Submissions

 Submissions for the 3rd Volume of the Journal are open

  Download Call for Papers
  Download PULP style guidelines

Submission of abstracts and timetable

  • Authors interested in submitting a paper to the Journal should submit an abstract of plus-minus 300 words by 31 August 2025.
  • Abstracts should contain the title of the paper, a short description of its focus, the methodology to be adopted, a brief overview of the issues to be explored, and the expected findings or insights.
  • Decisions on abstracts will be communicated by 15 September 2025.
  • Draft manuscripts of accepted abstracts are expected by 15 November 2025.

Submissions should be emailed to:

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Guidelines for the submission of draft manuscripts

  • The Journal is published in the English language.
  • Only manuscripts that fall within the themes specified above will be considered.
  • The Journal publishes only original works of the authors that have not been published elsewhere. By submitting a manuscript to the Journal, authors are warranting that the submissions are original unpublished works.
  • The proposed style guidelines for the Journal are the PULP style guidelines. These style guidelines should be strictly adhered to.
  • Articles should contain an abstract of 150 to 300 words.
  • Articles should contain the author’s name, affiliation and qualifications.
  • The preferred length for all manuscripts submitted to the Journal is as follows:

(a) articles: 6 000 to 10 000 words;
(b) book reviews: 1 500 to 2 500 words;
(c) notes/comments: 3 000 to 5 000 words.

  • Authors are to ensure that their articles are not plagiarised works and do not infringe the copyright of other authors.
  • The Journal takes the issue of plagiarism and copyright infringement seriously. Manuscripts with more than 15% similarity index may be rejected, while AI-generated manuscripts will be outrightly rejected.
  • Authors are encouraged to submit the plagiarism report of their manuscripts when submitting the manuscripts (Turnitin only).
  • Decisions of the Editorial Board on the acceptance of manuscripts for publication are final.

Form of publication of the Journal

  • The Journal is double-blind peer reviewed
  • The Journal is purely online and will also be available on PULP’s website
  • The Journal is open-access, registration with Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and other fitting organisations are ongoing

Conflict of interest

The Journal requires all authors to declare if they have any conflict of interest in relation to their manuscripts submitted to the Journal. Please direct any correspondence or enquiries to the Journal’s Editor as follows:

Dr Akinola Akintayo
(Editor-in-Chief)
  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

Use of AI by authors

All authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript. Authors submitting manuscripts to the  African Journal on Privacy and Data Protection have to confirm that the manuscript is their original work and that the work of others has been appropriately attributed.

As such, AI-generated substantive content will not be considered for publication. Any submission found to include AI-generated substantive content will be declined, or retracted if already published. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and violates the principles of transparency and honesty in research.

AI tools may however be used to guide the author to adopt a particular method, or to assist the author in conducting research, for example to find relevant sources. Such use and the extent thereof must be declared at the time of submission in the cover letter and detailed in the methods, as set out in the manuscript. The declaration of such use should include the name, version, and manufacturer of the tool used, and the date on which it was accessed, for example: Chat GTP 3.5, Version 28 August 2023, Open AI, accessed 1 January 2024. The ‘prompt’ or plain-language instruction entered in the tool should also be provided, where relevant, either in the methods section of the manuscript or as supplementary material to the manuscript.

However, AI and large language models may be used to revise and edit original writing. On the one hand, the use of AI tools to conduct a general edit, to translate and to summarise papers or large sections of writing is permitted, but needs to be disclosed. On the other hand, the use of commonly used AI tools to conduct spelling and grammar checks, is permitted but does not need to be disclosed. However, authors should exercise discretion when using these tools. It is important to carefully scrutinise the suggestions provided by AI tools to avoid the misinterpretation of the context or terminology.

The table summarises these stipulations as they apply to authors:

Example

AI can be used

Use must be disclosed

Use of AI to generate substantive content

Writing/generating any part of a manuscript

e.g. "Write 3000 words on [specific topic], covering key concepts, recent developments, methodologies, and potential future directions."

e.g. “Write an Introduction to the below text and add key references.”

No

n/a

Use of AI to guide author to adopt a particular method or to assist author in conducting research

e.g. “Provide a list of cases dealing with a particular topic” (followed by the finding and reading of the cases by the author)

Yes

Yes

Editing, translating and summarising papers or large sections of writing

e.g. “Edit the text to reduce to 250 words while preserving content, intention and clarity.”

Yes

Yes

Grammar checking and copyediting tools

e.g use of Grammarly

Yes

No

Similarity checking tools

Yes

No

Reference managers

Yes

No

For reviewers

Reviewers are responsible for evaluating manuscripts of articles, fairly and objectively, with a focus on quality and originality.

Reviewers should not rely on AI-based tools to write decision letters on their behalf without proper human oversight. Experience and knowledge are crucial in this process, supported by various tools such as plagiarism detection programmes, statistical analysis software, and academic search engines, many of which are provided by AI applications. Reviewers should carefully check for incorrect terminology that may have been suggested by spelling and editing tools.

Reviewers using AI applications and content must adhere to ethical standards and best practices and document their use of AI tools in the review reports. Hiding the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in peer review.

Reviewers must consider the impact and implications of AI-generated content in publication. They need to be aware of the tools and resources that facilitate the detection of AI-generated or modified content. Reviewers are called upon to identify misinformation as this can have adverse consequences.

All submitted manuscripts and correspondence by reviewers with the Journals’ editors should be treated as confidential and not shared in any way.