Development Southern Africa

Journal of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) Visit the organisation site

Published By: Routledge

Volume Number: 28

Frequency: 5 issues per year

Print ISSN: 0376-835X

Online ISSN: 1470-3637

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Instructions for Authors

This journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts (previously Manuscript Central) to peer review manuscript submissions. Please read the guide for ScholarOne authors before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

We ask authors to follow these guidelines when preparing papers for submission to Development Southern Africa. This will help us to produce the journal more speedily and efficiently.

1. Author information

In a separate document, supply the following details in full for all authors (i.e. including co-authors):

First name and surname, e.g. Jane Mfundisi, James L Brown.
Designation/position, e.g. Senior Lecturer, Professor. (Note that in the case of a student author the level must be specified, i.e. PhD or Master's.)
Programme/department/organisation/institution, e.g. School of Government, University of the Western Cape, Bellville.
Full postal address, telephone (mobile and landline) and fax numbers and e-mail address.
Where there is more than one author, highlight the corresponding author's name and email address.
Postal addresses of all the authors (required by the publishers should the article be accepted).

2. Peer review

Articles being considered for publication will be submitted to at least two referees.

3. Submission of papers

All submissions should be made online at the Development Southern Africa ScholarOne Manuscripts site. New users should first create an account. Once a user is logged onto the site submissions should be made via the Author Centre.

Authors should prepare and upload a complete anonymised text to be sent to referees and a separate version containing any acknowledgements and author names should also be uploaded.

Use your surname to label your file(s), e.g. ‘Anderson.doc', ‘Anderson tables.doc', Anderson figures.doc.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a means of making your article more visible to anyone who might be looking for it. Please consult our guidance here.

4. Tables and figures

Submit all tables and figures (i.e. diagrams, graphs, maps) in a separate MSWord document.
Mark in the text the places where the tables and figures should be inserted, thus: [INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE].
Supply an appropriate caption for each table and figure. Captions for figures must be outside, not inside, the text box containing the figure. Place table captions above the table. Place figure captions below the figure.
Do not create a table using tabs or the space bar. Use the MSWord table function.
Do not use the space bar to align items in a table – use right/centre/left justification as appropriate.
Maps should contain essential information only and be as clear as possible. Details and features should not be cramped or too small. Use only high resolution jpeg or tiff files.
Acknowledge the source below the table or figure, if not created by the author.
Please note that Development Southern Africa is not printed in colour.
Please submit a black and white version of all colour illustrations, to avoid possible technical complications when converting to ‘gray-scale'.
If you submit colour figures, then these figures will appear on the website.
Do not add footnotes to tables or figures. Place any explanatory notes directly beneath the table or figure.

5. Copyright

Your paper must be accompanied by a signed statement by the author(s) that publication in Development Southern Africa would not contravene any copyright or other contractual agreements relevant to the paper or the research on which it is based. If a substantial amount of the material in your paper exists in another form on the internet, for example in the proceedings of a conference, please supply an acknowledgement.

Authors are themselves responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce copyright material from other sources. Further information can be found at http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/permission.asp

Should your submission be accepted, it is a condition of publication that authors assign copyright or licence the publication rights in their articles, including abstracts, to Development Bank of Southern Africa. This enables us to ensure full copyright protection and to disseminate the article, and of course the journal, to the widest possible readership in print and electronic formats as appropriate. Authors retain many rights under the Taylor & Francis rights policies, which can be found at http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/copyright.asp.

6. Quality control

Please get another person to proofread your paper before submitting it.

7. Language editor's queries

Any queries the language editor may have will be emailed to you. Please reply to these promptly (within three days). Be clear and specific in your responses and eliminate guesswork.

8. Length and layout

Articles

The maximum length is between 6500 and 7000 words, including the abstract and references, but excluding tables, figures and any appendices. In exceptional cases, and at the Editor's discretion, longer articles will be considered if they make an original or major contribution to the field.

Research note

Research notes should be no shorter than 3500 and no longer than 5000 words (including the abstract and references, but excluding tables and figures).

Layout

i) Submit papers in 12pt Times New Roman or Arial, 1.5 line spacing.
ii) Remember to number the pages.
iii) Use bullets for lists and not dashes, asterisks or letters of the alphabet.

iv) Please do not use any automatic numbering or links.

9. Content and style

Title

Provide a concise title, preferably no more than 15 words.

Abstract

Provide a brief abstract (maximum150 words). Type this in italics under the title of the paper.

Ensure that your abstract is a concise summary of the whole of your paper. It should cover the purpose of the research, the principal results, the major conclusions, and policy recommendations, if any.

Note that an abstract may be published separately from the article, so it must make sense on its own. It needs to be clear and straightforward, so a reader can skim it and get the gist rapidly.

