Policies

Governance Policy

The editor’s position is discussed annually, at the last SASAE Board meeting of the year. Members of the editorial board are not appointed competitively, and are retained as long as they are willing to serve on the board. Members of the editorial board are from inside and outside the country, and they handle peer review of individual manuscripts, as well as give advice on editorial policies/practices. The editorial guidelines have been aligned with the ASSAf National Code of Best Practice.

General Editorial Policy

1. Only original scientific contributions relating to agricultural extension will be considered for publication. By "scientific originality" is meant:

Original thought and
Responsible scientific reasoning.

2. Conclusions must as far as possible be empirically founded.

3. Because of the multi-disciplinary nature of agricultural extension, contributions from other learned disciplines can also be considered for publication on condition that the articles under consideration have sufficient bearing on agricultural extension.

4. Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that the material has not been published previously, and is not being submitted elsewhere.

5. To facilitate the international exchange of knowledge, articles should be written in English.

Acknowledgment of Authors, Reviewers and Editors

Authors, reviewers and editors can submit hours worked on research articles in order to qualify for CPD points. The condition is that the individual needs to be a member of a professional body e.g. SACNASP. Login to the SACNASP portal for example, submit it to category 3B (Individual Activities) as part of the individual SACNASP portfolio, and also attach evidence of work done. The latter can be in the form of an email, screen capture or other, as long as it confirms and provides evidence that the work has been done. Important: It must be done by the editor/reviewer/author him/herself and is not the responsibility of the journal.

Remember - different disciplines have different professional bodies (SAQA Accredited) and might use different CPD systems. Please enquire with your SAQA accredited professional body in case of doubt.

Article Processing Charges

Before the reviewing of an article can proceed, non-members of SASAE are required to pay a reviewing fee of US$ 45.00 which is non-refundable. The reviewing forms part of the publication fee for non-members of SASAE of US$ 10.00 per page on the receipt of written confirmation by the editor on successful screening of the article.

Article Processing Charges are payable to the following:

Account Name: SASAE
Bank: ABSA Bank
Account no: 540 810 257
Branch code: 334 334
EFT branch code: 632 005
SWIFT Code: ABSA JJ ZA

Reference: Name and Surname or invoice number.

Proof of payments can be sent to the SASAE Secretariat at secretariat@sasae.co.za

Peer Review Policy

All submitted articles are peer reviewed by three independent adjudicators to determine whether an article can (or cannot) be published. A double-blind peer review process is followed. Review reports are accessibly retained in the archives.

In order to maintain the integrity of the review process, reviewers are required to keep the manuscript under review confidential. The manuscript under review are not to be shared or discussed with anyone outside the Editorial Office without specific permission from the editor-in-chief. All communication related to the manuscript are to be done through the editor-in-chief.

When a review has been completed and submitted, reviewers are requested to destroy all copies of downloaded or printed manuscript files, as these are the property of the submitting authors.

Reviewers are requested to consider the following when conducting the review:

General presentation: Is the writing concise, clear, and well organised?
Consistency: Do all sections of the manuscript consistently reflect the major point being made?
Length: Should the paper or parts of it be shortened or expanded?
Findings: Are findings new, unique, convincing, interesting?
Abstract: Does it accurately reflect and summarise the paper?
Introduction: Is the research question or hypothesis clearly stated?
Methods and statistical design: Are the methods valid for the question asked? Are they current? Are they clearly presented so that the work can be replicated by other researchers? Are sample sizes adequate? Are the statistical analyses appropriate, correct?
Results and data: Are they clearly summarized? Are data in the text and tables/figures consistent? Are tables/figures included necessary? Is information needlessly repeated?
Discussion: Are the conclusions justified and interpretations sound? Are the limitations of the study noted?
Citations: Are the cited references pertinent and current? Do they support any assertions of fact not addressed by the data presented in this paper?
Figures: Are figures of high quality and clearly labeled? Are legends and titles clear?

Reviewers are required to comment on the manuscript in MSWord through the use of Track Changes, to submit the online review form, and include any additional comments in the comment box provided. Reviewers will also be requested to make a recommendation related to the manuscript through selecting one of the following:

Accept Submission – there may be minor concerns or corrections
Revisions Required – concerns or corrections should be checked by the editor before final acceptance
Resubmit for Review – the paper cannot be published without significant improvements and must go for another round of review (preferably by the same reviewers, if they are still available)
Decline – the paper is not fit to publish and should not be resubmitted

Conflicts of Interest Policy

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) defines conflicts of interest as “those which may not be fully apparent and may influence the judgement of authors, reviewers and editors”. A conflict of interest can be described as “those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived”. Conflicts of interest can be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. Such interests must be declared by authors, reviewers and editors. In case of uncertainty, rather disclose.

Reviewer Competing Interests

Reviewers are requested to reveal any potential competing interest – financial or personal – that may bias a review of the submitted manuscript.

Author Competing Interests

Authors are requested to consider any issues of bias that arise based on the content of the paper and the authors’ affiliations. Share any concerns with the editors in the Confidential Comments to Editor.

Plagiarism Policy

If plagiarism is detected during review, a paper may be summarily rejected and will not be accepted unless even minor infringements are corrected. Should plagiarism be detected after a paper is published, the editor reserves the right to withdraw a paper from publication. We expect authors to be honest in representing work as their own, and to respect the time and effort our reviewers put in without an undue burden of policing plagiarism, and hence take violations seriously. All submissions are screened through iThenticate.

