Author Guidelines

Submissions will generally be articles subjected to peer-review process, but JESA will also consider ‘Special energy news’ items: authoritative editorials, commentaries, topical reviews, book reviews, scientific correspondence, ‘news and views’ assessments by experts on the context and significance of peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary articles, conference reports and papers, and methodological updates as well as advertisements.

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.

Agreement by authors when submitting manuscripts to JESA

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for publication elsewhere, and will not be submitted for publication elsewhere unless rejected by the journal or withdrawn by the author. Neither the editorial staff, the board nor the publisher accepts responsibility for the opinions or viewpoints expressed, or for the correctness of facts and figures.

Article Processing Fees

The JESA will be introducing article processing charge (APC) at R5000 per submission, 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.

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.

NB: See previous papers for an indication of conventions and practices not covered in the points below.

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 PV 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

Again, see published articles in a recent edition of JESA for stylistic models.

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 is the software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references on the Windows; and is a downloadable MS Word plug-in recommended by Thomson Reuters and endorsed by most journals and universities. Other tools such as Mendeley can also be used, including manual systems.

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.  

Peer review

The journal uses a double-blind peer-review process and continues to expand its reviewer database to facilitate a quicker turnaround of publications. Authors are, therefore, requested to give four proposed reviewers with their credentials when they make submissions (credentials include: title, name and surname, including middle initial when available, organisation or institution, discipline or faculty or department, position or role, email address), under 'Comments to the Editor' during Step 1 of submission process. Potential reviewers can most likely be those that have published in at least one accredited international journal in the last five years and may be sourced from the list of your references. Reviewers must have expert knowledge of the topic. Any possible conflict of interest with the proposed reviewer must be disclosed to the editor. Such a conflict of interest would include the following.

When the proposed reviewer:

•           has co-authored with current authors;

•           was in the same organisation/institution as the authors’ in the last three years;

•           has played a role in funding mechanisms for the research;

•           has personal/special relationships with the resources of research (e.g. equipment suppliers, authors, employees of affected organisation and owners of technology); and

•           is associated with the competitors or the opposing views.

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.

How to add proposed reviewers in the open-access system used by JESA.

At the end of the open-access submission process STEP 1, under Comments for the Editor.