Preferably do not include abbreviations or references in your abstract, unless essential.

Abbreviations and acronyms

At first mention in the abstract and in the text, supply the full wording in brackets after the abbreviation or acronym. For example: DBSA (Development Bank of Southern Africa); SADC (Southern African Development Community).

If an organisation's name appears only once in the document, there is no need to give the abbreviation or acronym.

Use full stops after abbreviations such as e.g., i.e., et al., etc. Please note the full stop after ‘al.' in ‘et al.' (short for Latin ‘et alii' – ‘and others').

Do not use a full stop:

i) when the abbreviation ends on the same letter as the full word, e.g. Dr, Mr, Rd, St (note that Prof. has a full stop.)

ii) after a person's initials, e.g. D Coetzee, AB Smith.

Footnotes

Do not use endnotes.

Use footnotes only when absolutely necessary and keep them short (not more than 200 words in total). Do not use footnotes to elaborate on the text. Footnotes may, however, be used for citing non-standard sources such as archival material or court cases.

Keywords

Supply three to five keywords. Note that a 'keyword' can be a short phrase, e.g. food security; rural small businesses; nominal effective exchange rate.

JEL codes

Supply JEL classification codes (if used).

Section headings

Number the sections of your paper, beginning with 1. Introduction, using DSA heading styles:

All headings are in sentence case, bold, e.g.

4. Agriculture

4.1 Market for existing crops

4.1.1 Maize and wheat

Please number the sections manually and not with the auto numbering function.

Sources

Cite only sources that are relevant to your discussion.

Acknowledge all sources of ideas, statements, tables, graphs, etc. that are not your own.

Where you use the exact wording from a source, you must make this clear by placing the quotation in quote marks or indenting it if it is a long quotation.

Style and concepts

Development Southern Africa favours a crisp, concise style, for a busy general readership.

Bear in mind that certain concepts are self-evident to people in your field, but DSA has many readers from other disciplines, including non-economists. Therefore, consider including a brief definition of concepts early on in the paper.

Your general style of writing should neither overestimate nor underestimate the comprehension of the readers.

Do not use italics, underlining or bold to emphasise points. Rather achieve the required emphasis with an effective style of writing.

Note that busy readers who skim articles often read just the introduction and the conclusion of a paper, so pay special attention to these. Make the introductory paragraph interesting and enticing. Try not to clutter it with a mass of references or statistics – make it as reader-friendly as possible. Ensure that your concluding paragraph sums up all your main points clearly and concisely.

10. Spelling and punctuation

Spelling

DSA uses UK English conventions and spelling rules. For these, follow the most recent edition of either Collins or Oxford dictionaries, but note that DSA uses ‘‑ise' rather than ‘‑ize'. Set your language check function to UK English.

Italics

Note that common Latin and French terms are not italicised. For example: et al., in situ, per capita, inter alia, vis-à-vis, laissez faire.

Words and phrases from other languages, e.g. isiZulu, German, are italicised. Please supply a translation of non-English words and phrases and state what language they are, e.g. kgosi (chief, Tswana).

Quote marks

Use single quote marks.

Use double quote marks only for quotations within quotations. For long quotations (‘long' generally means longer than one sentence), indent the text in a separate paragraph and omit the quote marks.

Spacing between sentences

Make a single space after a full stop, not a double space. There should be no more than one space at any point in the document.

Capital letters

Use lower case as far as possible (e.g. parliament, government, state, president, director-general, regional council), except in specific, direct references such as ‘Mr P Mabena, Deputy Director-General and President of XYZ, said that…'.

Use lower case for the first letter of a generic ethnic group (e.g. black, white, coloured) but upper case for the first letter of a group named according to country (e.g. African, Indian, Chinese, Swedish).

11. Numbers, dates, percentages

Numbers

Express ranges of dates and pages in the smallest number of digits, e.g. 1974–94, not 1974–1994, and 325–7, not 325–327.

Use a space, not a comma, to indicate tens of thousands etc., e.g. 10 000. Write thousands without a space, e.g. 1000, except in tables, where the space is needed to get the alignment right.

For decimals use the decimal point, not comma, e.g. 3.85.

Ensure that you state the size of your sample clearly in your table and figure captions, e.g. n=68.

Dates

Write dates as 20 July 2005. Not as 20th etc. (Do not use superscripts.)

Percentages

Use the % sign and not ‘per cent' or ‘percent'. This applies to the text as well as the tables and figures.

Use percentages appropriately. If your sample size is small (especially if it is less than 100 items) round off percentages to the nearest whole number. For small data sets, and in a non-technical context, strict mathematical accuracy is not required.

