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About the SA Journal of Human Resource Management

This page includes information on the focus and scope of the SA Journal of Human Resource Management as well as the policies and publication procedures. For details on how to prepare and submit a manuscript via the online manuscript submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

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Focus and scope ↑

 The South African Journal of Human Resource Management (SAJHRM) is a research journal that aims to provide a forum for the exploration of issues and experiences relating to employment studies and people management in organisational teams.

Historic overview of SA Journal of Human Resource Management ↑

Background: Professor Gert Roodt and his colleagues, at the Department of Human Resource Management (Rand Afrikaans University), started building on the brilliant initiative to establish theSouth African Journal of Human Resource Management. A few prominent academics from abroad and esteemed local colleagues were approached to serve on the editorial advisory committee of the journal. They eagerly agreed because South Africa was more than ready to welcome such an academic title. At that stage three editions per year were published. Since OpenJournals Publishing took over, the journal is now published on an Open Access, rolling publication basis, with one hard copy issue published each year. It might be that other special issues are added on an ad hoc basis to the journal throughout a particular year, which will form part of consecutive issues thereafter.

Focus: Latest developments — such as the growth of the economic, agricultural, public and higher education sectors in South Africa — lead to ‘Human Resource Management’ being a very necessary and respectable practice. South Africa needed the input such professionals could offer, in order to help improve their business-relationship structures. The South African Journal of Human Resource Management stood out as a means to capture such knowledge and preserve it for many generations to come. Prominent role players in the field of Human Resource Management succeeded in consolidating fragmented interest groups and sub-fields in a single Education and Training Quality Assurance body (ETQA). These events can indeed be viewed as a milestone on the developmental road of Human Resource Management as an independent discipline in South Africa.

Criteria: The following contextual variables informed the decision to establish a Human Resource Management journal:

  • There was no other journal in South Africa, at that time, which was focused on the broad field of Human Resource Management.
  • There was a pressing need for presenting published research in the field of Human Resource Management in an integrated way.
  • There was also a need at different academic institutions for a relevant journal in which peer-reviewed research contributions could be published.
  • There was pressure mounting to establish and develop the identity of the Human Resource Management profession.

A journal of this nature would also contribute to the development of a professional image of the Human Resource Management profession.

Open Access ↑

Open Access refers to free and unrestricted access via the Internet to articles published in the SA Journal of Human Resource Management. This free access has usage limitations as stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) usage license. The license allows redistribution and reuse of all articles on the condition that the SA Journal of Human Resource Management is appropriately credited.

Peer review policy ↑

The SA Journal of Human Resource Management has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. The editors do not inform the reviewers of the identity of the author(s). The reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to the authors either. The reviewers’ comments as well as recommendations regarding an article’s form may be passed on to the corresponding author and may also include suggested revisions. Manuscripts that are not approved for publication will not be returned to the submitting author in any format. Please note that AOSIS OpenJournals do not retain copies of rejected articles.

The peer review process aims to ensure that all published articles:

  • present the results of primary scientific research
  • report results that have not been published elsewhere
  • are scientifically sound
  • provide new scientific knowledge where experiments, statistics and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail so that another researcher will be able to reproduce the experiments described
  • provide conclusions that are presented in an appropriate manner and are supported by the data
  • are presented in an intelligible and logic manner and are written in clear and unambiguous English
  • meet all applicable research standards with regard to the ethics of experimentation and research integrity
  • adhere to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

The journal publisher, AOSIS OpenJournals, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In the event of suspected plagiarism in submitted works CrossCheck is available to the editors of the SA Journal of Human Resource Management to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. AOSIS OpenJournals endorses and applies the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which promotes integrity in peer-reviewed research publications.

Publication frequency ↑

The SA Journal of Human Resource Management publishes one issue per year. Individual articles are published as soon as they are ready for publication by adding them to the table of contents of the 'current' volume and issue. In this way, the SA Journal of Human Resource Management aims to speed up the process of manuscript publication from submission to becoming available on the website. 

Special issues may be added on an ad hoc basis to the journal throughout a particular year and will form part of consecutive issues thereafter.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript via the submission system at any time by logging into the journal website’s personalised section.

Indexing ↑

After publication in the SA Journal of Human Resource Management, the complete text of each article is deposited immediately and permanently archived in major bibliographic databases:

Additionally, the SA Journal of Human Resource Management uses the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to create a distributed archiving system amongst participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

The journal is always seeking to establish a LOCKSS-compliant archive with university libraries. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for the SA Journal of Human Resource Management is: http://www.sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/gateway/lockss 

Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.

DoHET accreditation ↑

The following lists are regarded as accredited journals by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DoHET):

Journals appearing on the IBSS:

Journals appearing on the three indices of Thomson Reuters products:

List of approved South African journals: Journals that do not appear in the abovementioned international indices but are published in South Africa and meet specific criteria may be included in this list.

In conclusion: the SA Journal of Human Resource Management meets the criteria of the DoHET (see List of approved South African journals as maintained by the DoHET). It is therefore accredited and approved by the DoHET for its inclusion in the subsidy system for being a research publication for South Africa.



ISSN: 1683-7584 (print) | ISSN: 2071-078X (online)Follow us on:

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