives more details may be cited. If the method from a previous article is used, then this article must be cited and discussed. If wording is reused from a published article then this must be noted, e.g. This study uses the method of Smith et al. and the methods description partly reproduces their wording [1].

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining any necessary permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Publishing Protocols. We encourage authors describing any methodology, in particular laboratory-based experiments in the life sciences but also computational and bioinformatics protocols, to upload details of their methods to protocols.io. This is an Open Access website that allows researchers to record their methods in a structured way, obtain a DOI to allow easy citation of the protocol, collaborate with selected colleagues, share their protocol privately for journal peer review, and choose to make it publicly available. Once published, the protocol can be updated and cited in other articles.

Results and Discussion

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Main Text (Review only)

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Conclusions

This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the article, highlighting its importance and relevance.

Data Availability

This statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests.

Acknowledgements

All acknowledgements (if any) should be included at the very end of the manuscript before the references. Anyone who made a contribution to the research or manuscript, but who is not a listed author, should be acknowledged (with their permission).

References

Authors may submit their references in American Psychological Association (APA) style.  Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. The APA referencing style is an "author-date" style, so the citation in the text consists of the author(s) and the year of publication given wholly or partly in round brackets. Use only the surname of the author(s) followed by a comma and the year of publication. All references should be cited within the text and uncited references will be removed.

Date formatting

Afropolitan Publications recommends writing dates out fully to avoid confusion with different all-numeral date styles. For example, 11/10/2018 could be 10 November 2018 or 11 October 2018 depending on the reader, therefore, the date should be written out in full. For example, the date September 1, 2018 can be used rather than 01/09/2018 or 09/01/2018.

Units of measurement

Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using the International System of Units (SI).

Preparation of figures

Upon submission of an article, authors should include all figures and tables in the Document file of the manuscript. Figures and tables should not be submitted in separate files. If the article is accepted, authors will be asked to provide the source files of the figures. Each figure should be supplied in a separate electronic file. All figures should be cited in the manuscript in a consecutive order. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.

Maps. Afropolitan Publications Limited remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps. For reasons of consistency, authors are requested to use accepted standard maps as the basis for map figure drawing, for example using the latest standard base-map of Map Press. Responsibility for maps rests with the author and it is their responsibility to also provide any copyright or licence information when using maps that are not owned or created by the author (e.g. Google Maps, etc.)

Preparation of tables

Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary materials are the additional parts to a manuscript, such as audio files, video clips, or datasets that might be of interest to readers. Authors can submit one file of supplementary material along with their manuscript through the Manuscript Tracking System. If there is more than one file, they can be uploaded as a .ZIP file.

A section titled “Supplementary Material” should be included before the references list with a concise description for each supplementary material file. Supplementary materials are not modified by our production team. Authors are responsible for providing the final supplementary materials files that will be published along with the article.

Proofs

Corrected proofs must be returned to the publisher within two to three days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication.

Copyright and permissions

Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of copyrighted materials included in the manuscript.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

Reporting guidelines

Authors are strongly encouraged to use appropriate reporting guidelines when preparing and submitting manuscripts, to maximise transparency and reproducibility. Our editors and reviewers are also encouraged to use them in the review process. Completed checklists should be provided in the supplementary files on submission. We particularly encourage the use of:

  • CONSORT for randomized controlled trials
  • TREND for non-randomized trials
  • PRISMA for systematic review and meta-analyses
  • CARE for case reports
  • STROBE for observational studies
  • STREGA for genetic association studies
  • SRQR for qualitative studies
  • STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies
  • ARRIVE for animal experiments

Peer review

All submitted articles are subject to assessment and peer review to ensure editorial appropriateness and technical correctness. In order for an article to be accepted for publication, the assigned Editor will first consider if the manuscript meets minimum editorial standards and fits within the scope of the journal. If an article is within scope, then the Editor will ideally solicit at least two external peer reviewers (whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors) to assess the article before confirming a decision to accept. Decisions to reject are at the discretion of the Editor.

Our Research Integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Article Processing Charges

The journal publishing model is Open Access. Article Processing Charges (APCs) allow the publisher to make articles immediately available online to anyone to read and reuse upon publication.

APC for online publication is:

  • N17,750 naira only ($30 USD) for Nigerian authors and
  • $80 (USD) for international authors.
  • A print (hard copy) is available at a fee of N10,000 naira only (postage and delivery charges inclusive) for Nigerian authors. Additional copies for co-authors are N5,000 naira only per copy.
  • A print copy is $20-40 (USD) only for international authors depending on the postage charges to deliver the publication to their address overseas.

Interested in submitting to this journal? We recommend that you review the About the Journal page for the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines. Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.