Academy Of African Management & Economic Research

Before submitting your article, please make sure that your article has a very strong fit with the AMER Journal. Therefore, review our aims and scope below

Aim & Scope

AMERJ accepts high quality articles that cover broad topics in management and grounded in the context of Africa. Topics include but not limited to. Organizational theory, Strategy. Marketing. HRM, Operations/Production, Finance, Accounting, Purchasing, Logistics, Supply, Corporate Governance, Leadership, Risk, Change Management, Industrial Relations, ICT, Ecommerce, EBusiness, Tourism, Communication, Retail, Public Relations, Sustainable Development, Agri-Economics, Agri-Business, Digitization amongst others.

AMERJ also has a special corner for PhD thesis-based articles to promote early career researchers in Africa

Regarding methodology, AMERJ accepts papers based on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research designs.

As for impact, AMERJ has a very strong focus on publishing articles which have a clear impact on academia, industry and policy.

Types of articles

AMERJ publishes the following types of articles

• Empirical research paper.
• Theoretical research paper.
• Review paper.
• Insights
• Research notes.
• Manager Leadership Life Stories.

This is where by academics explore the manager-leadership life stories of African managers and leaders. This is a reflection from a practical perspective of what managing and leading entails.

 Preparing Your Article

Font Type: Times New Roman.

Font Size – 12.

Spacing – Double.

Referencing: APA.

Abstract: Unstructured with a maximum of 200 words.

Keywords: A maximum of seven.

Length of paper:

Empirical, theoretical and review research papers – 10, 000 words inclusive of tables, figures and references.

Insights, research notes – 6,000 words inclusive of tables, figures and references.

African Manager Leadership Life Stories – 8,000 words maximum.

Formatting Your Manuscript.

Manuscript Title

The title should be very clear and avoid verbosity and ambiguity. Let the title be as simple and as descriptive as possible to clearly indicate what the article is all about or what the central issue is.

Abstract

Between your title and introduction, write an unstructured abstract with at most 200 words. Your abstract should concisely capture the research problem, hence purpose of the research, methodology, findings and major conclusions.

Keywords – maximum seven.

Anonymous Manuscript.

This is your article to be reviewed and it should not contain any meta data which discloses your identity. Self-citation should only be done in extreme cases and when citing yourself avoid disclosing your identity. For instance, do not write: As observed in our earlier study ABC and XYZ, (2018) because doing this implies article reviewing is no longer anonymous. Instead, you could write, this argument is also supported in ABC and XYZ, (2018).

Placing figures and tables:

To facilitate easier reviewing please insert a Table or a Figure on their exact position.

Figures

Further provide a separate document for tables and figures starting with tables and later showing the Figures found in the text.

Sub Headings

Below is how you should craft your sub headings

Title: Capitalize first letter of each word and bolden it. Further, centre it. For example.

Fostering Team Work In Small Firms: Insights From Accra, Ghana

Abstract:     Capitalize first letter and centre it

Main Text (Body work):

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical underpinning
3. Conceptual framework
4. Research questions
5. Methodology
   • Research philosophy (e.g. Interpretivism)
   • Research approach (e.g. qualitative)
   • Research strategy (e.g. Case study)
   • Target population
   • Sampling technique
   • Sampling size
   • Data collection techniques (e.g. Personal interviews)
   • Data collection procedure
   • Data manipulation/capturing
   • Data analysis
   • Research ethics
6. Results (for quantitative study) / Findings (for qualitative or theoretical papers)
7. Participants demographic profile (place a table)
8. Descriptive statistics or themes (tables, and or charts, figures)
9. Inferential statistics (Tables, and or charts, figures).
10. Discussion
11. Conclusion
12. Implication
13. Limitations
14. Future research

Paragraphing

To start a new paragraph, simply indent. However, the first sentence of the first paragraph for a subheading is not indented.

e.g.

1. Research methodology

The researcher used a qualitative approach. (Don’t indent)

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

          As for research strategy, grounded theory was preferred (You can now indent)

Copyright material:

It is of paramount importance that you should obtain permission to use any copyright material, such as long direct quotations as well as use of tables, figures and any artworks. You should strictly abide by the dictates of fair use policy which is a global practice in making use of other people’s work.

