About the Journal

Journal policies

The KIJE is strictly guided by the following policies which are briefly outlined below and which have largely been drawn from the internationally acknowledged Committee On Publication Ethics, COPE guidelines appended at the end of this document. Below we highlight key elements of each of the following:

  1. Publication Ethics Policy
  2. Plagiarism Policy
  3. Peer Review and
  4. Complaints Policy
  5. Conflict of Interest Policy
  6. Copy right and access policy
  7. Editorial board policy
  8. Advisory board policy
  9. Generative AI policy
  10. Journal Subscribers
  11. Journal indexing policy

 

In addition to the above policies, the KIJE has the following guidelines:

  1. Author guidelines
  2. Reviewer guidelines
  3. Publishing fees

Policies

Publication Ethics Policy

  1. Anonymity: all names of institutions or participants including proxy information that may easily lead to the identification of participants must be expunged from articles submitted for publication to the KIJE.
  2. Confidentiality: information provided by research participants must be treated with the utmost confidentiality and cannot be divulged in ways which may compromise or jeopardise the integrity of the sources of the information.
  3. Informed consent: research participants must be fully informed about the purposes of the research and its publication and their data can only be used after they have signed an informed consent undertaking.
  4. Right to withdraw: all research participants must be told that they have the right to withdraw from the research at any time and without giving any reasons for their decisions.
  5. Beneficence: participants must be accorded full disclosure about how they will benefit from being informants or participants. Benefits accruing to the system as a result of their involvement must also be disclosed.
  6. The above constitute a general framework of ethical guidelines which authors must observe usually before data collection.
  7. A statement of ethical adherence must be included in each article at the time of submission for review
  • KIJE operates a double-blind independent peer review policy. By this we mean the following: double blind means that the reviewers will not know who the authors are, nor will the authors know who reviewed their work. Independent review means that the reviewers, though invited by the editor in chief to review, will only do so voluntarily. There is no financial inducement involved for undertaking review work at the journal.
  • when an article arrives at the desk of the Editor in chief, it is immediately reviewed for relevance to the journal, scope, and language efficacy. This is usually done by the Editor in chief or the Journal administrator, if appropriate. The purpose of this initial desk review is to determine if the article worth sending to reviewers.
  •  The authors are informed in writing of the decision of the editor at this stage.
  • The journal administrator helps the Editor in Chief to identify three of the most suitable reviewers for the article who are then contacted by email. At this point, all references to the actual names of the author/s are expunged from the paper. The request to review should also be accompanied by the abstract.
  • The potential reviewers are asked to indicate their willingness to review and the task completion requirements are spelt out at this stage.
  • As soon as the reviewers agree to review, the paper is sent to them, together with the review guidelines and review comments sheet.
  • The author is again informed when this has been done and an indicative review time should be given here.
  • When the independent reviews come in, the editor in chief should read these, especially the recommendations. The key recommendations should be compiled ed in one documents which is then sent to the author/s for revision.
  • When the revisions are done, an editorial board meeting is called to review the process, the recommendations, and the corrections. Any outstanding matters at this stage should be communicated to the authors with new deadlines for final submission.
  • When the corrections have been done and approved, the Journal editorial assistant will then suggest which articles go to which issue. At this stage, date of submission should be taken into account when allocating articles to issues. Under normal circumstances, publication priority should be based on a first come first serve process. Other considerations including number of articles from specific institutions in the same issue need to be considered to ensure a fair distribution of publishing opportunities to all.
  • Usually, the Editor in Chief calls another brief meeting of the editorial board members available to review the entire process leading to the publication of a specific issue.

Plagiarism Policy

  1. The KIJE operates a stringent anti-plagiarism policy. We define plagiarism as unacknowledged use of material from other sources.
  2. Acknowledgement of origin of materials obtained from other sources should be done in accordance with the latest APA GUIDELINES which this journal uses.
  3. Authors must test the similarity index of their articles by placing it through a plagiarism check software. The KIJE only reviews and accepts articles checked via turn it in software. A 15% similarity index is the maximum allowable for articles published by the KIJE.
  4. Every article submitted for publication must be accompanied with a Turnitin similarity index report.
  5. The KIJE subjects 20% of all the articles it publishes to its own similarity index checks. The papers are randomly selected before publication of the issue.

