Creating a sustainable diamond open access future for African scholarly journals

 The Journal of Student Affairs in Africa (JSAA), of which I am a founder and editorial executive, has received a substantial development grant to support its decadelong history as diamond open access journal into the future. 

The grant-maker is EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries), which is a not-for-profit organisation based in Vilnius, Lithuania, that works with libraries and journals to enable access to knowledge in developing and transition economy countries in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. JSAA shares EIFL's vision of "a world in which all people have the knowledge they need to achieve their full potential". 

EIFL has provided JSAA with funding to hold its first ever in-person full editorial team workshop; build capacity and tools (such as an editorial manual and a financial sustainability plan); renew its editorial team and operationalise the community of practice in student affairs research that JSAA launched in 2022. The  grant-holder is JSAA's long-term project partner and publisher, African Minds.

In March 2025, the JSAA editors held an editorial summit and workshop in the historic town of Porto (Portugal). The venue was chosen among several options (Zanzibar, Mauritius, South Africa, Morocco and Portugal) because it turned out to be more accessible and less costly for the editors who come from South Africa, Germany, USA, Ethiopia, and the UK. Nonetheless, parts of the workshop was held hybrid to enable a full participation including editors, who for various reasons were not able to join in person (several last-minute).

The five-day editorial summit/workshop focused on (1) discussing the financial sustainability plan; (2) discussing the operationalisation of (a) the community of practice and (b) the JSAA awards; (3)  discussing the renewal of the editorial board and international editorial advisory board; and (4) developing a draft operational manual for JSAA. In addition and somewhat unexpectedly, the three Editorial Executives present in person at the summit also developed (5) a new concept paper on ways to enhance JSAA's contribution to the professionalisation of student affairs with extensive capacity building work. This, they included in their Yidan Prize application. As part of the context: On the encouragement of some of the most outstanding higher education and student affairs scholars and professionals world-wide and particularly in Africa, Prof Moja, Prof Schreiber and I have applied for the educational development prize given annually by the Yidan Prize committee.

The draft operational manual that the summit produced includes a detailed outline of the procedures, some automated and some manual involved in producing JSAA. This Operational Manual will be the guide to review and renew the JSAA website and serve as training tool and reference manual for new and existing section editors, editorial executives, and journal managers. Once complete, the operational Manual will include sections on:

1. Manuscript Submission Management
2. Editorial Review and Assignment
3. Peer Review Coordination
4. Decision Making
5. Manuscript Revision Management
6. Copy Editing
7. Formatting and Layout
8. Proofreading
10. Marketing and Promotion
11. Ethical Oversight, Plagiarism and AI
12. Administrative Tasks
13. Quality Control, and Improvement
14. Mentorship 

This will be drawing on, and update, the present author guidelines for submission and publishing, but dealing with it from the perspective of editors of the journal.