Title Page

Your manuscript should never contain any identifying information about you the author or authors. All such information is captured in this title page and below are its sub headings.

Title:  State the title at the top and use centre alignment.

Key words: State the key words

Author Details

List all persons that qualify as authors or have a rightful claim as authors.

For each author, state their full names, institutions and any other affiliations such as their departments.

State author’s ORCID and any other details such as their city, and country.

 Author Biography: A very short biography of at most 200 words to capture the author’s professional career.

Please note that the authors’ institutions should be where the research was undertaken. If the authors are now at different institutions first capture their previous institutions where the research was undertaken and most probably got funded.

Second, you can proceed to state current institutions of each author.

Clearly identify the corresponding author by writing their details under the sub heading corresponding author.

Statements And Declarations. Acknowledgements

Acknowledge all those that rendered support for this research

Author Contribution

Clearly state the full names of all individuals and the roles they played, for example, literature review, data collection, data analysis or methodology design

Conflict of Interest:

State your conflict of interest position. For example, if no conflict of interest you could write:

The author certifies that in writing this article, they have no conflict of interest whether financial, material or otherwise and that this article has not and is not being published in any journal.

If there is a conflict of interest, state nature of conflict of interest so a decision can be made with regards to the risk involved.

Funding

State if you received funding and from who to do the research and which year. You could write,

This study received funds from XYZ University in December 2025, Grant Number A131225

If you did not receive any funding you can write:

This research did not receive any funding from any organization

Ethics Approval

Declare that you got ethics approval to undertake this research and where you know the approval reference number, please state it. For instance, you can write

The ABC Research Ethics Review Committee (RERC) at XYZ University approved our interviews (Approval: A017) on 15 July 2025.

Participant Informed Consent

Declare that you got participant written consent. You can write:

Written informed consent was obtained from participants before undertaking the research.

Participant Informed Consent To Publish Results

Some participants agree to take part in a study but disagree to get them published. Declare whether your participants consented to the publication of results or not. Alternatively, state whether you obtained consent to publish from the legal representatives of such participants.

Data Availability

Best practice research encourages the sharing of data to enhance transparency, credibility and research integrity. You are therefore required to state how your data can be accessed. You can choose from any one of the following statements that best describes your situation.

1. This is a theoretical paper and as such it has no data.
2. Key data for this research which is sufficient to back up the findings has been included during the thematic analysis of this qualitative paper.
3. Data for this research is not available because participants did not grant consent.
4. Data for this research shall only be available after a period of XX years or months due to an embargo. Readers shall be advised of the URL immediately after this period. Alternatively, contact the author via email address (State your email) for further guidance.
5. Only partial data as consented by the participants is available on: State the URL
6. Entire data for this research is available on: State the URL
7. Entire data for this research is available upon request by contacting the researcher via email: State your email address.

Plagiarism Declaration

Plagiarism is an extremely serious offense. Write your own declaration making a sworn statement that this research which you are submitting is indeed your own work. Further, declare that you have accordingly cited or referenced all those scholars who you should rightfully cite for making use of their work and that where you are required to get their prior consent to make use of their data or findings, for example, long direct quotations, you did so.

Use of AI

Declare the extent to which you have used AI in the preparation of your manuscript.

Article Resubmission

Indicate if this is the first-time submission or if this is a resubmission of an edited version. If it is a resubmission kindly state the article number.

Prepublication

Kindly state if an earlier version or the same version has been published at a conference or some preprint platforms.

Article Reviewing and Publication

Kindly state that this article has only been submitted to this journal and is not being reviewed elsewhere or published in another journal.

APC Declaration

Write a sentence making a legal declaration that you have the funds to pay for the Article Processing Charges (APC) once your article is accepted following the journal’s rigorous blind peer review process. Please note that you cannot decide to withdraw from publishing your article with this journal after it has been thoroughly reviewed and accepted.

However, where your article is reviewed and rejected, you are not legally obligated to pay an APC. You can continue developing your article and even benefitting from the comments of our reviewers. Further, you are free to publish your further revised article elsewhere.

The above marks the end of sub headings to appear in your title page.

