Aims

The Journal aims to publish and disseminate high quality, peer-reviewed scholarly contributions by and for a multi-disciplinary range of stakeholders (students, teachers, researchers, development actors, policy makers, etc.) focusing on the exchange of knowledge and experiences relevant to promote and support development within pastoral systems in East Africa as well as global scientific advancement.

More specifically, EAJP plans to :

  • Create a forum for scientific exchange on pastoralism.
  • Facilitate development of strong scientific and research networks between institutions and professionals working in east African pastoralist areas.
  • Improve the visibility and practical role of scientific research programs in east African pastoralist areas.
  • Contribute to the sharing of evidence-based knowledge and practices to improve the management and utilization of indigenous knowledge and resources in east African pastoralist areas.

Publication Themes

Generally, EJAP is a multidisciplinary Journal accepting contributions from a wide range of scientific fields, conditional to a focus on pastoral systems in Eastern Africa (including their ‘agro-pastoral’ forms): Preference will be given to contributions touching on one or more of the following broad research/publication themes :

  • Integration of dry-land crop agriculture and mobile or extensive livestock production at different scales, especially in relation to food security and resilience (resilient livelihoods).
  • Pastoral resource management, including ecological sustainability of pastoral systems, land tenure and use, biodiversity conservation, and ecotourism.
  • Social organization, language and communication, indigenous institutions and rules (especially concerning conflict resolution); mobility.
  • Health care, including alternative and integrated health systems (e.g. one-health approach); maternal and child health and nutrition; harmful traditional practices; endemic and emerging health problems; and ethno-medicine.
  • Education, including innovation and adaptation in service delivery, child care and development, youth and adult education, culture and history, sustainable development goals and strategies.
  • Economic systems, including the direct and indirect economic value of pastoral systems; market access, value chain analysis and development, and niche markets; and financial services and investment.
  • Modernization, with a focus on ways scientific research and technological innovation can contribute towards understanding, supporting and improving pastoral systems.
  • The legacy and current outcomes of development in relation to pastoral systems (especially poverty alleviation and equity, employment, settlement and basin development, creation and management of infrastructures, social cohesion and security).
  • Cross-cutting issues: climate change, gender, HIV/AIDS, internal displacement (IDPs), migration, marginalization, security, urbanization.

Scope

Generally, EJAP will be published in both print and electronic formats on a biannual basis i.e. November and June of every JJU academic year. To successfully realize its aims, EAJP invites original research articles, critical topical reviews, theoretical and methodological articles, short communications, case studies, book reviews and other special issue scholarly contributions pertaining to the dynamics, challenges and development of pastoral systems in eastern Africa.

  • Original articles should present data from original research which is relevant to scientific advancement and socio-economic development especially in the context of eastern Africa and the African continent as a whole.
  • • Critical topical review articles must be critical analyses of the fields reviewed, covering a wide range of issues for instance, controversies, ‘gray’ areas, and breakthroughs.
  • Case reports should be authentic, and follow disciplinary ethical writing principles.
  • Letters to the Editor are welcome but must be relevant to other readers and priority will be given to those responding to articles published in the last journal issue.
  • Short Communications are brief (2 -4 printed page) reports on the results of complete small investigations or giving details of new models or hypotheses, innovative methods, techniques or apparatus. The style of main sections need not conform to that of full -length papers.
  • Special issue may include special reports, statements or proceedings of pastoral related conference, workshop and symposiums.

PUBLICATION POLICIES AND GUIEDLINES

Ethics

EAJP accepts all submitted manuscript with understanding that the contribution has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors are responsible for the authenticity and integrity of information and opinions expressed on their manuscript.

Manuscripts reporting research on human and animal subjects must include a statement confirming that the study had received necessary ethical clearance from relevant authorities, and in case of human studies that informed consent was obtained from participants or their legal guardians.

The Editorial Board of EAJP (the board) does not tolerate plagiarism or other unscholarly breaches of conduct expressed on JJUs research policies and guidelines (Article 6.7.). Evidence thereof will lead to automatic rejection and/or withdrawal of contributions from publication.

Authorship

Manuscript authorship credit for EAJP publications will be based on :

  • substantial contribution to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
  • drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  • approval of the final version of manuscripts to be published.

