Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

Koedoe is a peer reviewed, open access journal, published since 1958, that promotes science and environmental conservation in Africa. Published by South African National Parks since the journal’s inception, Koedoe joined OpenJournals Publishing in 2007.

Koedoe, with its new subtitle “African Protected Area Conservation and Science” aims to provide a forum for all aspects of protected area science and management in order to facilitate integration and shared learning. Koedoe publishes original papers on all aspects of conservation science, as well as on policy and management related issues. This journal provides novel, exciting and baseline scientific information on many conservation areas in South Africa as well as on the African continent generally.

With its platform in the open access arena, Koedoe is well positioned to become the journal of choice for conservation scientists, ecologists, biologists and protected area practitioners across Africa. We aim to include all forms of protected areas, from large state national parks to small regional and local game and nature reserves, cultural and environmental heritage areas to private conservation endeavours Underlying the conservation science we promote is how scientific and policy research in one place might become relevant to other protected areas in similar settings.

In this way, we aim to facilitate knowledge generation and information sharing around the African continent, and even beyond. To this end, we have introduced a new structured abstract format that concludes with a section entitled “Conservation Implications”, in which authors are explicitly requested to defend the relevance of their work to a broader constituency.

Disseminating reliable scientific and policy information is increasingly vital as global biodiversity faces increasing pressures and protected areas become more important in maintaining habitats, species, ecosystem services and in ensuring environmental resilience. However, the protected areas estate is increasingly fragmented under pressure from development and global climate change. Africa’s unique socio-ecological systems, together with some of the largest protected areas in the world are of planetary importance. Moreover, tourism initiatives are frequently centred on protected areas, thus providing economic stimulus in otherwise marginalised regions.

The journal works towards understanding, documenting and mitigating the negative influences of human development on conservation areas within the context of complex socio-ecological interactions. Koedoe publishes exciting original research, essays, short communications on issues of general interest, in-depth and critical reviews, monographs on large datasets and complicated issues, and book reviews on new releases.

 

Section Policies

Original Research

Reports on complete, comprehensive pieces of original research in the area of conservation and science whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important discovery and/or problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications in conservation sciences and its management. (Between 4500 – 7000 words, maximum of 60 references)

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Review Article

May be submitted, or solicited by the editor. Inform a broad readership about fields in which there have been recent, important advances of immense, fundamental importance and highlight unresolved questions and future directions. Only one to two reviews are likely to be published annually. (Between 2500 – 4000 words, maximum of 40 references). Standard headings are not always appropriate, but the review should have clear sub-headings to provide order to the manuscript

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Essay

Short opinion piece or personal perspectives (not research papers) on any fundamental conservation concept and/or development that highlights recent exciting research or policy developments. As these are meant to express a personal viewpoint, with rare exception Essays should have no more than two authors. (Between 1000 – 2000 words). Standard headings are not always appropriate, but the essay should have clear sub-headings to provide order to the manuscript

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Short Communication

A Short Communication is a concise, but complete, description of a limited investigation, which will not be included in a later paper. Short Communications should be as completely documented, both by reference to the literature and description of the experimental procedures employed, as an original resaerch paper. (Betweeen 500 - 1000 words, maximum 10 references)

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Letter

Discussions on material, whereby the authors raise their opinion on a particular aspect of area conservation or their reaction to a previously published paper in Koedoe. This section encourages debate amongst authors and readers on topical issues of national and global importance to the field of protected area and conservation. Letters will be published at the editors discretion. In the case of critical letters, the original author will be given an opportunity to provide a short rebuttal which will be published along with the critical letter (Up to 800 words)

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Comment

Invited by the editor to provide a critique on a potentially controversial article. The comment piece will be published along with the original article. Comments will not normally receive a rebuttal from the author of the original article (Less than 2000 words).

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Book Review

Normally requested by the editor or book-review editor on any books relevant to all aspects of conservation. Please contact the editor if you would like to suggest a review or book for consideration

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

Peer reviewers are asked to make every reasonable effort to ensure the following criteria are taken into account for submitted manuscripts they have agreed to peer review:

  • All manuscripts submitted for review will undergo a double-blind review process.
  • Unbiased consideration should be given to each manuscript, judging each on its merits without regard to the race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority or institutional affiliation of the author.
  • Manuscripts should be dealt with and processed according to the timeframes set out by OJP.
  • The quality of the manuscript, and its experimental and theoretical work, its interpretations, and its exposition will be judged objectively.
  • The peer review process will be kept confidential.
  • Conflicts of interest must be declared.
  • Referees' judgements must be explained and supported. Any statement that an observation, derivation or argument has been previously reported must be accompanied by the relevant citation, and unsupported assertions must be avoided.
  • Whilst the review of a manuscript may justify criticism, even severe criticism, under no circumstances is personal or malicious criticism of the author appropriate or acceptable.
  • Reviewers may be asked to re-appraise a manuscript that was referred back to the authors after a first-round review.
  • In cases where reviewers provide substantively different ratings, a manuscript will be sent to an arbitrator for a final verdict.
  • Reviewers respect the confidentiality of the review process and the proprietary rights of those who have submitted manuscripts.
  • Reviewers must decline a request to review others’ manuscripts if they are aware of a conflict of interest, or they should disclose the nature of the conflict of interest to the Editor.
  • Reviewers may decline the request to review the work of others if they believe the process may be biased or if they have questions about the authenticity or integrity of the reported research.