 Please note that authors are required to comply with all the above policies and non-compliance leads to your article being returned to you without being reviewed so that you address the outstanding issues.

Submitting Your Article

Document Type

AMER journal only accept word document for reviewing

 Preprint

AMER journal accepts submission of articles that have been uploaded on preprint servers. However, you should not proceed to submit any of your updated versions of your article while it is undergoing our peer review process.

Preprint platforms include but not limited to:

• Your organization’s repository where your PhD theses or working papers can be uploaded.
• Your personal website or other blogs
• Other preprint servers in the market which even assign a DOI to your article and permit you to further publish your article
• Workshop and conference paper presentations
• Any other registers that store work in progress research

Cover letter

Submit a concise cover letter which pitches your article addressing it to the Chief Editor. explaining why it is suitable to be published in AMERJ.

 Checklist of documents to submit

• Cover letter
• Anonymous manuscript
• Title page
• Figures
• Supplementary material (if applicable)

Additional information required during submission

• Stating type of submission: Empirical research, theoretical, review, insights, notes, or manager-leader lived experiences.
• Title of article
• Abstract
• Key words
• Number of figures
• Number of tables
• Length of article (word count) including figures, tables and references.
• Funding declaration
• Conflict of interest declaration
• Plagiarism declaration
• AI usage declaration
• Correspondence author listing
• Other authors listing
• Whether submission is in response to a special issue or it’s an ordinary submission

Publication Options

AMER Journal currently publishes open access only. Publishing open access implies that you as the author you will make a one-time payment for your article to be published in this journal. Your accepted article gets published immediately: No embargos and it is freely available to anyone to read.

Why Publish Open Access

Understandably, numerous authors do struggle to pay open access article processing charges (APC). However, the advantages of open access publishing by far outweigh the cost of such an APC. Importantly, as an author, take this as your investment in your contribution to knowledge. There are several advantages of publishing open access as opposed to the tradition of subscription route. The subscription option implies that you as the author do not pay but readers or institutions such as universities pay subscriptions to allow their students access to read your research.

Clearly, major advantages of open access publishing include but not limited to:

• Immediate publication, thus, visibility of your article.
• Faster knowledge sharing
• Increased discoverability.
• Greater reach.
• Increased citations given greater reach.
• Increased collaboration
• Greater access to funding, given an increasing number of grant funders now make open access publishing mandatory.

Further, note that an increasing number of universities now also encourage open access publication and some even set up open access funding to support their lecturers to open access publish. Another alternative is where universities enter into some partnerships with other organizations seeking open access funding or waivers for and on behalf of their researchers. Therefore, you can indeed find support to publish open access

Article Processing Charge

The Article Processing Charge (APC) for articles in AMER journal is USD$155. 

 APC Discount

Currently there are no discounts neither waivers. It is hoped that in the future, subject to growth of this journal, such discounts and waivers would be available.  

APC Declaration

Authors are required to declare in their Title Pages that they have the funds to pay for the Article Processing Charges (APC) if their article is accepted for publication. Payment of the APC is required immediately after authors are notified of the acceptance of their articles. 

Article Withdrawal

AMER journal accept that in general, authors have the right to withdraw their papers. Where authors withdraw their papers within 7 days of submission, there shall be no charge.

However, withdrawing an article after seven days and before completion of the review process attracts a withdrawal fee of 80% of the article processing charge.

Further, if authors withdraw their paper after the review has been completed and the article has been accepted, they shall be legally bound to pay the full article processing charge. 

Article withdrawal fee is being charged because it is quite irresponsible on the part of the authors and in several ways unethical to submit an article for review and only to withdraw it.

Our editorial team would have devoted their time and energy to expertly review the paper; yet it gets withdrawn and even worse when the full review has been completed and the article has been accepted. 

On the contrary, authors shall not be charged any article processing fee where a full review is completed and the paper is rejected.

Therefore, by submitting their articles to this journal, authors are making a legal sworn statement that they shall allow their paper to undergo the entire review process and that if accepted, they will pay the required article processing charge.

