Sahel International Multidisciplinary Journal (SIMJ) is peer reviewed journal with the objectives
to explore, develop and elucidate in knowledge across a wide range of disciplines, to keep
Practitioners and Researchers informed on current issues, developments and best practices, thereby
serving as a platform for the exchange of ideas, knowledge and expertise in all fields of human
Endeavour.
SIMJ is a Journal of Federal Polytechnic Damaturu, Yobe State of Nigeria and sponsored by
Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund). The first and second edition of the Journal was
published in June and November, 2016. The third and fourth edition was published in December
2018 and 2019 respectively. Those volumes were distributed to various Libraries and tertiary
institutions across the country. The Journal has been receiving articles for publication across the
country as a result of wider publicity of its activities through posters and flyers that are usually
distributed across the country.
p-ISSN: 2408-6118 | e-ISSN: p-ISSN: 2630-6611
PUBLICATIONS: JUNE AND DECEMBER
SIMJ is currently indexed in the following indexing platforms are:
i. Google Scholar
ii. Academic Accelerator
iii. IJIFACTOR
OPEN ACCESS POLICY
SIMJ publishes fully open access journals, which means that all articles are available on the
internet to all users immediately upon publication. Non-commercial use and distribution in any
medium is permitted, provided the author and the journal are properly credited.
Benefits of open access for authors include:
- i. Free access for all users worldwide
- ii. Authors retain copyright to their work
- iii. Increased visibility and readership
- iv. Rapid publication
- v. No spatial constraints
LICENSE TERM
The non-commercial use of the article will be governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license as currently displayed on http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/,
PEER- REVIEW POLICY
All articles published in SIMJ must undergo peer review. Peer-review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers’ expert in the field.
SIMJ uses a double-blind review system in which the author and reviewer do not know each other. This ensures that there should be no conflict of interest, high confidentiality and for objective reviewing of articles for qualitative publications. Review takes approximately 6 weeks from date of receipt of paper. Papers submitted to SIMJ are usually sent out for review within a week. Articles will be subjected to and must pass a plagiarism check before it can be sent out for peer review.
A key policy is that articles submitted to SIMJ should not have been nor will be submitted to any other journal or conference while still under review or after being accepted for publication.
The contents of the articles are the sole opinion of the author(s) and not of SIMJ. SIMJ reserves the exclusive right to distribution of the published articles in any media.
A copyright and statement of originality documents will need to be filled out clearly and signed prior to publication of an accepted article.
PUBLICATION FREQUENCY
Two Issues are published in batches annually.
Issue 1 - June
Issue 2 - December
RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE AUTHORS
Before submitting any work to SIMJ the author(s) must make sure that:
i. the author(s) owns all of the rights in the work including the copyright in the work;
ii. the work is the author(s)’s own original work and is not copied wholly or substantially from any other work or material or any other source;
iii. the work does not infringe the copyright or other rights of any third party;
iv. the author(s) has the right to license or assign (as applicable) the copyright in the work;
v. the work or any version of it has not previously been published or submitted for publication except as specifically informed to SIMJ at the time of submission; and
vi. the author has not submitted the work or any substantially similar work to another publication and will not do so unless SIMJ decides not to publish the work.
PLAGIARISM POLICY
Policy in Relation to Plagiarism, Infringement of Copyright, Moral Rights and Submission of Multiple Publications.
Plagiarism is the act of dishonestly copying or using the work of another author as if it were your own without any acknowledgement. Plagiarism can take many forms including word to word copying of another work or simply copying the ideas from another work without attribution.
Plagiarism includes so called “self-plagiarism”, which is the submission of one’s own previously published material to a new publication, without informing the publisher of the new publication that the work has been previously published.
Sahel International Multidisciplinary Journal (SIMJ) will not tolerate submission of works to which contain plagiarised material or infringe the copyright or moral rights of third parties.
There is also a concern where authors submit the same work to multiple publications. This can waste the time of publishers and reviewers and this policy therefore aims to prevent this.
Authors have certain moral rights which include the right to object to derogatory treatment of a copyright work. Infringement of moral rights occurs if a person publishes commercially or communicates to the public a derogatory treatment of the work of another author. A derogatory treatment of a work is any addition to, deletion from or alteration to or adaptation of the work which amounts to distortion or mutilation of the work or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author. Moral rights of authors also include the right to be identified as the author of a copyright work (if the author has asserted this right), and breaching this right would also constitute an infringement of moral rights.
WHAT TO DO WHEN A WORK HAS BEEN SUBMITTED, BUT NOT PUBLISHED
If SIMJ becomes aware that a work may contain plagiarised material or infringe copyright or moral rights belonging to a third party before publication, SIMJ will contact the author(s) to highlight the issue that has arisen and ask for the author(s)’s explanation of the apparent problem.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of actions that may be taken by SIMJ in such circumstances:
- i. No response or unsatisfactory response: If no response is received or an unsatisfactory response is received to SIMJ’s query: the work may immediately be withdrawn from the editorial/review process and may not be published;
SIMJ may inform the author(s) that no further action with respect to progressing the reviewing/editorial handling of the work will take place and that SIMJ will not consider for publication works written by the author(s) for a period of 5 years; and the editor or editorial board of SIMJ publications and members of staff employed by SIMJ may also be informed of these actions only on a need to know basis.
- ii. Response admitting mistake: In the case of minor mistakes (for example omitting to include proper citation of the source of reproduced material) SIMJ may request from the author(s) some wording for use in noting any correction to the online version by adding a note to the metadata or adding an additional separate PDF, or in the case of a print version for use in printing an erratum note in a subsequent issue before progressing the editorial process.
