Author Policies

Manuscript Preparation
Complaints Policy
Participant/Patient Privacy and Informed Consent
Human and Animal Rights Policy
APC Waiver Policy
Author’s Agreement Form
English Language Editing
Digital Preservation
Article Processing Charge
Copyright Policy
Errata, Retractions, and Corrigenda Policy
Open Access Policy
Rights and Grants to the Author
Withdrawal Policy
Licensing Policy
Sample Paper
Plagiarism Policy
Data Sharing Policy
Check List
Submission of Manuscript

1. Manuscript Preparation

Manuscripts submitted to African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research should be prepared in English, double-spaced, using a standard 12-point font, with page and line numbers throughout to assist reviewers.

A typical manuscript includes: a title page (title, author names, affiliations, corresponding author's email), an abstract (250 words or fewer), 4–6 keywords, the main text (structured as Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, or an equivalent structure suited to the paper type), an acknowledgments section, a declaration of conflicts of interest, a funding statement, and a reference list.

Figures and tables should be numbered in the order they're referenced in the text, with clear captions, and submitted as separate high-resolution files (minimum 300 dpi for images). References must follow IEEE citation style — numbered in square brackets in order of appearance (e.g., [1], [2]) with a correspondingly numbered reference list — and be complete enough that a reader could locate the cited source independently.

Authors are encouraged to write plainly. A well-argued paper in clear language will be reviewed more favorably than one that hides a thin contribution behind dense phrasing.

2. Complaints Policy

We take complaints about editorial decisions, peer review conduct, or publication ethics seriously, and we handle them directly rather than deflecting them.

If you have a complaint — about a reviewer's conduct, an editor's decision, a suspected ethical breach in a published article, or the handling of your submission — email the journal's editorial office directly with a clear description of the issue and any supporting evidence. Complaints are acknowledged within 5 business days and investigated by an editor not involved in the original decision, following COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines.

If you're not satisfied with the outcome, you may escalate the complaint to the Editor-in-Chief, and beyond that, to KevinPage's publisher office. We keep a record of all complaints and their resolutions, and repeated or systemic issues are used to revise our editorial procedures.

3. Participant/Patient Privacy and Informed Consent

Any study involving identifiable human participants — including case reports, clinical photographs, or patient-derived data — requires documented informed consent for both participation and publication.

Authors must confirm in the manuscript that participants (or their legal guardians) provided informed consent, and that identifying details (names, photographs, dates, or other information that could reveal identity) have been removed or consented to explicitly where removal isn't possible. For case reports specifically, we require a signed patient consent form on file, available on request from the editorial office, though not published alongside the article.

Manuscripts that cannot demonstrate proper consent will not proceed to peer review, regardless of scientific merit.

4. Human and Animal Rights Policy

Research involving human participants must have been conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and authors must state the name of the approving ethics committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB), along with the approval reference number, in the Methods section.

Research involving animals must comply with relevant national and institutional guidelines (e.g., ARRIVE guidelines for reporting), and authors must state IACUC (or equivalent) approval, including the approval number, in the Methods section.

Manuscripts lacking a clear ethics approval statement — or describing research that appears to have caused unjustified harm to human or animal subjects — will be returned to authors before entering peer review, or rejected outright if the concern is serious.

5. APC Waiver Policy

KevinPage charges no Article Processing Charge (APC) on any of its journals, including African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research. Publication is entirely free for all authors, regardless of institutional affiliation, funding status, career stage, or country of origin — there is no waiver to apply for, because there is no fee to begin with.

This is a deliberate, permanent policy choice, not an introductory offer: KevinPage operates as a diamond open access publisher, meaning publication is free for authors and reading is free for everyone, with no paywall on either side.

6. Author's Agreement Form

Before publication, the corresponding author must complete and sign an Author's Agreement Form on behalf of all co-authors, confirming that:

All listed authors have made a substantive contribution to the work and approve the final manuscript
The manuscript is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not under consideration by another journal
All authors agree to be accountable for the accuracy and integrity of the work
Any conflicts of interest have been disclosed
The authors grant African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research the rights described in our Copyright and Licensing policies

The form is provided by the editorial office upon manuscript acceptance and must be returned before the article proceeds to production.

7. English Language Editing

Manuscripts should be submitted in clear, grammatically correct English. Peer reviewers and editors evaluate scientific content, not prose style, but a manuscript that's difficult to understand due to language issues may be returned to authors for language revision before or after peer review.

We don't provide in-house language editing services or endorse a specific commercial provider, but authors for whom English is a second language are welcome to use a professional English-language editing service prior to submission if they feel it would strengthen their manuscript. Use of such a service does not influence the editorial decision, which is based solely on the scientific merit of the work.

8. Digital Preservation

Published articles in African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research are preserved through CLOCKSS and LOCKSS, two independent, not-for-profit digital archiving networks that ensure the journal's content remains permanently accessible even if African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research or KevinPage ceases operations. As our journals are hosted on the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) through Open Journal Systems, each published issue is automatically harvested and archived across a distributed set of secure library nodes, providing an additional independent layer of long-term preservation.

All published content is also assigned a persistent identifier via the journal's registered DOI system, ensuring articles remain citable and locatable even if the journal's website changes.

9. Article Processing Charge

African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research charges no Article Processing Charge (APC), and no other fee at any stage — submission, peer review, production, or publication are all provided at no cost to authors. This applies to every article type the journal publishes (original research, reviews, case studies, and so on), with no exceptions and no hidden costs introduced after acceptance.