Authors should meet all these pre-conditions. Acquisition of funds, supervision and minor assistance of the research group during collection/analysis alone does not justify authorship. Such contributions should be reserved to the acknowledgment section of manuscripts. Authorship order should be mutually pre-agreed based on the weighted contribution of individual authors. One of the authors should be assigned as corresponding author (CA) responsible for manuscript submission as well as all communication between the EJAP Editorial Board (EB) and manuscript co-authors both prior to and after publication.

All EAJP authorship disputes will be handed according to procedures outlined in JJUs publication policy and guidelines (Articles 2.5.2.)

Conflict of interests

A statement describing any conflicts of interest or lack thereof must be included in each submitted manuscript. This statement should describe all potential sources of bias, including affiliations, funding sources, and financial or management relationships, that may constitute a conflict of interest. The statement will be published in the final article. If no conflict of interest is declared, the following statement will be published in the article: “The authors declare no conflicting interests”.

Likewise, all parties involved in the peer review and editorial process should disclose any conflicts of interest (for example financial, academic, political or personal relationship) capable of influencing their opinions and judgments. Once conflict of interest is recognized, it should be promptly disclosed to the Board for quick decision on an alternative path forward.

Manuscript preparation

Manuscripts should be prepared using Standard American English (SAE) strictly following the EAJP format and guidelines. EAJP manuscripts should be prepared using accepted word-processing software i.e. DOC or DOCX. The Journal will not perform intensive language or format/style editing on submitted manuscripts. Authors who are not familiar with SAE are urged to seek assistance as deficiencies in grammar could be a serious hindrance to the review and editorial process. EAJP editors and/or reviewers may reject and return to authors, any manuscripts exhibiting major language/grammatical errors and/or format/style inconsistencies. Therefore, authors are advised to have their articles checked by SAE proficient colleagues or native-speakers before submission.

Manuscript submission

Manuscripts and accompanying documents including signed authors publication agreement form (APAF) (Annex 2), ethical clearance documents, figures/illustrations, supplementary data, etc. should be submitted by the corresponding author as email attachments addressed to editors at EAJPeditror@jju.edu.et/ fikeurga@gmail.com. Manuscript submission emails should have a subject line “EAJP Manuscript and corresponding authors’ name”. The submission email should carry the message “Please acknowledge receipt of the manuscript entitled ----------------------“.

Peer review

Up on receiving manuscripts, the Chief Editor/s will confirm receipt of submission and communicate a manuscript ID to the CA. Subsequently, the CEs along with relevant Section Editors (SEs) will perform a preliminary review on submitted manuscripts. At this stage, the Editors may exercise their prerogative to reject a manuscript without peer review if contributions are judged to be outside the scope of the Journal, poorly written or formatted, fragmentary and marginally incremental, lacking in significance, or containing no obvious new physical insight. In such cases, the Chief Editors will inform the concerned CA of preliminary editorial review decision along with proper explanation and/or recommendations.

For acceptable manuscripts, the Editors will seek critical review of contents from at least two experts who are active in the research area covered by selected manuscripts. To ensure that the focus of the journal is respected, at least one of the reviewers will be a pastoralism specialist. Manuscripts will then be sent to the selected peer-reviewers by email to collect their honest and impartial feedback within a one month period. The CEs will send a reminder to reviewer’s midway through this period. In case of non-respondent reviewers, another reviewer will be identified and invited by the Editors as before. Reviewers are expected to comment on the following aspects of submitted manuscripts (1) significance and originality of the work, (2) appeal to broad range of pastoral professionals, (3) how well the conclusions are supported by the data and analysis, and (4) clarity of the paper. Reviewers will submit their comments and recommendations to the Chief Editors using the standard EAJP format.