In the text, readability is important. Keep in mind that you are writing a journal article for interested colleagues, not a thesis for examination. Use approximate percentages or even fractions to sum up your findings. For example, write

‘Results showed that about 75% of the sample…'
or
‘Results showed that about three quarters of the sample…'

rather than

‘Results showed that 72.89% of the sample…'.

12. Referencing style

Add a list of references at the end of your article.

Note that ‘References' means a list of the sources you have cited in your article.

Include in the reference list ONLY the sources you cite in the text.

Please ensure that all the sources you cite are listed and that all the sources you list are cited.

Use the Harvard system of referencing, i.e. citations give the author's name and the year of publication.

If a publication by more than two authors is referred to in the text, write ‘et al.' from the start, e.g. (Skosana et al., 1997:14), but provide the names of all the authors in the reference list.

References to more than one publication by an author in the same year must be distinguished alphabetically, for example: (Fields, 1984a,b).

Use Development Southern Africa's referencing style for your list of references.

See the examples below or refer to the most recent issue of DSA. (Note that the style was changed in 2010, from the beginning of Vol. 27.)

Supply full details for each reference in your list. All references should contain the following five essential details, in this order:

1. Author, 2. Date, 3. Title, 4. Publisher, 5. Place of publication (town or city).

Some details may vary for some types of sources, for example:

1. Author, 2. Date, 3. Title of article, 4. Name of journal, 5. Volume, issue, page nos.

1. Author/Organisation, 2. Date, 3. Title of webpage, 4. Website address, 5. Date of access.

The following examples show the DSA conventions for the order of components, capitalisation, punctuation, etc.:

Book

Schmidt, MI & Ashley, JD, 1988. Game Ranging: The Case in Botswana. Ad Donker, Johannesburg.

Chapter in a book

Backman, J, 1981. The problem of regulation. In Backman, J (Ed.), Regulation and Deregulation, pp. 55–75. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis.

Journal article

Mwangi, I, 1997. The nature of rental housing in Kenya. Environment and Urbanisation 9(2), 141–59.

Conference paper

Delgado, CL & Siamwalla, A, 1997. Diversification in developing countries. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference of Agricultural Economists, 10–16 August, Sacramento, California.

Official document

NDA (National Department of Agriculture), 2001. The Strategic Plan for South African Agriculture. Government Printer, Pretoria.

Newspaper or magazine article

Booth, J, 2004. Blair plans annual UK-China summit. Guardian, 11 May, p. 6.

Or, if the author is unknown:

The Economist, 2005. Special report: Congo, Africa's unmended heart, 11–17 June, pp. 5–7.

Thesis

Hyuha, TS, 2006. Profit efficiency among rice producers in eastern and northern Uganda. PhD thesis, Makerere University, Uganda.

Electronic text

DoH (Department of Health). 2002. National service framework for diabetes: Delivery strategy. Department of Health, London.
www.dh.gov.uk/assetRoot/04/03/28/23/04032823.pdf Accessed 5 May 2009.

Please note that website references must include the date you last accessed the site.

This is because websites can change, and even disappear. The date of access certifies that the source was there, in the form you cited, at that particular date. Please check your website references before submitting your paper to ensure that as far as possible the addresses are still correct and accessible.

Personal communication / interviews

Do not list ‘personal communication' references in the list of references. Cite these in your paper, as follows:
(personal communication, [name, including first name(s) or initial(s)], [position], [organisation], [place], [date]).

For example:

(personal communication, M Ncube, Land Board Secretary, Ministry of Land Affairs, Harare, 10 April 1999)

For repeat citations from the same communication, only the name and date are required:

(personal communication, M Ncube, 10 April 1999).

Use the same style for citing interviews if the interviewee's name is relevant, for example:

(interview, G Smith, Senior Chief Representative, Omega Co., Johannesburg, 28 February 2007).

Note that where a study is based on interviewee responses, these responses are your data, they are not references. They do not go in the reference list.

If you have a very long list of interviewees who must be acknowledged, such as businesses, organisations, institutions or companies you approached, you may supply a list at the end of your paper, after the reference list.

Dataset (with publisher and place of publication):

Stats SA (Statistics South Africa), 2008. Income and Expenditure Survey 2005/2006. Stats SA, Pretoria.

Dataset (with website address and date of access):

UNU-WIDER (United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research), 2008. World Income Inequality Database: V2.0c May 2008. www.wider.unu.edu/research/Database/en_GB/database/ Accessed 27 October 2011.

13. Free article access

Corresponding authors of accepted manuscripts receive free online access to their article through our website, Taylor & Francis Online, and a complimentary copy of the issue containing their article. Additional reprints can be ordered through Rightslink® when proofs are received. If you have any queries, please contact our reprints department at reprints@tandf.co.uk

Visit our Author Services website for further resources and guides to the complete publication process and beyond.

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Development Southern Africa

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