Focus and Scope

The journal has a regional focus on southern Africa. Manuscripts that are accepted for consideration to publish in the journal must address energy issues in southern Africa or have a clear component relevant to southern Africa, including research that was set-up or designed in the region. The southern African region is considered to be constituted by the following fifteen (15) countries: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Within this broad field of energy research, topics of particular interest include energy efficiency, modelling, renewable energy, poverty, sustainable development, climate change mitigation, energy security, energy policy, energy governance, markets, technology and innovation.

JESA is inter-disciplinary, with contributions accepted from energy studies, and related disciplines including: engineering, economics, sociology, political science, history, geography, public policy, science and technology studies, environmental science, international relations. Multi-disciplinary submissions are particularly welcome.

Agreement by authors

By submitting work for a consideration to publish in JESA, the author prospectively grants the publisher a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and perpetual licence to reproduce, publish and distribute the work in any format or medium. The author agrees that the contribution is an original work, was not published elsewhere; is not being considered for publication elsewhere; and will not be submitted for publication elsewhere unless rejected by the journal or withdrawn by the author.

Disclaimer

Neither the editorial staff, the board nor the publisher accepts responsibility for opinions or viewpoints expressed; or for the correctness of facts and figures.

Article processing charges (APCs)

The JESA will be introducing article processing charge (APC) at R5000 per submission undergoing peer-review, starting with submissions made from 24 July 2017 onwards. The APC is payable when the authors have received a notification: Submission accepted or Accept submission. This step is usually reached after a peer-review-revision-editing process has been satisfactorily completed.

Submissions

Submissions are made through the open-access journal system at http://journals.assaf.org.za/jesa/. Follow the instructions carefully for a successful submission, especially to allow a double blind author-reviewer interactive process. In other words, during first submission, names of authors and their affiliations are excluded from the document.

The open-access journal system allows authors to add supplementary information to the research article – research instrument/equipment, research material, research results, transcripts, data analysis and source text. Authors are encouraged to use this facility to avoid articles having annexures/appendices, but to share additional information that might be of use to readers.

If you experience difficulties in making an online submission, please contact the editor.

Open researcher and contributor ID (ORCiD)

In line with international best-practice in academic research, JESA makes it mandatory to include author ORCiDs in all its activities. The ORCiDis affords unique identifiers for the benefit of both individual researchers and their institutions continually. It makes a significant difference to a researcher’s ability to gain full credit for their work for as long as their work is in different repositories and can be a useful tool for academic/research intitutions to track, evaluate and report research work. The ORCiD can be considered to protect your research outputs since many researchers share the same name, while others have different names during their career, or different variations of the same one, potentially causing a loss or mixup of research profiles. Authors without ORCiD can consult this free-to-use registry in https://orcid.org/register. All the authors who published with JESA in the past can log in at http://journals.assaf.org.za/jesa and review their metadata to add their ORCiDs. For your peace of mind, even the National Research Foundation has commenced a process to make ORCiDs mandatory in all its activities.

Peer review process

This journal uses a double-blind review process, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.

The Journal of Energy in Southern Africa continues to expand its reviewer database to facilitate a quicker turnaround of publications. Firstly, to satisfy the double-blind review condition, authors should exclude their names and affiliations in the original manuscript at the time of submitting. A notification will be sent to the corresponding author to add these details at an appropriate time, usually at the end of a satisfactory review process. Secondly, if the reviewers chose to use track changes, they are requested to change their PCs user names to Reviewer A, B or C while working on the MS document under review: Go to File/options/username and change accordingly. Otherwise reviewers can create a new file and comment according to the line numbering in the original submission. 

It is mandatory for the authors to give four proposed reviewers and their credentials when submitting an article (credentials include: title, name and surname, including middle initial when available, organisation or institution, discipline or faculty or department, position or role, email address). These proposed reviewers must be added under 'Comments for the Editor' during Step 1 of submission process. Potential reviewers can most likely be those that have published in at least one 1 accredited international journal in the last five 5 years and (optional) may be sourced from the list of your references. Such reviewers most certainly have expect knowledge of the topic at hand. Any possible conflict of interest with the proposed reviewer must be disclosed to the editor. Such a conflict of interest would include the following.