Withdrawal of the paper therefore becomes a breach of this declaration; hence, the article withdrawal fee

COPY RIGHT

AMER Journal is an open access journal which publishes articles under the Creative Commons Copyright Licences. There are six Creative Commons Licences, namely CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC SA, CC BY-ND, and CC BY -NC-ND and the details are available here https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/

 Of the above six, all articles in this journal are published under the CC BY -NC 4.0. This licence allows third parties to freely access an author’s article, share it and even make some adaptations but all this must be for non-commercial use. In all cases, third parties should make attribution to the author. Further details are available here

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.en 

In the event the authors funders prefer the CC BY, this will be used. This is the most accessible Creative Commons Licence which allows third parties to read, share, adapt and even for commercial purposes.

However, in all cases, third parties should make attribution to the author. Details are available here https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

Please note that when reusing and sharing any Creative Commons Licenced article, always make attribution to the original source quoting the full URL or DOI provided.

A notable feature when you publish open access is that you retain the copyright or your employer does, if you did the research for them.

However, you sign a publishing agreement in which you grant AMER Journal exclusive unlimited licence to publish your article under a Creative Commons Licence.

Further, you categorically identify and assign AMER Journal and its parent organization, the Entrepreneurship Institute of Zimbabwe (EIZ) as the original publishers. In addition, by publishing with AMERJ and EIZ, you are consenting to abide by all our publishing terms and conditions inclusive of the Creative Commons Licence agreement.

Regular URLs and Persistent Identifiers (PIDs)

Best publishing practice directs that persistent identifiers (PIDs) such as DOIs, ARK, and Handle be used to permanently identify digital objects such as articles. 

Authors are here by informed that during the infancy stages of this journal, regular URLs shall be assigned first to articles, instead of PIDs. At an appropriate later stage, AMER journal shall then assign PIDs  to the articles.

PIDs such as the DOIs are purchased from organizations such as Crossref; check here https://www.crossref.org/ or DataCite – https://datacite.org/

Notably, a considerable amount is required. This also explains why this journal is making use of a model of first assigning regular URLs, which are free. Doing this ensures that the article processing charges remain much lower and affordable. At an appropriate later stage, the journal can then approach Crossref or DataCite or some other DOI organization and arrange for the procurement of such DOIs. 

It is hoped that this infancy period shall run from March 2026 up to December 2028 at the very latest.

Therefore, by submitting their articles to this journal, authors are hereby making a legal sworn statement that they accept this initial usage of regular URLs as explained here.

Abstracting and Indexing

Authors are here by informed that because AMER journal is just starting, it is impossible for it to be indexed immediately in all major indexing databases. 

This is because, each indexing database has its own terms and conditions for taking on board new journals. Some of the major conditions include the requirement that this journal should have been operational for some stipulated number of years. 

Nevertheless, there are other indexing databases such as Google Scholar whose requirements are less stringent and can easily be fulfilled. It is in this context that authors are being advised that this journal shall start by indexing in Google Scholar and other indexing databases whose requirements can easily be fulfilled by just starting new journals. 

Therefore, by submitting their articles to this journal, authors are making a legal sworn statement that they accept this indexing arrangement and how it shall progress as the journal continues to grow.

ISSN Registration

Authors are informed that because AMER journal is still starting, it currently has not as yet applied for an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). Once the journal has reviewed and accepted at least five articles, it shall make its initial publication. Given this initial publication, AMER journal shall then apply for an ISSN and this is the procedure. Details are available here https://www.issn.org/understanding-the-issn/what-is-an-issn/

Consequently, authors are advised not to worry when they see that this journal is not currently displaying an ISSN. All this is part of the start-up process which any new journal goes through.

Permissions

Authors can reuse their work and in doing so must first check their specific author agreement so that they comply fully with the stated terms and conditions. In doubt, they should consult the AMER journal.

In reusing their work, authors must make proper reference to the original title including the volume and issue number as well as the respective DOI or URL.

With regards to permission to use other authors’ work, all open access Creative Commons Licensed articles provide for such reuse. All you need to do is to strictly comply with the specific provisions of such license, making the appropriate attributions as well as whether you are allowed to adapt or not and whether to do that for commercial use or not. For any content not published under the Creative Commons License, you must consult the AMER Journal for guidance on reuse. In such cases, you will certainly require to obtain relevant permissions.