Submissions

Author Guidelines

Thank you for choosing the DBSA: African Journal of Infrastructure Development (DAJID) as a platform to showcase your research. Please note the instructions outlined below:

All submissions should be in English and may take the form of scholarly articles, review articles, practical library work, short communications, book reviews or letters to the editor. Items that have been published elsewhere should be submitted only with permission of the original publisher, and this should be clearly indicated.

Review Process

All manuscripts are reviewed by an editor and members of the Editorial Board or qualified outside reviewers. Authors cannot nominate reviewers. Only reviewers randomly selected from our database with specialisation in the subject area will be contacted to evaluate the manuscripts. The process will be blind review. Decisions will be made as rapidly as possible, and the journal strives to return reviewers’ comments to authors as quickly as possible. The editorial board will re-review manuscripts that are accepted pending revision. It is the goal of the DAJID to publish manuscripts within the shortest possible time after submission.

Preparing a Regular Article  

All portions of the manuscript must be typed in 1.5 spacing and all pages numbered, starting from the title page.

The Title should be a brief phrase describing the contents of the paper. The Initial Title Page should not include the authors' names and affiliations. This will be requested after the review process is done. 

The Abstract should be informative and completely self-explanatory, briefly presenting the topic, stating the scope of the experiments, indicating significant data, and pointing out major findings and conclusions. The Abstract should be 100 to 300 words in length. Complete sentences, active verbs, and the third person should be used, and the abstract should be written in the past tense. Standard nomenclature should be used and abbreviations should be avoided. No literature should be cited.  Following the abstract, between 3 to 10 key words that will provide indexing references should be listed.  A list of non-standard Abbreviations should be added. In general, non-standard abbreviations should be used only when the full term is very long and used often. Each abbreviation should be spelled out and introduced in parentheses the first time it is used in the text. 

The Introduction should provide a clear statement of the problem, the relevant literature on the subject, and the proposed approach or solution. It should be understandable to colleagues from a broad range of scientific disciplines.  

Materials and methods should be complete enough to allow experiments to be reproduced. However, only truly new procedures should be described in detail; previously published procedures should be cited, and important modifications of published procedures should be mentioned briefly. Capitalize trade names and include the manufacturer's name and address. Subheadings should be used. Methods in general use need not be described in detail.

Results should be presented with clarity and precision. The results should be written in the past tense when describing findings in the authors’ experiments. Previously published findings should be written in the present tense. Results should be explained, but largely without referring to the literature.  Discussion, speculation and detailed interpretation of data should not be included in the Results but should be put into the Discussion section.

The Discussion should interpret the findings in view of the results obtained in this and in past studies on this topic.  State the conclusions in a few sentences at the end of the paper. The Results and Discussion sections can include sub-headings, and when appropriate, both sections can be combined.

The Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be brief.

Tables should be kept to a minimum and be designed to be as simple as possible. Tables are to be typed in double-spacing throughout, including headings and footnotes. Each table should be on a separate page, numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals and supplied with a heading and a legend. Tables should be self-explanatory without reference to the text. The details of the methods used in the experiments should preferably be described in the legend instead of in the text.  The same data should not be presented in both table and graph form or repeated in the text.

Figure legends should be typed in numerical order on a separate sheet. Graphics should be prepared using applications capable of generating high resolution GIF, TIFF, JPEG or PowerPoint before pasting in the Microsoft Word manuscript file. Tables should be prepared in Microsoft   Word.   Use   Arabic   numerals   to designate figures and upper-case letters for their parts (Figure 1). Begin each legend with a title and include sufficient description so that the figure is understandable without reading the text of the manuscript. Information given in legends should not be repeated in the text.

References: In the text, a reference identified by means of an author‘s name should be followed by the date of the reference in parentheses. When there are more than two authors, only the first author‘s name should be mentioned, followed by ’et al ‘.  In the event that an author cited has had two or more works published during the same year, the reference, both in the text and in the reference list, should be identified by a lower case letter like ’a‘ and ’b‘ after the date to distinguish  the works.

Examples:

Aigbavboa (2012), Aigbavboa et al. (2012), (Thwala, 2000), (Aigbavboa and Thwala, 2012), (Aigbavboa, 2008; Lesito, 2007a, b; Aigbavboa, 2010, 2011), (Thwala et al., 2001)

References should be listed at the end of the paper in alphabetical order.  Articles in preparation or articles submitted for publication, unpublished observations, and personal communications should not be included in the reference list but should only be mentioned in the article text (e.g., A. Kingori, University of Nairobi, Kenya, personal communication).  Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy of the references.

Examples:

Aigbavboa C.O. (2010). Residential satisfaction in low-income housing: a South Africa perspective. Journal of Construction Project Management and Innovation, 1(2): 14 – 20.

Aigbavboa C.O. and Lesito K. (2012). ICT benefit in South Africa Construction. Journal of Construction Project Management and Innovation, 2(2): 75 – 81.

Preparing a Short Communication

Short Communications are limited to a maximum of two figures and one table. They should present a complete study that is more limited in scope than is found in full-length papers. The items of manuscript preparation listed above apply to Short Communications with the following differences: (1) Abstracts are limited to 300 words; (2) instead of a separate Materials and Methods section, experimental procedures may be incorporated into Figure Legends and Table footnotes; (3) Results and Discussion should be combined into a single section.

Proofs and Reprints: Electronic proofs will be sent (email attachment) to the corresponding author as a PDF file.  Page proofs are considered to be the final version of the manuscript. With the exception of typographical or minor clerical errors, no changes will be made in the manuscript at the proof stage.