Such a conflict of interest would include the following - when the proposed reviewer:

• has co-authored with current authors before,
• was affiliated with the same organisation/institution as the authors’ during the last 3 years,
• has played a role in funding mechanisms for the research,
• has personal/special relationships with the resources of research (e.g. equipment suppliers, employees of affected organisation and owners of technology), or
• is associated with the competitors or the opposition.

It is the editor who assigns author’s submissions to reviewers and the editor retains the right to use or not use the proposed reviewers.

Presentation of the manuscript

The paper should be submitted in MS Word, with a single column and no section breaks. All body text should bear the ‘Normal’ style. Spacing should be 1.5 lines. Tables and figures are included in the text.

Length: Between 5000 and 7000 words all inclusive (text, info-graphics and bibliography).

Linguistic and other conventions: UK English spelling (including ‘-ise’ rather than ‘-ize’ suffixes).

Use single quotation marks ('....').

Currency units: Use the ISO 4217 currency code (http://www.xe.com/iso4217.php).

Measurements: Use the International System of Units, with the unit separated from the value by a non-breaking space (in MS Word: control-alt-spacebar), except for %, min, sec.

Numbers or values: Use a point for the decimal marker. Allow a non-breaking space between thousands in long numbers as well as between value and units. No commas to separate thousands.

Abstract: The abstract should be a single paragraph of up to 250 words. Briefly introduce the research field and the particular problem investigated; follow this with a statement of the objective/importance of the problem under investigation; then an indication of the study design and setting, key findings/contributions/results; conclude with a catchy or appealing indication of implications for future or existing developments.

Highlights: Not more than four bulleted points, each of a maximum of ten words.

Keywords: Not more than five words or phrases (not sentences). All in lower case and separated by semi-colons; the keywords should not repeat words in the title.

Numbering: Section headings numbered 1, 2, 3…, subheadings numbered 1.1, 1.1.1 etc. Minor subheadings can be left unnumbered.

Tables, figures and equations: These should be included within the body of the text and each series numbered consecutively from 1. All tables, figures and equations must be referred to in the body of the preceding text and as near as possible to the respective illustrations, using capital T, F or E (e.g. ‘…as shown in Figure 1.’ or ‘Table 1 shows…’ or ‘…expressed in terms of Equation 1’). Captions are placed above tables, but below figures, respectively, with a full-stop at the end. If not your original work or if adopted/derived from elsewhere, give citations, e.g.,

Figure 3: Cross-sectional view of a commercial photovoltaics module [1] or (Bekker, 2007).

Figures, which may be in colour, must be of reasonable standard at the time of manuscript submission – i.e. with crisp and clear drawings and labels. Labels within figures should take the font consistent with the manuscript. Excel figures should be included in editable form. When the manuscript is finally accepted by JESA, authors may be requested to submit better quality illustrations. Note that downloads from the internet sometimes do not meet a publishable quality for an academic journal.

Bibliographic management: This is one of the most significant values of your submission. The general guideline here is that citaions from credible, scholarly and peer-reviewed journals have a direct impact on the quality of your work going into the future. While authors may find it inevitable to cite material from non-scholarly and nonpeer-reviewed publications or sources such as the WEB, newspapers, reports, governments, theses and dissetations, JESA discourges such practice. Authors should not, however, view this as an impediment to their publishing aspirations and stop submitting to JESA, but can proceed with their submissions with full knowledge of opportunities to enhance their research profiles.      .

Citing as you write: Use one of two systems: either numbered in brackets, e.g. [1, 2, 3], or author-year in parentheses, e.g. (authour1, year; author2, year; author3, year), i.e. the Harvard system. Choose a style and apply consistently throughout and, preferably, place such citations at the end of a clause or sentence. A system of numbered citations is relatively optimal with respect to the number of words in the text. Authors are encouraged to include citations mainly from accredited international journals. Sources outside scholarly published material and theses are acceptable but should be at an absolute minimum.

Recommended tool: EndNote, Mendeley and refWorks are software tools for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references on the Windows; and are downloadable MS Word plugins. EndNote, in particular is recommended by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, as well as endorsed by most journals and universities. 

Reference list: Choose the Harvard system of reference, which is essentially automated but can be edited for consistency in respect with (1) author’s last name and initials, (2) year of publication/source, (3) title of publication/source (taking into account the general conventions of capital and lower case letters), (3) name of journal/source, (5) relevant pages. Only initial capitals are used for titles of articles, books, etc; caps are used for journal titles. Examples:

Bekker, B. 2007. Irradiation and PV array energy output, cost, and optimal positioning estimation for South Africa. Journal of Energy in Southern Africa 18 (2): 16–25.