However, the invited Reviewers act only in an advisory capacity and final decision concerning the publication of submitted manuscripts is responsibility of an ad hoc Editorial Board sub-committee comprising of CEs and relevant SEs. The latter will give serious consideration to reviewer recommendations and vote on whether the manuscript in question should be :

  • Accepted for publication as is
  • Accepted for publication with minor revisions
  • Accepted for publication with major revisions
  • Rejected as not suited for publication on the Journal

Thereafter, the CEs will communicate the Editorial Board’s decision to CAs of concerned manuscript providing appropriate explanation or instructions for revision and/or any additional processing. A manuscript sent back to CAs for revision should be resubmitted to EAJP CEs within 3 months. In absence of feedback by this period, the CEs will send an email to concerned CAs asking whether the authors intend to withdraw their submission or need extra time (of no more than 1 month) to complete their revision. Failure of CAs to respond to this reminder or to deliver their manuscript revised in accordance with reviewer/editorial comments within the additional relief period will lead to automatic expiration of the submission i.e. formal removal from EAJP publication consideration.

On re-submission, the CA should provide a cover letter with the revised manuscript containing responses to all of the Reviewers’ comments and detailing, in a point-by-point manner, the revisions to the manuscript. If using highlighting, bolding, italics, or markings of any kind to indicate changes made in response to the reviews of your manuscript, we ask that you upload the marked-up copy as “Supporting Information for Review Only” and provide an unmarked version as the official revised manuscript submission.

The chief and section editors, will check whether reviewer’s comments have been satisfactorily met to merit publication in which case manuscript will be sent for language and layout editing to produce a final proof of the publishable manuscript. The CEs will send the final proof of manuscripts to concerned CAs who will be responsible for confirming that all authors approve publication and agree on transfer copyrights to the publisher (JJU) in no more than two weeks period.

Confidentiality

All manuscripts (including any accompanying data) submitted for publication on EAJP and corresponding communications with authors and reviewers will be kept confidential. Authors, editors and reviewers are expected to keep all documents and communications associated with all contributions submitted to this Journal in strict confidence. The board will keep the identity of manuscript reviewers anonymous and the latter are requested not to identify themselves to authors without the Editorial Boards knowledge.

Copyright

To protect researchers and the Journal against unauthorized reproduction of articles, EJAP requires author’s of accepted manuscripts to sign a copyright transfer agreement (CTA) (Annex 4) assigning JJU as a legal publisher. A copy of this form will be supplied to CAs along with final proof of manuscript for confirmation of author’s publication approval and copyright transfer agreement within a two week period.

Dissemination and subscription

The EAJP board has full rights to disseminate published manuscripts by any means available including hard and soft copy publications. In the spirit of fostering global exchange of knowledge, EAJP will offer open access to published manuscripts through a dedicated JJU web link. Such open access publication is expected to increase the readership and citation prospect of contributions published on EAJP.

The EAJP Editorial Board calls on all stake-holding institutions and individuals to support this worthwhile scientific and developmental initiative by pursuing a modest fee based subscription for hard copy and/or electronic versions of published Journal issues. Annual subscription rates for intuitions and individuals will be 50 $ (1,250 Ethiopian Birr) and 25 $ (625 Ethiopian Birr), respectively. Subscription fees should be deposited in JJUs Commercial Bank of Ethiopia Account; No 1000023069109

MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION GUIDELINES

General Instructions

Format/Style: Manuscripts must be prepared using accepted word-processing software, and all parts must be double-spaced. All pages must be numbered consecutively (Roman numerals bottom center of page) starting with the title page and including tables and figures. Page set up should be in portrait layout with normal margins. A standard font size of 12 points must be used with 1.5 spacing all the way. The Journal has a 25 typed page or 7,500 word limit, not including references, tables, and figures. Authors must request approval from the Editor-in-Chief to submit manuscripts exceeding 20 typed pages.

Heading styles: Please use no more than three levels of headings in the text. The first-order heading (e.g. Introduction, Results, etc.) should be typed first-letter-cap, rest-lower-case, centred and bold; both second- and third-order headings should be typed first-letter-cap-rest-lower-case and italicized (e.g. Effects of climate change), but the former in bold and the latter in normal font. A Short Communication shall not have subsection headings except for Acknowledgement(s) and References.

Abbreviations: abbreviations/acronyms should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Scientific names: In using scientific names for plants, animals and microbes please indicate the authority for all Latin names only once i.e., when the name is first mentioned in the text, tables or figures. Alternatively, provide a general reference to a standard source of nomenclature, such as a well known regional Flora, at an appropriate place. Latin names, must always be italicized in the text.

Units of Measurement: All units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using System International (SI) units.