If you would like to become a reviewer, please visit the following link for reference on how to conduct a review. This will serve as guidance for your review.

Following the review the Editor will evaluate the review reports and make a final decision.

The outcome will be categorised as one of the following:

  • Acceptable as is (apart from editorial changes)
  • Acceptable, but requires minor revision (to the satisfaction of the Editor)
  • Requires major revision and reconsideration (Requires re-review)
  • Reject, not acceptable for publication in Koedoe

 

 

Publication Frequency

Koedoe publishes one issue per year, but individual papers will be published as soon as they are ready, by adding them to the "current" volume and issue’s table of contents. In this way, Koedoe aims to speed up the process of manuscript publication, from submission to becoming available on the website.

 

Open Access Policy

Publishing an open-access online journal is not without costs, and OpenJournals Publishing defrays these costs from article-processing charges, which we will collect from the authors. We believe that immediate, world-wide, barrier-free, online open-access to the full text of research articles is in the best interest for the scientific and non-scientific communities. Koedoe provides immediate online open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

In an endeavour to enhance their support for conservation globally, SANParks have implemented a sponsorship for all authors submitting to Koedoe, please read the sponsorship policy.

 

Archiving

Koedoe utilises the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Also, Koedoe is abstracted and indexed at:

  • Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Thomson Reuters Services, Philidelphia, PA, U.S.A. http://www.scientific.thomson.com
    • Zoological Records
    • BIOSIS Preview
  • Google Scholar http://www.googlescholar.com
  • Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.co.za
  • Biological Abstracts
  • Forest Production Abstracts
  • Fishlit
  • Geographical Abstracts
  • Helminthological Abstracts
  • Herbage Abstracts
  • Index to South African Periodicals
  • International Bibliography of Periodical Literature
  • Index Veterinarius
  • Revue of Applied Entomology
  • Soils and Fertility Abstracts
  • The Serials Directory
  • Veterinary Bulletin
  • Wildlife Review

 

Sponsorship Policy

Authors can submit articles without incurring any cost towards publication if the article falls within the sponsorship policy.

Policy
SANParks sponsors articles under the following conditions: 1. Article falls within the journal’s focus area 2. Article conforms to the instructions to authors in terms of length and other requirements 3. The length of the article is less or equal to 10 pages in its galley format. [Note: SANParks will sponsor the first 10 pages of the manuscript, and authors will be billed for each page thereafter.]

The decision to hold back the SANParks sponsorship is at the discretion of the Editorial Board and can be acted upon if the submission does not fall within the conditions. Funding for these articles will be retrieved from the author.

 

Department of Education Accreditation (South Africa)

Approved South African Journal: Koedoe meets all the DOE criteria and has DOE accreditation in the subsidy system for research publications.

 

Citation Information

Koedoe is indexed in Scopus and its impact factor is calculated by SCImago

Please note that the Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) is a weighted impact factor, adapted to reflect the relative importance of the journals citing this journal. The SJR is calculated over a 3 year period.

SCImago Journal & Country Rank

 

Origin of the name Koedoe

Koedoe cover

Many readers of Koedoe have either wondered about the meaning of the word Koedoe or about how it became the title of the journal. The word Koedoe is the Afrikaans term for Kudu (Tragelaphus strepsiceros), the large, graceful antelope that is the corporate logo of South African National Parks.

In the 1950s it was decided that the research conducted in South Africa’s national parks was of sufficiently high quality to be published in a specialist journal and the first issue of Koedoe appeared in 1958. At the time there were two official languages in South Africa, Afrikaans (a local language that had formally emerged in the nineteenth-century) and English. The Afrikaans subtitle was Tydskrif vir wetenskaplike navorsing in die Nasionale Parke van die Unie van Suid-Afrika, and the English Journal for scientific research in the National Parks of the Union of South Africa.


During that period the overriding majority of officials in SANParks were Afrikaans-speaking, and official internal correspondence was almost exclusively in Afrikaans. However, English was used together with Afrikaans in notices to visitors and members of the public. In addition, most scientists preferred to publish in English and gain a wide readership, although many were trying to promote Afrikaans as a scientific language. Koedoe and many other South African journals would accept papers in Afrikaans with English summaries.

With a new constitution and new government after 1994, there was a move to use English as the principal language of communication, not only in SANParks but throughout all government and organs of state, although there are eleven official languages in South Africa.

English is also the language of the scientific world and by far the majority of international scientists read and publish in English-language journals. Thus, in order for Koedoe to be relevant to – and supported by – scientists across Africa and the globe, it is now only published in English. However, as we would like to recognise the 50-year publishing history of the journal, together with the fact that many libraries contain a full run of issues, the name Koedoe has been retained. We have, however, added a new sub-title, African Protected Area Conservation and Science, in order to clarify the focus of this journal and to encourage scientists in the many fields that comprise protected area science to contribute to it.



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