Author Guidelines

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

Authors must ensure the following:

• Only original, unpublished work of the author/s, not under consideration for publication elsewhere, will be considered by Communicare.
• All authors significantly contributed to the research design, execution and/or writing of the article.
• Results are based on data that was not fabricated, falsified or inappropriately manipulated.
• Authors should comply with ethical research standards.
• This includes disclosing funding sources or any other support for the execution of research.
• Manuscripts should adhere to all the guidelines for authors. Manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned to the author.
• It is the responsibility of the author/s to obtain permission to use copyrighted material, and proof of such permission should be submitted with the initial manuscript.
• Manuscripts should not contain any information that may identify the author(s).
• Acknowledgements should not appear anywhere in the manuscript submitted for review. Once the article is accepted, acknowledgements should be included in the final version of the manuscript. Acknowledgements are placed at the end of the article before references.
• Authors should declare a conflict of interest that may have influenced the work or its results.
• Authors should not re-submit a manuscript previously rejected by Communicare, unless they were invited by the editor to do so.

Authors must submit three documents: the manuscript, the iThenticate or Turnitin report (similarity not exceeding 15%) and the information sheet with the author(s) title, name, email, ORCID, institutional affiliation and country. 

The manuscript should include a title and be accompanied by an abstract. Abstracts should be a precis (150–250 words) of the research undertaken, highlighting the salient findings. The abstract should not contain any references.

The authors should provide up to 6 keywords in alphabetical order, which will be used for indexing and online search purposes.

The author’s information sheet must contain:

• Informative but concise title of the article
• The full name(s), surname(s) and titles of the author(s)
• Email addresses of the authors
• The name and contact details of the corresponding author (if different from the submitting author)
• Author’s ORCID - If the author does not already have an ORCID number, one can be created on https://orcid.org
• Author’s affiliation (organisation and country) 

Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

Manuscript Guidelines

• The length of a full-length manuscript at initial submission should be between 5000-8000 words, including references.
• The length of an emerging scholar manuscript should be 3000-4500 words.
• An emerging scholar is defined as a person under the age of 35, who is a current or recent student (completed studies within the past three years), who has never published in a peer reviewed journal before.
• Contributions should follow the spelling rules of South African or UK (not the US) English.
• The manuscript should be submitted in Microsoft Office Word format.
• The font used in the manuscript is: Arial 11 pt, single line spacing, not justified.
• New paragraphs should be indented, with no extra line between paragraphs.
• Tables and figures should be included in the text and the original files within which these graphics were generated (e.g. PowerPoint) are attached. Screengrabs should not be used.
• All tables and figures should be numbered separately: Table 1, 2, 3, etc. and Figure 1, 2, 3, etc. Tables and figures should be suitable for reproduction in black and white.
• Illustrations and photographs should have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.
• Double quotation marks should be used for all quotes.
• End notes and footnotes should be limited.
• Main headings should be capitalised, bold, left-aligned.
• Second-level headings should be in lower case, bold, and left-aligned.
• Harvard method for in-text citations and the reference list should be used.

REFERENCING GUIDELINES

All references in the reference list should be cited in-text and vice versa.

The reference list must be in alphabetical order.

In-text citations:

Give only author and date, with page numbers for all quotes:

One author: (Aziz, 2021:102)

Two authors: (Giddens & Sutton, 2021:34)

More than two authors (Kujala et al., 2017:16)

Reference list entries examples: journal article, publications by the same author in one year, book, internet source with no date, chapter in the edited book, thesis, news article, internet source with a date, conference paper.

Aziz, Z.A. (2021). The influence of communication on project success: a survey of the SANRAL Gauteng e-tolling project in South Africa. Communicare, 40(2):101-128.

Frassinelli, P.P. (2019)a. Borders, media crossings and the politics of translation. London: Routledge

Frassinelli, P.P. (2019)b. Crisis? Which crisis? The humanities reloaded. Critical Arts, 33(3):1-15.

Giddens, A. & Sutton, P.W. (2021). Sociology. 9th ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Johnson, L. [n.d.]. Will technology save the education system? Available from: http://www.netscape.com/users/johnl/save.html

Kujala, J., Lehtimäki, H. & Myllykangas, P. (2017). Value co-creation in stakeholder relationships: A case study. In R. Freeman, J. Kujala & S. Sachs (eds.). Stakeholder engagement: Clinical research cases. Issues in Business Ethics, Book 46. Cham: Springer, 15–30.

Masuku, C. (2021). Sustainability and stakeholder relationships in embedded mining communities in Zimbabwe. Doctoral thesis. Johannesburg: University of Johannesburg. Available from:  https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository/uj:44054?site_name=Research+Output&exact=sm_creator%3A%22Masuku%2C+Caven%22&sort=sort_ss_title%2F

Ramphele, L. (2017). Three of SA’s big banks accused of collusion. Cape Talk, 16 February. Available from http://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/245059/three-of-sa-s-big-banks-accused-of-collusion

Stats SA. (2019). Living conditions. Available from http://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=595.

Wolf-Brenner, C. (2021). Make us smile! AI and the violation of human intentions. Paper presented at 34th Bled Conference, June 27 – 30 (online).

Please refer to previous articles published in Communicare for further referencing examples.

SUBMISSION CHECKLIST

• The article has not been previously published and is not under consideration in another journal.
• The manuscript is in MS Word format.
• Author information sheet has been submitted
• A similarity report has been submitted
• The length of the manuscripts complies with the prescribed length (5000-8000 words for a full-length article at submission, 3000-4500 words for a practice-based case study, 750-2500 words for editorial, commentary or a book review).
• The length of the abstract is 150-250 words.
• The manuscript adheres to the stylistic and technical requirements outlined in the Guidelines for Authors.
• Harvard referencing style has been used.
• The manuscript has been proofread and/or language edited, at a minimum, using free software such as Grammarly.
• The manuscript does not contain any information that may identify the author(s).

DATA AVAILABILITY

The availability of article data should be indicated in the published article in the form of:

Open data set - whereby the complete data set used in the study are openly accessible through the link included.

All data included - whereby all data used in the study are included in the article.

On request from authors - the data used in the study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Not available - data used in the study have not been made available.

Not applicable - there are no data relevant to the study.

ARTICLE PROCESSING CHARGES

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.