Different sections of the manuscript should be assembled in the following sequence:

  • Title and authorship (single page)
  • Abstract and keywords (single page)
  • Introduction
  • Materials and Methods/ Theoretical Framework
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Conflict of Interest Declaration
  • References
  • Tables
  • Figure captions
  • Figure graphics

Title page: The title, authorship, and institutional affiliations should be included on a single page i.e. title page. The title should be specific and informative and be in Title Case no more than 20 words. Avoid using common phrases such as “investigation”, “study,” “demonstration”, or “performance evaluation”, uncommon acronyms, and words such as “First”, “Novel”, “Facile”, and “One Pot” in the title. The name(s) of author(s) should be normal capitalizing first letter of major terms, and addresses should be in italics. If there is more than one author, each author should be designated with superscripts ( 1,2, 3, etc.) and the corresponding author should be indicated by an asterisk along with email address.

Abstract: Following the title page, a self-contained abstract not exceeding 300 words and typed on a separate page should be placed in all manuscript types including Short Communications and reviews. Abstracts should be free of citations and abbreviations. The first sentence of the abstract should indicate the objectives of the study. Subsequent sentences should indicate the location of the study, methods, and summaries of major findings. The last sentence should articulate the major conclusion(s).

Key words: About five key words arranged alphabetically, should be listed and placed after the abstract. Key words should not contain words which are found in the title of the submitted research or review work.

Introduction: This section should be succinct, with no subheadings. It should clearly state the objectives of the work (including hypothesis and research questions) and provide an adequate background describing significance of the research work. Since scientific approaches to obtain a new knowledge involve testing of hypotheses, EAJP encourages authors to use the introduction to develop the conceptual basis for the specific hypotheses and research questions that they are attempting to probe. This would include identifying the gap of knowledge addressed in the research work. The section should be written in a way that it fully describes why the study was carried out and what it aims to contribute to the field.

Materials and Methods: This section needs to deliver clear description of the study site with geo-referenced location maps. Important details of the study subjects/informants and laboratory materials are expected to be placed here. The methods section should also provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced. This may include detailed information on design of the study, experimental settings, sampling methodologies, a clear description of all interventions and comparisons and statistical analyses used. Moreover, for health related researches generic drug names should generally be used. When proprietary brands are used in your research, please include the brand names in parentheses in this section. For studies involving human subjects for experiment a statement detailing ethical approval and consent should be included in the methods section.

Results: Results should be clear and concise. The whole purpose of this section is to just present and illustrate your findings. Discussing and interpreting your results is not expected here since it belongs to a separate discussion section which comes after the results section. When using figures and tables to narrate your results please avoid redundancy in re-stating your results again in a text form. Just provide a brief summary of tabulated and figurative data citing corresponding object identification number.

Discussion: The focus of this section is discussing and interpreting your results not recapitulating them. The section should explore significance of the results of your work by making comparisons to previous studies and/or making inferences based on scientific knowledge or logical deductions.

Conclusions: The main conclusions of the study have to be presented in a short Conclusions section, which should stand alone. This section should not be more than a five line paragraph and should highlight the importance and relevance of core findings. Avoid specific quantitative results, citation of other studies and any generalizations not supported by your findings.

Acknowledgement(s): All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the paper before the references and may include supporting grants, presentations, and so forth.

Conflict of interest interests:All authors are required to complete a declaration of conflict of interests. All competing interests that are declared will be listed at the end of published articles. Where an author gives no conflict of interests, the listing will read 'The author(s) declare that they have no conflict of interests '.

References

Citations within text The style of citation in the text part must follow a name and year system. If more than one paper published by an author in a given year are cited, these should be indicated by a suffix, a, b, etc. to the year, both in the text and the list of references.

Examples: Ensermu (1976); (Zemede, 2000); Patrick (1986a, b); Ermias and Seid (1999); or (Hugo, 1965, 1970; Pierce and Peak, 1984; Sali, 1976; Asmare, 2015).
Note that within the parenthesis the names of authors are arranged in chorological order.

In case there are more than two authors of a paper; use et al. after the first name in the text, e.g. (Van Damme et al., 1988); however, if more than one paper of the same first author but with different second or third author are cited for the same year, all the names should be given e.g. (Dave, Pandey and Tiwari, 1984; Dave, Rawat and Chaturvedi, 1984; Dave, Rawat and Sharma, 1984).

