About the Journal

Focus and scope

African Review of Social Sciences (ARSS) publishes peer-reviewed research across the social sciences, with particular attention to African societies, institutions and policy.

The journal exists because a great deal of rigorous African social research never reaches publication. Article processing charges at established open access journals routinely exceed a Kenyan lecturer's monthly salary. Subscription journals are free to publish in but invisible to the readers who most need the work. ARSS is built to reduce both barriers as far as we can sustain.

We consider submissions across:

  • Sociology and social policy
  • Anthropology
  • Psychology and social behaviour
  • Social work and community development
  • Gender and women's studies
  • Public health as it intersects with social policy
  • Political science, governance and public administration
  • Economics and political economy
  • Development studies
  • Law, society and human rights
  • Criminology and justice
  • Education policy and practice
  • Media, communication and digital society
  • Human geography and urban studies
  • Population studies and demography
  • History and area studies
  • Research methodology in the social sciences

This list is indicative, not exhaustive. If your work sits within the social sciences and speaks to African contexts, it is in scope.

Geographic focus. We prioritise research on African societies, institutions and policy. Comparative work including African cases is welcome. Research from outside Africa is considered where it makes a clear methodological or theoretical contribution relevant to African scholarship.

What we do not publish. Work already published elsewhere or under consideration by another journal. Purely descriptive reports without analytical contribution. Consultancy reports repackaged as research without methodological restatement. Opinion pieces without empirical or theoretical grounding.

Authors uncertain whether their work fits should email the editorial office with an abstract before preparing a full submission. We will answer honestly, and quickly.

Sections

  • Articles — Original empirical or theoretical research making a substantive contribution to social science knowledge. 6,000 to 9,000 words. Double anonymous peer review.
  • Review Articles — Systematic or critical reviews synthesising a body of literature. Must state search strategy and inclusion criteria. 7,000 to 12,000 words. Double anonymous peer review.
  • Research Notes — Short reports of a single significant finding, a methodological innovation, or a replication. Held to the same standards of rigour as full articles but narrower in scope. 2,500 to 4,000 words. Double anonymous peer review.
  • Editorial — Commissioned by the editorial team. Not peer reviewed.

Peer review process

ARSS operates double anonymous peer review. Author identities are withheld from reviewers, and reviewer identities from authors.

Stage 1 — Editorial screening, 5 working days. The editorial team checks scope, completeness, formatting and ethical compliance, and screens for textual overlap. Submissions outside scope or falling clearly below the required standard are declined at this stage without external review. Desk rejections are communicated with reasons.

Stage 2 — External review, 6 to 8 weeks. Manuscripts passing screening are sent to at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise. Reviewers assess originality, methodological soundness, quality of analysis, engagement with existing literature, and clarity.

Stage 3 — Editorial decision, 2 weeks. The handling editor weighs the reviews and decides: accept, minor revisions, major revisions, or reject. Where reviewers disagree substantially, a third reviewer is appointed.

Stage 4 — Revision. Authors receive the full anonymised reviews with the decision. Minor revisions are due within 4 weeks, major revisions within 8 weeks. Manuscripts under major revision are normally returned to the original reviewers.

Our target from submission to first decision is 10 weeks. We publish our performance against that target annually. Where we fall short, we say so.

Reviewer selection. Reviewers hold a doctorate or equivalent research standing and have published in the relevant area. We do not use reviewers from the author's institution, recent co-authors, or anyone with a declared conflict of interest.

Appeals. Authors may appeal a decision by writing to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days, setting out specific grounds. Appeals are considered by an editor not involved in the original decision. The outcome of an appeal is final.

Publication frequency

ARSS publishes on a continuous basis. Articles are published as soon as they are accepted and typeset rather than held for a scheduled issue, and are gathered into annual volumes for citation and archiving. An accepted article reaches readers in weeks rather than months.

Open access

ARSS is a fully open access journal. All content is freely available immediately on publication. Readers may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search and link to the full text without charge, subscription or registration. There is no paywall and no embargo.

Article processing charge and waivers

ARSS levies an article processing charge of USD 100, payable only when an article is accepted for publication.

  • There is no submission fee. Nothing is payable when you submit, and nothing is payable if your article is declined.
  • There are no page charges, colour charges or supplementary fees of any kind.
  • The charge is invoiced after acceptance and before publication.

Waivers. Authors without access to research funding may request a full waiver. Waivers are granted on request. No documentation, means test or justification is required.

Requesting a waiver has no bearing whatsoever on the editorial decision. Waiver requests are handled separately from peer review. Reviewers and handling editors are not informed of an author's payment status at any point in the process.

The charge covers editorial administration, screening, typesetting and long-term preservation. It is set as low as we can sustain, and the waiver policy exists so that it never determines whose research gets published.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain copyright in their work and grant ARSS right of first publication.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). This permits anyone to share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided the original author and source are credited.

Authors are free to deposit the published version in institutional repositories, on personal websites, and on preprint or scholarly networking services, with acknowledgement of publication in ARSS.

Archiving and preservation

ARSS content is preserved through the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), a distributed digital preservation service which ensures articles remain permanently available even if the journal ceases to operate.

Authors are additionally encouraged to deposit accepted manuscripts in their institutional repository.

Research integrity

Every submission is screened for textual overlap before external review using Turnitin. Where substantial unattributed overlap is found, the submission is declined and the author's institution may be notified.

Generative AI. Authors must disclose any use of generative AI tools in the preparation of a manuscript, stating which tool was used and for what purpose. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, since they cannot take responsibility for the work.

Use of AI for language editing is acceptable when disclosed. Use of AI to generate data, results, or substantive analytical content is not. Undisclosed AI use discovered after publication is treated as a breach of publication ethics and may result in correction or retraction.

Publication ethics

Authorship. Authorship requires substantial contribution to conception or design, or to acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data; drafting or critically revising the work; approval of the final version; and agreement to be accountable for it. All four conditions must be met. Contributors not meeting them should be acknowledged instead.

Supervisors are not automatically authors. Heads of department, funders and data collectors are not authors by virtue of those roles.

Conflicts of interest. Authors must declare financial and non-financial interests that could be seen to influence the work. Reviewers and editors must declare conflicts and withdraw where appropriate.

Ethical approval. Research involving human participants must have received approval from a recognised research ethics committee. The approving body and reference number must be stated in the manuscript. In Kenya this means NACOSTI licensing and institutional ethics review.

Informed consent. Authors must confirm that participants gave informed consent and that identifying details have been removed unless explicit consent to publish them was obtained.

Data availability. Authors are encouraged to make underlying data openly available where ethically and legally possible. Every article must include a data availability statement. Where data cannot be shared, the reason must be given.

Corrections and retractions. Errors affecting interpretation are addressed by a correction notice linked to the original article. Work found to be fraudulent, plagiarised or fundamentally flawed is retracted, with a notice stating the reason. Retracted articles remain online, clearly marked as retracted, so that the scholarly record stays complete.

Complaints. Complaints about editorial process or published content should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief and will be acknowledged within 10 working days.

Publisher

African Review of Social Sciences is published by Digital Rights Kenya, a registered non-governmental organisation, through the African Open Research platform.

Digital Rights Kenya established African Open Research to address a structural problem in African scholarly publishing: the researchers best placed to study African societies are frequently unable to publish that research in venues where it will be read.

The publisher exercises no influence over editorial decisions. Acceptance and rejection are matters for the editorial team and its peer reviewers alone.

Journal history

African Review of Social Sciences was established in 2026 and published its first volume in that year.