Madessa, H.B., Lovesth, J. and Nydal, O.J. 2009. Experimental investigation on rock bed for high temperature solar thermal storage. Renewable energy shaping our future. Proceedings of the ISES Solar World Congress 2009, Johannesburg, South Africa, 11–14 October, 2009: 123–132.

Manwell, J. F., McGowan, J. and Rogers, A. 2002. Wind power explained: Theory, design and application, second edition. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Okello, D. 2012. Rock bed thermal energy storage for solar cooking application – potential for solar cooking in Uganda. PhD dissertation, Makerere University, Uganda.

Publication frequency

The journal publishes one volume per annum, and each volume consists of four issues in February, May, August and November. Authors are advised to plan their publications as follows: Allow about 100-150 days from submission of manuscript to publication. For an example, to publish in the February 2018 Volume 29 Number 1, authors submit their manuscripts in the period: last week August-last week October 2017.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Articles form this journal can be submitted to institutional repositories, subject to the following conditions:

1. Always upload the final version as published at http://journals.assaf.org.za/index.php/jesa
2. Acknowledge the publisher.
3. Cite the article as part of the metadata and 
   include the DOI as part of the citation to the article.

Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is defined as the use of another's work, words or ideas without attribution or permission, and representation of them as one’s own original work. Plagiarism may take many forms, ranging from major plagiarism (the copy-and-paste of large amounts of text), to minor plagiarism without dishonest intent (e.g. when an author uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper) and even self-plagiarism (the reuse of significant, identical or near-identical portions of one's own work without citing the original version).

Manuscripts containing plagiarism will not be considered for publication in the journal. If plagiarism is brought to light after a manuscript has been published, the journal will proceed to conduct a preliminary investigation. Suspected misconduct will be reported to the institutes and funding agencies of the authors concerned. The journal reserves the right to formally retract such manuscripts and publish statements to reference material as plagiarism.

Editorial Policy

This journal subscribes to the ASSAf National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Review for South African Scholarly Journals.

Digital Presevation Policy

The journal is archived through the ASSAf/Portico agreement https://www.portico.org/ 

Indexing/Listing

JESA is indexed/listed by the following:

• Crossref
• DHET Accredited
• DOAJ
• Open Archives Registry
• PKP Index
• Sabinet
• SciELO SA
• Scimago Journal & Country Rank
• Scopus
• SHERPA/RoMEO
• University of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry
• Web of Knowledge (WoK)
• Web of Science (IF 0.22)

Copyright & License Terms

Copyright remains with the author/s of the article/s.

All articles published in JESA can be re-used under the following CC license: CC BY-SA Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Usage & Impact

• Crossref
• Google Analytics (Editor & Journal Manager only)
• Google Scholar Metrics
• JESA on OJS (Editor & Journal Manager only)
• SciELO SA Metrics
• Scimago Journal & Country Rank
• Scopus
• Web of Science (IF 0.22)
• Google Scholar Citations Profile

Language Policy

Submissions should conform to linguistic and other conventions of UK English (including ‘-ise’ rather than ‘-ize’ suffixes).

Special Energy News and Advertisements

Special energy news include:

• conference papers;
• authoritative editorials;
• commentaries;
• topical reviews;
• book reviews;
• scientific correspondence;
• ‘news and views’ assessments by experts on the context and significance of articles in the peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary, conference reports and papers, and methodological updates.

Advertisements are also welcome and these may include a variety of appropriate energy-related material.

• Conference announcements.
• Academic job advertisements
• Climate, environment, science, engineering and technology products and services.
• Images in JPEG format (at a resolution of about 90dpi) and text in MS Word format.

All the special energy news and advertisements are subject to approval by the Managing Editor of JESA and ASSAf office.

Advertising rates

Table 1: Advertising rates.

Sponsors

• Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

Sources of Support

• Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

Journal History

This journal was established in 1990 at the Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town, South Africa. The Energy Research Centre was formed from merger of activities of the Energy Research Institute and the Energy Development Research Centre at the University of Cape Town.

Editors

1 January 2016 - currently: Dr Mokone J. Roberts PhD, Pr.Sci.Nat., MSAIMM