About the Journal

The Defence Innovation and Management in Africa (DIMA) journal is a scholarly publication that is published twice per year, excluding special issues. DIMA focuses on matters pertaining to innovation and management within the military, defence and security sectors. It provides a platform for sharing research findings and perspectives on current and future developments in these sectors, thus empowering policy-makers, analysts, academics, students and practitioners for their purposes. DIMA promotes inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research through publication of research products from both natural and social sciences.

All submissions are subjected to a blind peer-review process which is premised on anonymity and confidentiality principles for the author and the reviewers.

All queries may be directed to the Editor at: DimaEditor@sun.ac.za

 

Publication Frequency

Journal articles are published collectively as part of an Issue, twice a year.

When applicable a "special issue" will be published.

 

Open Access Policy

DIMA is an open-access journal, which means that all content is freely accessible to users and their institutions without any associated charges.  Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, as underwritten by the license CC BY NC ND 4.0, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. 

Double blind peer review

DIMA is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal, meaning that the author(s) do not know who the reviewers are, and vice versa. Their identities are never disclosed to each other. This unwavering commitment to anonymity ensures a rigorous, scholarly, fair, and unbiased review process for all submitted articles. The Journal  subscribes to the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) Code of Best Practice in Scholarly Journal Publishing, Editing and Peer Review (See ASSAF Code of Best Practice ).

Code of Conduct

Publication ethics and malpractice statement

1. Publication and authorship:

  • Authors must list all references used in/for the article
  • Authors must acknowledge financial support received and from which organization or firm
  • Authors acknowledge that the article/s is their own original work and that no other author's work has been used without referencing or in a manner which constitutes plagiarism.
  • Authors acknowledge that their data is real and verifiable and that no fraudulent data is used
  • Authors may not submit an article that has been published in another journal; nor may they submit to other journals when published in SAJHE. Articles must be published exclusively in SAJHE


2. Author's responsibilities:

  • Authors are obliged to participate in the review process and refusal to do so may result in articles not being published or retracted
  • Only people who contributed significantly to the research and/or article can be listed as "author". People who contributed in a lesser role must be acknowledged as ˜contributor"
  • Authors must provide retractions or corrections of any mistakes found by the reviewers


3. Peer review / responsibility of reviewers:

  • Judgments will be objective
  • Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funders of the research
  • Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited
  • Reviewers will treat reviewed articles as confidential


4. Editorial responsibilities:

  • The editor-in-chief has complete authority to reject or accept articles
  • Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject or accept
  • The editor/s will only accept a paper when reasonably certain that all conditions have been met by the author/s
  • The editor will promote the publication of corrections or retractions when errors are found in published work
  • The editor will preserve the anonymity of the reviewers


5. Publishing ethics issues

  • The editorial board will monitor and safeguard the publishing ethics of the journal
  • The guidelines for retracting articles are as follows:
    • Articles that are seriously flawed and unreliable will be retracted. Redundant articles (published in other journals prior to SAJHE) will be retracted. Change of authorship or minor errors will not lead to retraction but to the publishing of a correction notice.
    • Notices of retraction will clearly state the reason and the retracted article will be clearly marked in all electronic versions of the journal, and a retraction notice will be published in the print copy of the journal.
  • The journal will not compromise intellectual or ethical standards in favour of the business needs of the journal
  • The editorial board will maintain the integrity of the academic record of the journal
  • The editorial board will always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
  • No plagiarism and no fraudulent data will be tolerated in the journal

 

Guiding Acts and documents

The ethical conduct of all operations of the Journal is guided, inter alia, by the following Acts and documents:

  1. Chapter 7 of the South African Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 ('POPIA'). See ASSAf POPIA code of conduct for research.
  2. SCIELO guidelines on best practices for strengthening ethics in scientific publication.
  3. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
  4. Global Social Work Statement of Ethical Principles.

 

Unbiased, offensive, and derogatory language

 Manuscripts must be free of biased, offensive, or derogatory language.  Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, is sensitive to differences and conveys respect to all people.

Digital Preservation

DIMA is in the process of migrating from the Stellenbosch University preservation platform to the PKP PN (Preservation Network) platform.

ORCID iD

This journal programme cannot read the ORCID iD.  Please do not add it when you Register or when submitting a paper.

After Registration, can you Edit your Profile and then insert the ORCID iD, or please send your ORCiD ID, along with the name of the journal to, scholar@sun.ac.za to add to your Profile.

Stellenbosch University researchers/authors can create an ORCID iD here.

ORCID iD is a persistent, unique, numeric identifier for individual researchers and creators. It distinguishes you from researchers and creators with the same or similar names.   ORCID iD is similar to ResearcherID, Scopus Author ID, ISNI and other systems for identifying and distinguishing researchers and creators.