Communicare: Journal for Communication Studies in Africa facilitates scholarly discussion on communication phenomena in Africa and how these are in conversation with other regions. Communicare is a non-profit, open-access journal, in existence since 1980, published biannually by the School of Communication, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Communicare uses a double-blind peer review system and is accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training.

Communicare aims to serve as a point of reference for continental academic debate and geo-specific theorising. It thus invites articles that complement, test, refine or counter global theoretical perspectives by amplifying and consolidating African research and scholarship. The journal publishes original theoretical-conceptual and empirical articles regardless of paradigm, perspective or context and welcomes a wide range of methodological approaches. Communicare publishes articles in a broad spectrum of communication sub- and related disciplines, including organisational communication, strategic communication, marketing communication, corporate communication, development communication, social change, political communication, gender communication, postcolonial studies, identity politics and politics of everyday life, celebrity studies, visual communication, internet studies, gaming, digital communication, digital media, film studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture, and journalism. Communicare also publishes generic (non-region specific) research articles on topics relevant to scholarly conversations on communication in Africa.

Cover Page

The cover page design and template design are courtesy of Given Dube.

ETHICAL STANDARDS 

Communicare is committed to upholding the integrity of the scholarly record. The journal editors, peer reviewers and authors are expected to follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on professional publishing standards available from https://publicationethics.org/core-practices

PLAGIARISM POLICY 

Manuscripts submitted to Communicare will be scanned for potential plagiarism, which occurs when a person uses someone else's words, concepts, ideas, data or other work, whether written or visual, as their own original intellectual work, without adequately acknowledging the original author.

For submitted manuscripts

The Editor-in-Chief will analyse manuscripts suspected of plagiarism in consultation with the Editor or Associate Editors to determine the extent of the plagiarism.

If the material has been plagiarised, the Editorial Office will inform the corresponding author that the manuscript is rejected due to plagiarism.

In the case of extensive plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief may report the offence to the author/s’ institution and/or funding bodies. 

Authors will be notified about the Editor-in-Chief’s response to the plagiarism.

Authors will be banned from submitting any future work to Communicare if they are found guilty of extensive plagiarism.

The person reporting the suspected plagiarism will be informed of the outcome of the probe.

For published articles 

of plagiarism will be analysed by the Editor-in-Chief in consultation with the Editor or Associate Editors to determine the extent of the plagiarism.

If the material has been plagiarised, the Editorial Office will inform the corresponding author.

In case of minor or unintentional plagiarism, a statement indicating the plagiarised material and appropriate reference will be published online.

In the case of extensive plagiarism, the article will be retracted, and a statement will be published acknowledging the original authorship.

Authors will be banned from submitting any future work to Communicare if they are found guilty of extensive plagiarism.

If applicable, the person reporting the suspected plagiarism will be informed of the outcome of the probe.

The Editor-in-Chief may report the offence to the author/s’ institution and/or funding bodies.

The similarity index for articles should not exceed 15%.

Articles based on master's or PHD studies should not exceed 50% similarity to the original thesis.

Use of large language models (LMM) and generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools

Communicare conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

AI bots such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission.

Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI in the manuscript (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections.

SUBMISSIONS 

Communicare accepts a variety of articles that contribute to contemporary scholarly debates on communication studies in Africa.

Full-length theoretical, conceptual and empirical research articles (at submission 5000-8000 words, all-inclusive).

Practice-based case studies (3000-4500 words).

Editorials and commentaries  (750-2500 words).

Book reviews (1000-2500 words)

PEER REVIEW PROCESS 

Research articles and review articles are subject to double peer review, whereby the authors' and reviewers' identities are concealed.

Practice-based studies, commentaries and editorials are subject to editorial reviews and/or limited peer reviews. 

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

Communicare articles are published with open access under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open-access journal, which means that all content is freely available to the user or his/her institution without charge. 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 BOAI definition of open access.

ARCHIVING POLICY

Communicare is preserved using LOCKSS, CLOCKSS and PKP PN.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES (APCS)

Communicare bills article processing charges (APCs) to cover the production costs and ensure the journal’s sustainability. APCs apply only to articles accepted for publication (Please refer to APCs tab for further information)

REPOSITORY POLICY

This journal allows authors to deposit the published version of their work in an institutional or any other repository of their choice.

Online ISSN
2957-7950
Print ISSN
0259-0069