Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • To ensure anonymity, submit your biodata on a separate file (title page). Moreover, no names should appear in the main document (article).
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are within the text at appropriate points.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.
  • For instructions on the uploading process, click here to watch a short video or read this article here.
  • Ensure the file name do not include author's names

Author Guidelines

An Overview

Prior to the submission of your manuscript to the University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal (UDSMLJ), please be sure to read aim and scope. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts that focus on different aspects of Library and Information Science. Only manuscripts that sufficiently meet the scope and aim of the University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal will be sent to the reviewers for the double blind review.

Contributors are required to affirm that they have the rights in the manuscript, and that the manuscripts are not being considered for publication or have not already been published in other journals. Contributors should not send their articles on the preprint platforms as it will affect the anonymity in the double blind review.  We don’t provide copy editing; authors are therefore required to check the quality of their works prior to the submission. These include quality, accuracy, completeness and consistency of information provided.

Authors’ Ethical Practices

University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal takes ethical practices in publishing with special attention. Authors should avoid plagiarism and any other malpractices. Upon submission all manuscripts will be subjected to plagiarism check. Manuscript with plagiarism issues will be outright rejected. Manuscripts that have been previously published in other publication outlets will not be acceptable for publication in our journal. All submissions to the journal will be subjected to plagiarism test to check the quality and originality of articles. Authors should also declare that their manuscripts have not published or submitted for publication elsewhere.

Declaration of Conflict Interest

University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal requires authors to disclose any conflicting interests that are directly or indirect relate to the work submitted for publication in the journal.  The conflicting or competing interest may include financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationships that may either affect the research reported or peer review process and decisions.

Recommended Structure of Manuscripts

All submissions to the UDSMLJ should adhere to the following submission guidelines:

  1. The length of manuscript should be between 4000 and 8000 words (references inclusive).
  2. The articles should contain unstructured abstract of up to 200 words.
  3. Include four to five keywords that best describe the contents of the manuscript.
  4. Provide a title page containing the following information: title of manuscript, authors’ personal information e.g. full name, email address, institutional affiliation and ORCID.
  5. Manuscript submitted should be in Word format.
  6. University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal adheres to the APA reference and in-text citation styles.
  7. Short communication e.g. book reviews should be between 2000 and 3000 words.

Section Specific Guidelines

Abstract

Authors should include unstructured informative abstract. The abstract should not exceed 200 words. The abstract should include a maximum of five relevant keywords.

Manuscript

For the sake of uniformity, all submitted manuscript should adhere to the following structure: Introduction (Background Information; Methodology (Material and Methods); Results; Discussion; Conclusions; Recommendations; Implications and References.

Citation and Referencing Style

UDSMLJ adhered to the American Psychological Association (APA) style of citation and referencing. Contributors are therefore required to align their citations and referencing with the recent APA referencing and citation guidelines.

Submission of Manuscript 

University of Dar es Salaam Library Journal is hosted on UDSM OJS platform. This is a web based online submission and peer review system. Authors are required to submit their manuscripts to the Online Journal System [OJS] at https://journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/lj/user/register [if your a have not registered] or at https://journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/lj/index if you are  registered.

Accepted Manuscript 

Once manuscript has been accepted, authors will notified by email and have access to their manuscript for final proofreading. Once proofreading is completed and Agreement signed, articles will be published online as a complete issue where authors will have open access to their final articles. 

Post-publication Corrections, Retraction and Removal     

In cases where errors are noticed in a published article, corrections shall be granted following satisfaction of the conditions put in place by the journal. When errors are noticed, the corresponding author shall notify the journal editor in writing and confirm that all contributors recognize the error and are in agreement that an action needs to be taken. This should be done by submitting a written notice preferably signed by all contributors. Contributors should be informed that any correction notice submitted shall be subjected to a full review that might result in requests for more information from them. The journal classifies errors as major and minor; where major errors are those that alter the meaning of findings or affect readers’ understanding of the same while minor errors have no influence on these two aspects. Contributors should also be informed that in some circumstances, the journal shall make minor corrections to articles. These are corrections that do not affect the meaning of the contents of the articles. The journal shall keep the contributors informed of such changes. Where changes have been made to original articles available online, a correction notice will be made available to inform readers of the changes made. This shall be done by adding footnotes of the concerned updates to the respective manuscripts.

The journal shall retract an article upon realization of the presence of an error or errors in its contents that puts its findings into question. Such errors may be associated with the methods and materials used to come up with the findings. In other cases, such an action shall be taken on articles that have been noted to have been prepared under unethical conditions (i.e. fabrication of data, plagiarism etc.). Upon confirmation of such malpractices, the retraction shall be done following the University of Dar es Salaam policies and COPE guidelines.

Copyright Notice

UDSMLJ is an open access journal where authors grant the journal the rights necessary to publish and distribute their work under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 4.0) . Under this licensing arrangement, users may access, read, download, and share published articles provided that proper credit is given to the original author. Authors retain the right to share and disseminate their published work through other platforms, including institutional repositories (IRs), in order to increase the visibility and impact of their research. Authors may also reuse parts of the work, including figures and tables, in other publications; distribute their articles at conferences, symposia, and workshops, and share their work through social media platforms. However, authors may not submit or publish the same work with another publisher or outlet. The authors of articles published in UDSMLJ bear sole responsibility for the content of their work. Neither the publisher nor the editorial team accepts responsibility for any alleged defamatory statements or for any infringement of intellectual property or privacy rights. The publication of an article does not imply that the editorial team or the journal endorses or represents the views expressed by the author.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.