A reference to an unpublished work may be cited in the text as 'In press' if the paper has been accepted by a journal. In such cases the name of the journal should be included in the references list. Reference to a thesis, dissertation or a paper which is not yet accepted by a journal can be cited in the text as 'unpublished' and be mentioned accordingly in the references list citing institution were the work was conducted.

Bibliographic list

List all references cited in the text in alphabetical order, giving the name of the journal in full. List the names of all authors in a reference. For references in languages other than English, the title should be given in the original language, followed by a translation into English in square brackets. The style and the portions of references to be italicized are exemplified below.

Papers in Journals and other periodicals

Hanely, T.A. (1982). Food resources partitioning by sympatric ungulates on Great Basin rangeland. Journal of Range Management 35: 152-158.
Gamelin, F.X., Baquet, G., Berthoin, S., Thevenet, D., Nourry, C., Nottin, S., Bosquet, L. (2009). Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol 105:731-738. doi: 10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8

In press article

Kharitonov, S.A., Barnes, P.J.: Clinical aspects of exhaled nitric oxide. Eur Respir J, In press.

Papers in Edited Books, Symposia Proceedings, etc.

Cole, D.W. and Rapp, M. (1981). Elemental cycling in forest ecosystems. In: Reichle, D.E. (ed.) Dynamic Properties of Forest Ecosystems, pp. 341-409. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Brown, B., Aaron, M. (2001). The politics of nature. In: Smith J (ed.) The rise of modern genomics, pp 230-257,3rd ed. Wiley, New York,
Kobriger, G.D. (1980). Food availability, nutrition and body weights of gray partridge in North Dakota. In: Peterson, S. R. and Nelson, L. (eds.) Proceedings of Perdix II Gray Partridge Workshop, pp. 70-86. University of Idaho, U.S.A.

Books

Lieth, H. and Whittaker, R.H. (eds.). (1976). Primary Productivity of the Biosphere. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Odum, E.P. (1971). Fundamentals of Ecology. 3rd edn. W.B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia.

Reports, Dissertations, etc.

Srivastava, S.K. (1985). Seasonal Dry Matter Dynamics and Nutrient Relations of Fine Roots in Teak Plantations in a Dry Tropical Region. Ph.D. Dissertation. Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India (unpublished).

On-line material

give the full URL, and the date when the reference was accessed as follows : IPCC. (2007). IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: climate change (AR4) www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_ data/ publications_and_data_reports.shtml#1 (accessed on 10 September 2009)

Preparing tables

Each table should be numbered using Arabic numerals, and always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order (i.e., Table 1, 2, 3...). Please supply a table caption (title) above each table explaining the components of the table. Identify any previously published material by citing the original source in the form of a reference at the end of the table caption. Footnotes to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data) and included beneath the table body.

In your table, columns and rows data should be made visibly distinct by ensuring that the borders of each cell display as black lines. Please do not use commas to indicate numerical values within tables. Colour and shading may also not be used; parts of the table can be highlighted using symbols or bold text, the meaning of which should be explained in a table legend. Tables should not be embedded as figures or spreadsheet files. Large data sets or tables too wide for a landscape page can be uploaded separately as additional files.

Preparing illustrations and figures

Illustrations and figures should be provided as separate files, not embedded in the text file. Each figure should include a single illustration and should fit on a single page in portrait format. Please use one of the following formats for illustrations and figures: PDF (preferred format for diagrams), DOCX/DOC (single page only), PNG (preferred format for photos or images), TIFF, PPTX/PPT (single side only), EPS, TIFF, JPEG and BMP.

Figure legends

The legends should be included in the main manuscript text file at the end of the document, rather than being part of the figure file. Please provide the following information for each figure: Figure number (in sequence using Arabic numerals i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3 etc); short title of figure (maximum 16 words); detailed legend up to 300 words.

Photographs

Only essential photographs with good contrast should be submitted. When more than one photograph is submitted, they should be grouped on a plate. Photographs should be cited as figures in the text.

Authors wishing to include figures, photographs or tables, that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers.