About the Journal

African Security Studies (Political Science focus) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal under the Pan African Research Journals (PARJ) platform. It is positioned as a dedicated venue for scholarship in the natural and applied sciences, with particular attention to Political Science focus.

Aims and Scope

African Security Studies welcomes manuscripts that make a clear scholarly contribution, engage meaningfully with prior literature, and present findings or arguments in a form suitable for long-term academic use. The editorial direction of the journal prioritises field and laboratory evidence, synthesis of mechanisms, and transparent communication of uncertainty.

The journal is especially interested in work that speaks to African contexts without becoming parochial: submissions should be locally grounded where appropriate, but analytically strong enough to travel across institutions, disciplines, and regions.

Editorial Priorities

The journal publishes work connected to Security. Suitable submissions may include observational papers, theoretical contributions, review studies, and reproducibility-focused reports. Across these formats, the editorial office expects coherent framing, an explicit contribution, and methods or reasoning that are inspectable by readers and reviewers.

Contributors should explain how their study or argument extends current knowledge, resolves a recognised problem, tests an approach, or provides a sharper synthesis of existing evidence.

Methodological Orientation

Although the journal is open to different study designs and intellectual traditions, it expects submissions to use methods appropriate to the research question. Typical methodological expectations include experimental design, observational analysis, laboratory workflows, field-based measurement, and careful data interpretation.

Who the Journal Serves

African Security Studies (Political Science focus) serves scientists, laboratory and field researchers, technical educators, postgraduate trainees, and policy users of scientific evidence. The journal is therefore edited for both subject-matter specialists and well-informed adjacent readers. Articles should remain technically sound while also explaining why the work matters, who may use it, and what limitations shape the interpretation of findings.

Publishing Model

The journal operates a structured editorial screening and peer-review process designed to support discoverability, indexing, and long-term knowledge access. Submissions are checked for scope fit, metadata completeness, similarity concerns, ethical compliance, and presentation quality before they move to external review or editorial decision.

Accepted content is prepared for stable online publication, archival access, citation visibility, and indexing support across the PARJ network.

Editorial Standards

Authors are expected to submit work written in clear UK English, supported by accurate references, transparent declarations, and a level of reporting proportionate to the claims being made. In this journal, high-quality reporting means clear statement of hypotheses or questions, defensible analysis, and honest treatment of limitations and uncertainty.

Where applicable, manuscripts should also address ethics approval, participant protections, consent, funding, conflicts of interest, and data or materials availability.