Editorial Policy

Open access

This is an online open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.

There are no article submission or processing fees.

All articles are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence (see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

 

Issues

There are two issues a year. The first was launched in September 2017 and issues will come out every September and April thereafter.

 

Focus and scope

SOTL in the South is an online, open-access and peer-reviewed journal dedicated to fostering dialogue and research on teaching and learning in higher education in the global South, or about the global South.

 

Submissions to the Journal

All articles will be subjected to a double-blind peer-review process. Submissions are encouraged from as many countries in the global South as possible. Reviewers are solicited from countries across the global South. Submissions should be reviewed by individuals from more than one country in order to ensure relevance and readability for an international audience.

All submissions to SOTL in the South are subject to a plagiarism check using Turnitin.

Any member of the editorial board should not submit more than one peer-reviewed article within a two-year cycle. All submissions from the editorial board should be subject to blind peer review from reviewers who are not members of the editorial board.

 

Language of submissions

All articles should be in English, with an abstract in the home language of the author or in one of the regional international languages. Editing will be the responsibility of the author.

We welcome the following contributions:

  • Scholarly and thought-provoking contributions about the meaning and practice of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, and about what the global South might mean in relation to teaching and learning.
  • Reports on empirical studies based on teaching and learning in the disciplines in higher education, either in the global South, or about the South.
  • Reports on studies on other matters related to higher education teaching and learning, for example on the professional learning of academics, in or about the global South.

Studies focused on topics including indigenous knowledge, decolonisation and social justice in relation to SOTL are welcome, as are studies that present contextually based issues, and which consider the implications of these for other settings in the global South. Innovative studies and innovative or disruptive writing formats will also be welcomed.

Submissions that would be regarded as inappropriate for the journal would include:

  • Unscholarly manuscripts and manuscripts that do not adhere to the all the journal’s author guidelines
  • Studies that do not focus on higher education; that do not focus on teaching and learning; that do not relate to the scholarship of teaching and learning; that do not theorise about research or are not research-based.

 

Keywords:

scholarship of teaching and learning; higher education; global South; southern theory; teaching and learning; social justice; decolonisation

 

Funding

Articles are freely accessible.

 

Hosting of the journal

From May 2017 the journal was managed and hosted in the office of the Chair, Teaching and Learning, Professor Brenda Leibowitz. Since April 2018, the journal has been managed and hosted in the Deans Office of the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, by Dr Zach Simpson.

 

Editorial Board

Structure and Meetings

The editorial board should meet twice a year. Meetings will be online as well as face-to-face.

Editor-in-Chief

The function is to hold the editorial board together; see to policy; and general functioning of the journal. This will also include screening of manuscripts where necessary, thus to support the managing editor. The position should be held on a three-year period.

Managing Editor

The functions include initial screening, allocation of articles to editorial members to send out for review; copy-editing; managing social media.

Book Reviews Editor

The book reviews editor solicits reviews, obtains books for review and screens the reviews, which are not sent out for blind review.

Reflections and Short-Reports Editor

The reflections and short-reports editor solicits reviews, obtains books for review and screens the reviews, which are not sent out for blind review

Associate Editors (effectively ‘the editorial board’)

The functions include: looking after, for example, one issue per year; soliciting articles; publicising the journal; contributing to the policy.

 

Archiving

This journal is hosted on OJS and all materials are digitally archived with LOCKSS.