Author Guidelines

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• Only original, unpublished work of the author/s, not under consideration for publication elsewhere, will be considered by Communicare.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.
• The data should be recent – not exceeding 4 years since data collection
• 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.
• As a rule, Communicare does not consider multiple submissions from the same author(s) at the same time.

• Manuscripts based on students’ dissertations and theses:

The articles should not be merely a summary of the thesis but should be significantly reworked (50%), and the author is requested to provide a separate letter indicating how the submitted manuscript differs from the original work.

Authors must submit THREE documents: the manuscript, the information sheet, and the similarity report (e.g. Turnitin) not exceeding 15%.

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. Each key word must be uploaded individually when submitting the article.

The authors should also submit the author’s information sheet containing:

• Informative but concise title of the article
• The full name(s) and surnames of the author(s)
• email addresses of the authors
• It is assumed that the author who submits the article is the corresponding author. Notify the Editorial Team if this is not the case.
• 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 practice-based case study should be 2500-4000 words.
• The length of editorial, commentaries and book reviews 750-2500 words
• 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.
• Endnotes and footnotes should be avoided.
• The title must be in title case
• Headings must not be numbered
• Main headings should be capitalised, bold, left-aligned.
• Second-level headings should be in a lower case, bold, left-aligned.
• Third level headings should be in italics, bold, lower case, 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: (Gidens & 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.