- iii. In the case of misconduct, SIMJ may adopt any or all of the responses and actions listed above
- iv. Submitting a similar work to more than one publication: If prior to publication, it is found that an author(s) has submitted a work or substantially similar work concurrently to more than one publication without informing SIMJ, SIMJ will inform the author
- (a) that it believes the same work or substantially similar work had been submitted to another publication and
- (b) whether SIMJ will reject the work or would like to discuss publication of the work with the publisher of the other publication.
- v. If prior to publication, it is found that the work or a substantially similar work has already been published previously in another publication, SIMJ will inform the author that it believes the same work or a substantially similar work has been published in another publication and SIMJ may reject the work.
- vi. Any repeat occurrence may result in a similar process to that described in section 9.1 above except that SIMJ may not consider for publication works written by the author(s) for a period of 1 year.
WHAT TO DO WHEN A WORK HAS ALREADY BEEN PUBLISHED
If SIMJ has published a work and subsequently becomes aware of matters which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that the work contains plagiarised material or material that infringes copyright or moral rights then SIMJ may immediately withdraw the work from the relevant publication.
In respect of SIMJ Digital Library, the metadata, (Title and Authors) may be retained, but the PDF may be removed and replaced by a notice indicating the work is currently unavailable; and
If SIMJ withdraws publication of a work in this manner SIMJ may then follow the procedure set out in sections 11 and 12 below.
If SIMJ becomes aware that a work may contain plagiarised material or infringe copyright or moral rights belonging to a third party after publication, SIMJ will inform the author(s) that an issue has arisen and ask for the author(s)’s explanation of the apparent problem.
The following is a non-exhaustive list of actions that may be taken by SIMJ in such circumstances:
- 1. No response or unsatisfactory response: If no response is received or an unsatisfactory response is received to SIMJ’s query: the work may be withdrawn from the relevant publication:
- (i) In respect of SIMJ, the metadata, (Title and Authors) may be retained, but the PDF may be removed and replaced by a notice indicating the work has been retracted.
- (ii) SIMJ may request that it will simultaneously takes down the PDF from their database and leaves in place similar metadata and a similar retraction notice to that retained on SIMJ website.
- (iii) If the work has also been printed, in the next available issue of the publication SIMJ may publish a retraction note (included in the contents list) with respect to the work.
SIMJ may inform the author(s) that the work will be withdrawn from the relevant publication and that SIMJ may not consider for publication works written by the author(s) for a period of 5 years; and the editor or editorial board of SIMJ publications and members of staff employed by SIMJ may also be informed of these actions only on a need to know basis.
- 2. Response admitting mistake: If the author(s) responds admitting a mistake:
In the case of minor mistakes (for example omitting to include proper citation of the source of reproduced material) SIMJ may request from the author(s) some wording for use in noting any correction to the online version by adding a note to the metadata or adding an additional separate PDF, or in the case of a print version for use in printing an erratum note in a subsequent issue.
In the case of misconduct, SIMJ may adopt any or all of the responses and actions listed above.
Similar material published in more than one publication
- 3. Where it is discovered after publication of the work that the work or a substantially similar work has been published previously in another publication, SIMJ will inform the author that it believes the same work had been published in another publication and SIMJ may withdraw the work from SIMJ publication. Any repeat occurrence may result in a similar process to that described above except that SIMJ may not consider for publication works written by the author(s) for a period of 1 year.
DISCIPLINARY PROCEDURES FOR MEMBERS
Where the author(s) is a member of SIMJ and SIMJ believes that the author(s) may have acted contrary to the Bye-laws of SIMJ, tan then the matter may be referred to the Disciplinary Board of SIMJ together with the facts as known.
DISPUTES BETWEEN AUTHORS AND THIRD PARTIES
This section will be followed if there is a dispute between a third party and an author whereby a third party has made an allegation of plagiarism or infringement of copyright or moral rights against an author(s) of a work submitted to SIMJ for publication or published by SIMJ. Where such a dispute arises: the author(s) and the third party should endeavour to resolve their difficulties independently of SIMJ;
- (i) SIMJ will not act to decide the dispute between the third party and the author;
- (ii) SIMJ will not agree to act as an arbitrator or mediator on either a formal or an informal basis in any such dispute but does encourage the parties to resolve the matter amicably between themselves;
- (iii) SIMJ will decide for its own internal purposes on the basis of the procedures set out in the sections above, whether or not to publish a work or withdraw publication of a work if it has already been published; and
- (iv) SIMJ reserves the right not to publish any work that is the subject of a dispute until the dispute has been resolved.
When such a dispute is finally resolved through Court proceedings or by arbitration or mediation by the author(s) and the third party, and the outcome referred to SIMJ, a decision as to whether or not to publish a work, or re-instate a work which has been withdrawn, will be taken by SIMJ.
If SIMJ itself is accused of infringement of copyright or moral rights, SIMJ will take such steps as it deems appropriate to defend its interests.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners: The Federal Polytechnic, PMB 1006, Damaturu, Yobe State in Nigeria
INFORMATION FOR CONTRIBUTORS
The Sahel International Multi-disciplinary Journal (SIMJ) is a biannual journal that focuses on all disciplines. It welcomes well informed papers and research articles that can contribute to National Development.
The journal is expected to contribute to nation-building through science and Technology, peace-building and conflict resolution strategies, promotion of viable economic ideals, Socio-political issues, etc. by providing an avenue for the constructive analysis through research.
To publish in the journal, authors are expected to send in a well-researched manuscript of not more than 15 pages (A4 size double spaced pages) written in English Language. Book reviews should not be more than 13 pages, APA style of referencing.
Articles for publication MUST not have been published or submitted elsewhere.
Note:
Contributors are liable for any article that has been published elsewhere.
Articles for publications should be sent to simj2015@yahoo.com