Errata (Retractions, Corrections & Appeal) Policy

Errata are published when necessary. When articles are deemed severely plagiarised by the editor-in-chief, or when publications are deemed redundant or contain data errors, these may be retracted, removed or replaced. A notice of retraction will be published and include the particulars of the publication (title and authors) and the reason for retraction.

Digital Preservation Policy

SAJAE utilises both the Portico and the PKP Preservation Network (PN) systems to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. Click here to view SAJAE in the Portico Keeper's Registry.

Copyright Policy

Copyright of all published manuscript/articles subsists in the author/s. This means that the author has full control over the work (e.g. retains the right to reuse, distribute, republish etc.). While SAJAE retains right of first publication, subsequent re-publication is expressly permitted provided the original SAJAE publication is acknowledged and cited. Authors may enter into additional arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the SAJAE-published version of the work (e.g., post it to a repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Licensing Policy

An Attribution 4.0 International Creative Commons License (CC BY 4.0) applies to all articles published in SAJAE.

Open Access Policy

SAJAE is an Open Access journal, supporting the Budapest Open Access Initiative principles: “By ‘open access’ to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.” Therefore, copyright remains with the author/s of the article/s.

AI Policy

Use of AI and large language models

The introduction and availability of AI- and large language model (LLM)-based tools has created opportunities in the scholarly research and publishing environments, but has also presented challenges with respect to transparency, credibility, and accountability. The South African Journal of Agriculture Extension recognises the benefits of these tools that relate to efficiencies, but advocates for the responsible use thereof.

Authors are urged to be aware of the limitations and possible biases of these tools. Irrespective of the tool used or the context thereof, authors alone remain fully responsible for the scientific integrity of their submissions, including for any breach in publishing ethics, such as copyright infringements.

This policy guides the use of such tools pertaining to submissions to the South African Journal of Agriculture Extension. This policy is informed by the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and SciELO’s ‘Guidelines for the Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools and Resources in Research Communication’.

Authors

All authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript. Authors submitting manuscripts to the South African Journal of Agriculture Extension attest in the publishing agreement, inter alia, that the manuscript is their original work and does not contain any unlawful content and does not infringe any existing third-party copyright, moral right or other intellectual property rights; and that the work of others has been appropriately attributed. As such, AI-generated content will not be considered for publication. Any submission found to include AI-generated content will be declined [or retracted if already published] and the Journal’s Policy on Publishing Ethics will come into effect.

The above mandate notwithstanding, AI and large language models may be used to edit descriptive (non-data) images, revise and edit writing, and seek and summate existing literature. Such use and the extent thereof must be declared at the time of submission in the cover letter and detailed in the Methods or Acknowledgements. The declaration of such a use should include the name, version, and manufacturer of the tool used, and the date on which it was accessed, for example:
(Chat GTP 3.5, Version 28 August 2023, Open AI, accessed 16 September 2023)
The ‘prompt’ or plain-language instruction entered in the tool should also be provided, either in the Methods section of the manuscript or as supplementary material to the manuscript.

Where AI tools or large language models have been used, for example, in the conception and design of a study, editing of non-data images, or in editing or revising the writing, such contributions do not meet the criteria for authorship.

The use of tools specifically for spelling and grammar checks, similarity checking, and reference management is fully permitted and does not need to be disclosed.

Reviewers

Reviewers are responsible for the content of their review reports and for adhering to the Confidentiality Policy. AI-generated review reports will not be considered. All submitted manuscripts and correspondence with the Editorial Office should be treated as confidential and not shared in any way. Uploading any part of a manuscript into a large language model or similar tool is a violation of our Confidentiality Policy.
Reviewers who use an AI tool as a resource for peer review, in a way that does not violate the Confidentiality Policy, must disclose and detail this use in the review form and provide the name, version, and manufacturer of the tool used as well as the prompt provided.

Editors

A similarity check is performed on submitted manuscripts that undergo peer review.
The Journal does not use any tools to replace the work of peer reviewers in the evaluation of manuscripts, and editors of the South African Journal of Agriculture Extension do not use AI-based tools in the writing of their decision letters.

The table summarises these stipulations as they may be applicable to authors:

Example	AI can be used	Use must be disclosed
Writing/generating any part of a manuscript e.g. "Write 3000 words on [specific topic], covering key concepts, recent developments, methodologies, and potential future directions." e.g. “Write an Introduction to the below text and add key references.”	No	n/a
Creating images	No	n/a
Modifying data images, e.g. gel images, micrographs	No	n/a
Conception and design of study e.g. “Evaluate this study protocol to identify possible confounding factors.”	Yes	Yes
Editing, translating and summarising papers or large sections of writing e.g. “Provide recommendations to improve readability of the text.” e.g. “Edit the text to reduce to 250 words while preserving content, intention and clarity.”	Yes	Yes
Editing non-data images	Yes	Yes
Grammar checking and copyediting tools	Yes	No
Similarity checking tools	Yes	No
Reference managers	Yes	No

The use of AI tools in scholarly publishing is expected to evolve, and this policy will be revised as needed.
We welcome feedback on this policy from all users. Send your feedback to swanepoeljw@ufs.ac.za

Based on the AI & LLM policy of the South African Journal of Science.

Revised April 2024

Disclaimer

Neither the editorial staff, the Editorial Board nor the publisher accepts responsibility for opinions or viewpoints expressed, or for the correctness of facts and figures. The SASAE does not necessarily subscribe to the opinions /conclusions expressed by authors in the journal. Authors carry full responsibility themselves regarding the correctness of their publications.