Publication Ethics

The Journal of African Political Economy and Development adheres to the Core Practices and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in all aspects of its editorial operations. The following policies apply to all authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial board members involved in JAPED publications.

To be listed as an author on a JAPED publication, each individual must satisfy all four of the following criteria based on the ICMJE recommendations:

1.  Substantial contribution  to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data.

2.  Drafting or critical revision  of the manuscript for important intellectual content.

3.  Approval  of the final version submitted for publication.

4.  Accountability  for all aspects of the work, including willingness to address questions of accuracy and integrity.

Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet all four criteria should be named in the Acknowledgements section. Guest authorship (listing individuals who did not contribute to the work) and ghost authorship (omitting individuals who did contribute) are both violations of JAPED's authorship policy and COPE's Core Practices.

All research involving human subjects, animals, or sensitive data must comply with applicable national and international ethical standards and regulations. Authors must state in the manuscript whether ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB) approval was obtained for the research, and must provide the name of the approving body and the approval reference number. Where ethical approval was not required (for example, desk research using publicly available data), this must be explicitly stated in the Ethics Declaration. JAPED reserves the right to request copies of ethical approval documents at any stage of the review or production process.

All manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using detection software before peer review. A similarity rate exceeding 15% (exclusive of references, standard methodology descriptions, and author bylines) will result in desk rejection or a request for revision. Self-plagiarism — the re-use of the author's own previously published text without appropriate attribution and citation — is treated as a violation equivalent to conventional plagiarism. JAPED follows COPE guidelines in investigating and responding to all suspected plagiarism cases.

The fabrication of data (inventing results) and falsification of data (manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data such that the research findings are not accurately represented) are serious violations of research integrity. Manuscripts found to contain fabricated or falsified data will be rejected prior to publication. Published articles found to contain such violations will be investigated and, where substantiated, retracted in accordance with COPE's retraction guidelines.

JAPED does not accept manuscripts that have been previously published in peer-reviewed journals, books, or conference proceedings, or that are under concurrent consideration at another publication. Authors who wish to submit work based on a conference presentation or working paper must disclose this in the cover letter and ensure that the submitted manuscript represents a substantial development of the prior work. Posting to open preprint repositories (such as SSRN or Research Square) prior to submission to JAPED is acceptable but must be disclosed at the point of submission.

Authors must disclose in the Disclosure Statement any financial or non-financial relationship that could be perceived as influencing the design, conduct, reporting, or funding of the research. This includes: employment by or paid consultancy to organisations with an interest in the research findings; financial holdings or investments in relevant companies; receipt of honoraria, grants, or expert testimony fees; and membership on relevant boards or advisory committees. Where no conflicts exist, authors must state: "The authors report there are no competing interests to declare."

Editors and reviewers who have a conflict of interest with a submitted manuscript must recuse themselves from the decision-making process for that manuscript. Reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest before accepting a review invitation.

Authors who used AI tools in any part of the research process — including manuscript writing, data analysis, figure generation, or literature searching — must disclose this in the Disclosure Statement of the submitted manuscript, specifying the tool used and describing how it was used. AI tools may not be attributed authorship and may not be listed in the author byline. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of all content in the manuscript, including content generated with AI assistance. The use of AI tools to generate fabricated citations or references is a violation of publication ethics.

JAPED holds its reviewers to the ethical standards articulated in the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Reviewers must: maintain strict confidentiality of the manuscripts under review; declare and manage conflicts of interest; base their assessments solely on scholarly merit; provide constructive and honest reports within the agreed timeline; and not exploit unpublished manuscript content for personal or professional advantage. Violation of any of these duties may result in removal from the JAPED reviewer database and, where the violation is serious, may be reported to the reviewer's institution.

Errata (journal-introduced errors)

Where errors have been introduced in the manuscript during editorial production, a formal erratum is published and linked bidirectionally to the original article. The original article's online version is updated to reflect the correction.

Corrigenda (author-introduced errors)

Where the authors identify errors in their published work, they should contact the editorial office immediately. Corrigenda that affect data, findings, or conclusions are peer-reviewed before publication. Minor textual corrections are managed editorially. All corrigenda are published with a clear link to and from the original article.

Expressions of Concern

An Expression of Concern may be issued by the Editor-in-Chief where there are credible, unresolved concerns about a published article's data integrity or research ethics, pending investigation. Expressions of Concern are linked to the original article.

Retractions

JAPED will retract a published article where the findings are demonstrated to be unreliable due to misconduct or error, where the research constitutes plagiarism, where the work was previously published without disclosure, or where the research was conducted unethically. Retraction notices clearly state the reason for retraction. Retracted articles remain in the online record, marked conspicuously as "RETRACTED," to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record. JAPED follows COPE's Retraction Guidelines throughout this process.

Authors, reviewers, editors, or readers who have concerns about any published article may contact the editorial office. All concerns are treated seriously and handled in accordance with COPE guidelines. Anonymous concerns may be considered at the Editor-in-Chief's discretion.