Submissions

Author Guidelines

Acta Academica is an accredited, open access South African journal dedicated to scholarship in the humanities. The journal publishes independently refereed research articles in the humanities. It promotes the perspectives of critical social theory and engagements with postcolonial and post-developmental debates with special reference to (Southern) Africa. The journal is thereby in support of scholarly work that examines how the humanities in the twenty-first century respond to the double imperative of theorising the world and changing it. The journal appears twice a year and is published in English. 

General considerations for publication

Papers submitted to Acta Academica will only be considered for possible publication if the author(s) have certified in writing that the paper in question is not under consideration by another journal, and will not be submitted to such a journal until and unless a final, written rejection decision from the present journal has been received.

Papers submitted to journal are must fall broadly within the editorial scope as stated above. The editorial team will internally review all new submissions in light of this requirement, giving the broadest possible interpretation of the thematic and methodological parameters.

Papers submitted to the journal must ensure that the existing relevant literature is appropriately and fairly cited; in this respect, efforts should always made to ensure that reference is made to the first report of a finding or conceptual insight rather than a later elaboration.

The journal indicates in all cases the date of reception of the manuscript and the date of acceptance by peer review.

Position on the use of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

In the context of our editorial focus on scholarship in humanities, the editorial committee of Acta Academica considers generative AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), a technology that is parasitical on the labour of others, and inherently limited in its capacity to produce novel research contributions. We consider questioning, thinking, and writing from a situated, embodied – and therefore inimitable perspective, to be an essential element in humanities scholarship. We are therefore deeply opposed to outsourcing any of these faculties to a disembodied device that can only offer a dull (and at times faulty) aggregation of perspectives.

That being said, we realise that LLMs have the ability to mimic human effort to such a degree that it takes considerable time and effort to detect this dissimulation. We have faith in the ability of our peer reviewers to ultimately eliminate submissions that do not make a novel contribution to a particular field. Nevertheless, we respectfully ask all prospective contributors not to waste our, or our reviewers’ time by expecting us to read and engage with “scholarship” that cannot be attributed to any scholar.

We ask that you please accompany your submission with a declaration to the effect that you have taken note of our position on the use of LLMs, and your willingness to adhere thereto. If you should make limited use of AI nevertheless, we would expect you to make a detailed declaration that describes how the tool was used (including the prompts), provides the name, creator and version of the AI-tool, and specifies the date it was consulted. The editorial committee reserves the discretion to reject any submission if the specified use of AI is deemed to undermine the scholarly objectives of the journal.

Practical considerations

Acta Academica publishes articles in English. Word length of manuscripts should be 5000-8000 words including notes and references with an abstract of up to 150 words and five key words. Authors should supply a biography of 50-100 words.

A coversheet should accompany the manuscript providing full name, institutional address, email address, telephone and fax numbers - also the address where proofs and offprints should be sent if different from the above.

There are three levels of review: self-review by the author, pre-review by at least two members of the editorial team and lastly, review by two independent referees. Upon receiving a new submission, the editorial team will first conduct an internal review to determine whether the submission:

1. falls within our editorial scope
2. meets our general requirements for consideration, namely: adheres to our word count, style and reference guide, and our position on the use of generative AI.

The editorial committee reserves the right to decline submissions which do not meet the above requirements.

Authors should allow three to six months for consideration of their paper, but upon acceptance, they will be asked to make any necessary corrections and submit a final electronic copy.

Manuscripts are to be submitted in the first instance ready for the press: finally edited, stylistically polished and carefully proofread. 

Formatting and style requirements

• Articles must be typed in Times New Roman font, 11pt, 1.5 spacing using MSWord.
• Page size A4 (not letter)
• Page margins should be 2cm.

Titles and section headings should be clear and brief with minimal capitalisation (only the first letter and proper nouns). We prefer a minimalist approach to section headings and discourage the use multiple levels of subsections, unless where absolutely necessary. 

Lengthy quotations (exceeding 40 words) should be displayed, indented, in the text.

Essential notes should be indicated by superscript numbers in the text and included as footnotes, not endnotes.

Italics (not bold or underlined) may only be used to indicate emphasis, a word or expression from another language, or the title of a book.

Use 'et al.' (no italics) when citing a work by more than two authors.

Use ‘see’ instead of ‘cf’.

Use British English.

 The editor reserves the right to make editorial changes in any manuscript accepted for publication to enhances clarity or conformity with journal style

References

Acta Academica adheres to an adapted Harvard reference style. References cited in the text should read, for example: (Arendt 1958: 63-4); or Brown and Smith (1984, 1987) have argued that…

Please note:

• No comma after the author’s surname
• Space after the colon
• Please use ‘and’ instead of ‘&’

All references cited in the text should be listed alphabetically and presented in full. The letters a, b, c, etc. should be used to distinguish citations of different works by the same author in the same year.

The reference list should adhere to the following style:

Books with one author:

Arendt H. 1958. The human condition. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

Harwood E. 2015. Space, hope, and brutalism: English architecture, 1945–1975. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Please note: we make use of minimal capitalisation in book and article titles; only the first letter and thereafter all proper nouns are capitalised.

Books with two or more authors:

Laclau E and Mouffe C. 1985. Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. Translated by W Moore and P Cammack. Verso: London. 

Journal articles:

Coetzee JM (1991) The mind of apartheid: Geoffrey Cronje  (1907-). Social Dynamics: A journal of African studies 17(1): 1-35. 

Rolnik R. 2013. Late neoliberalism: the financialization of homeownership and housing rights. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(3): 1058–1066.

Please note: journal titles make use of maximal capitalisation.

Chapter in a collected volume with editors:

Dubow S. 1987. Race, civilisation and culture: the elaboration of segregationist discourse in the inter-war years. In: S Marks and T Stanley (eds). The politics of race, class and nationalism in twentieth century South Africa. London: Longman Inc.   

Collected volume with editors:

Butler C and Mussawir E (eds). 2017. Spaces of justice: peripheries, passages, appropriations. Abingdon: Routledge

Newspaper article, with author name, hard copy only:

Day N. 1979. Boxes stacked . . . like so many grey playing cards. Sydney Morning Herald. 16 May.

Newspaper article, with author name, available on the internet:

Elliott T. 2017. The Sirius building’s last tenant, Myra Demetriou, 91, reveals her future plans. Sydney Morning Herald. 30 November. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/the-sirius-buildings-last-tenant-myra-demetriou-91-reveals-her-future-plans-20171120-gzp32z.html [accessed on 6 November 2018].

Newspaper article without author name:

Last Sirius resident meets Pru Goward. 2017. ABC News. 7 December. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-07/last-sirius-resident-meets-pru-goward/9235112 [accessed on 6 November 2018].

In-text reference: (Last Sirius resident… 2017).