KevinPage is able to sustain this as a diamond open access publisher [— briefly note your actual funding/sustainability model here once decided, e.g., institutional support, grants, or a parent organization, since Scopus and Clarivate reviewers do look for how a no-fee journal sustains itself financially].

10. Copyright Policy

Authors retain copyright of their published work. Upon acceptance, authors grant African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research and KevinPage a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, and archive the article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.

This means authors are free to reuse, share, and republish their own work — including in theses, presentations, or subsequent related publications — provided the original publication in African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research is cited. KevinPage does not require authors to transfer copyright, unlike some traditional subscription publishers.

11. Errata, Retractions, and Corrigenda Policy

We correct the scholarly record when errors are identified, and we do so transparently.

Corrigendum: issued when an error introduced by the authors (e.g., a data entry mistake, an incorrect figure) is identified after publication but doesn't undermine the paper's overall conclusions.
Erratum: issued when an error introduced during the publication process (e.g., a typesetting mistake) needs correction.
Retraction: issued when the paper's findings are found to be unreliable due to misconduct (data fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication) or honest but fundamental error that invalidates the work's conclusions.

All corrections and retractions are linked prominently to the original article, follow COPE's retraction guidelines, and include a clear, dated notice explaining the reason. The original article remains accessible (marked accordingly) rather than being deleted, in line with standard scholarly practice.

12. Open Access Policy

All articles published in African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research are immediately and permanently open access upon publication — free to read, download, and share, with no embargo period and no subscription required.

Articles are published under the CC BY 4.0 license, meaning readers may copy, redistribute, and adapt the material for any purpose, including commercial use, provided appropriate credit is given to the original authors and source.

13. Rights and Grants to the Author

By publishing with African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research, authors retain the right to:

Reuse their own article (in full or in part) in future works, theses, or teaching materials
Post the published version on personal websites, institutional repositories, or preprint servers, provided the original publication is cited
Grant others permission to reuse the work under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license, since the license itself already permits broad reuse
Be properly credited as the author in any subsequent citation, translation, or adaptation of the work by third parties

KevinPage does not restrict authors from depositing their work in institutional or subject repositories immediately upon publication (no embargo), which is a requirement of several funder open-access mandates (e.g., Plan S).

14. Withdrawal Policy

Authors may request withdrawal of a manuscript at any stage before publication by contacting the editorial office in writing, stating the reason for withdrawal.

Withdrawal requests during peer review are generally accommodated without penalty, though we ask authors to be considerate of reviewer time already invested. Withdrawal after a manuscript has been formally accepted, typeset, or assigned a DOI is discouraged and may only proceed with editorial approval, since it affects the scholarly record; in such cases, a withdrawal notice is published in place of the article rather than the article simply disappearing.

Repeated withdrawal of manuscripts after acceptance, without valid cause, may affect an author's ability to publish with African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research in future.

15. Licensing Policy

African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research publishes all content under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license by default. Under this license, anyone may:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercially

...provided appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is included, and any changes made are indicated.

Authors who require a different Creative Commons variant (e.g., CC BY-NC for non-commercial-only reuse) for specific funder or institutional reasons should raise this with the editorial office at submission; exceptions are considered case by case but CC BY remains our standard.

16. Sample Paper

All manuscripts submitted to African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research must follow IEEE format, including IEEE's citation and reference numbering style, two-column layout at production stage, and standard section structure (Abstract, Index Terms/Keywords, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, Acknowledgment, References).

A downloadable IEEE-format manuscript template is available on the journal's Submission Guidelines page. Authors are encouraged to prepare their manuscript directly in this template to avoid formatting delays after acceptance. [Attach or link the actual IEEE template file here once uploaded to the OJS site.]

17. Plagiarism Policy

All manuscripts submitted to African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research are screened for originality before entering peer review, using iThenticate.

We define plagiarism broadly: copying text, data, or ideas from another source without proper attribution, including self-plagiarism (reusing substantial portions of one's own previously published work without disclosure). Manuscripts with unacceptably high similarity scores, or with evidence of copied content regardless of score, are returned to authors or rejected outright, depending on severity.

If plagiarism is discovered after publication, we follow COPE guidelines: the finding is investigated, the authors are contacted for explanation, and — depending on outcome — a correction, expression of concern, or retraction is issued.

18. Data Sharing Policy

Authors are expected to make the data underlying their published findings available, either within the manuscript, as supplementary material, or via deposit in a recognized public repository relevant to their field (e.g., NCBI GEO/SRA for sequencing data, Zenodo for general research data, Dryad for ecological/evolutionary data).

Where full data sharing isn't possible — for reasons of patient privacy, proprietary restrictions, or third-party data ownership — authors must state this clearly in the manuscript, along with the reason and any conditions under which the data could be made available to other researchers on reasonable request.

A Data Availability Statement is required in every submitted manuscript, even where the answer is "no additional data available."

19. Check List

Before submitting to African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research, please confirm:

20. Submission of Manuscript

Manuscripts are submitted online through the African Journal of AIDS and HIV Research submission portal on our Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. Authors will need to register for an account (if they don't already have one) before beginning a new submission.

The submission process requires: the full manuscript file, a separate title page (to support double-blind peer review), any supplementary files (data, figures, appendices), and confirmation of the checklist items above. Authors will receive an automatic acknowledgment of receipt, followed by an initial editorial screening (typically within 7 days) to confirm the manuscript fits the journal's scope and meets basic submission requirements before it proceeds to peer review.

Questions about the submission process can be directed to the journal's editorial office via the Contact page.