Dealing with complaints

Authors complain over a myriad of issues including the review process, the quality of the review especially the contradiction between the comments of different reviewers, the time taken to review. They also complain that the changes they made were not reflected in the final article. The following are broad principles followed at the KIJE when dealing with complaints:

  1. Immediately acknowledge complaints when they are received at the journal, promising the complainant to expect a resolution within a stipulated timeframe.
  2. The Journal should have a specific team identified to deal with author complaints. Such teams should usually have a legally trained person and not more than three other experts. If the team is locally available, they could meet in person otherwise they could also meet online.
  3. The decision should be communicated to the Editor in Chief who then writes to the complainant with the outcome and resolution.
  4. As a general guideline, complaints should be dealt with in a week or less.

Conflict of Interest policy

Conflict of interest happens when the integrity of the journal decisions have been or are perceived to have been compromised because of some or all of the following:

  1. A reviewer who might know the author.
  2. A reviewer who works in the same institution as the author
  3. A reviewer who has previously published with the author
  4. A reviewer who is a member of the editorial board and is reviewing an article by another board member.

In all cases, the KIJE will establish a declaration form which reviewers and editorial board members routinely complete each time they are assigned reviewing responsibilities.

Copy right and access policy

The KIJE will assume full copy right for all materials it publishes both online and in print. We define copy right as the type of intellectual property that protects the original works of the authors. This means that whatever work is published by KIJE:

  1. Can be reproduced by the author for academic purposes.
  2. Can be further developed by the author and by others in furtherance of the knowledge project. When this is done, permission must be sought from the KIJE in the first instance.
  3. Transform the work into other digital forms if there is demand which reflects issues of inequity of access.
  4. All online customers have free access to the material published by the journal.
  5. The published materials are freely downloadable by members of the public.

Editorial Board policy

The KIJE will be governed by the Editorial Board which will also work in close conjunction with an independent Advisory board.

The Editorial Board will comprise:

  1. A wide range of scholars and practitioners including 50% Professors, 40% doctoral qualified and 10% specially invited because other acknowledged expertise and service to education.
  2. The Board will comprise of a minimum of 20 individuals, with a good representation of both Male and Female.
  3. Not more than 3 members will be expected to be from any one institution, including the hosting institution.
  4. The editorial Board will be chaired by the Editor in Chief
  5. The Editorial Board will have at least one general meeting every year.
  6. The Editor in Chief shall have the right to convene ad hoc Editorial board meetings with no less than 20% of the size of the board to transact routine board matters such as considering the review comments of reviewers, overseeing the processes leading to the publishing of a specific issue, dealing with routine author complaints, among others.
  7. The editorial board members may be allocated reviewing responsibilities from time to time.
  8. The editorial board shall always seek to maintain the integrity of the journal in the public domain and especially discuss the primary issue of journal impact and integrity at every AGM.
  9. The editorial board shall comprise a good selection of people from both the international, regional, and in-country communities. At least 5 of the members shall be from outside the continent of Africa and be as widely distributed across the other continents.
  10. In conjunction with the Advisory Board, the Editorial Board must organise periodic training for reviewers to keep abreast with policies and enhance the quality of review.

The Advisory Board

The Advisory Board shall have the responsibility to inform the Editorial Board of the latest best practices and developments in the area of publishing.

  1. It will especially advise on issues of indexing, conferencing, links with other journals, impact issues, among others.
  2. It will comprise of at least 6 members, three of who should be international, and remainder will be selected from the region and from Rwanda.
  3. Members can be invited to submit CVs as part of the recruitment to membership of the boards.
  4. The advisory board should meet at least quarterly in March, June, September, and December.
  5. The Advisory Board selects its own chair.
  6. The Advisory Board will have a standing item at the Editorial Board AGM to report on their observations and make recommendations.

The Generative AI policy

The KIJE acknowledges the centrality of Artificial Intelligence and its potential to generate knowledge for both users and producers. While its use and applications must be encouraged and supported, authors need to be mindful of the following:

  1. Not to plagiarise material from AI platforms as this constitutes a serious breach of intellectual integrity.
  2. All material utilised from AI sources must be properly acknowledged in appropriate ways as indicated by the KIJE (see author guidelines)
  3. The quality of AI generated material is high. Editors must be careful to not depend entirely on external quality of writing as this might reflect some people’s financial capability to purchase AI products while poor authors would depend entirely on their own devices. The conceptual, theoretical, analytical, and methodological efficacy of papers should always be considered first ahead of linguistic elegance.
  4. The journal should establish a social platform presence to monitor reader reactions to its publications, fine tuning the journal quality processes, identify potential issues early before they get out of hand, and engage with readers more readily.