Journal Policies

These policies were approved by Dr. Grace Msofe, TLA Chairperson, on 8 October 2026, and apply from Vol. 1 No. 1.

1. Open access

The SJLIS is a fully open access journal. Every article is free to read, download, print and share from the day it is published. Readers do not need to register, subscribe or pay.

No fees for authors. There are no submission, processing or publication charges (article processing charges).
No embargo. Articles are online immediately on publication, both as a web page with the abstract and as a PDF of the full text.
Reuse. Readers may reuse articles under the licence in section 2, provided the authors and the journal are properly credited.

Open access supports TLA's mission of access to information for all, and makes articles by Tanzanian and African authors easier to find, read and cite.

2. Copyright and licence

Authors keep the copyright of their articles. They grant the SJLIS the right of first publication, and articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0).

What the licence allows. Anyone may copy, share and adapt an article for any purpose, including commercial use, provided they credit the authors and the SJLIS, link to the licence and say whether changes were made.
What authors grant TLA. A non-exclusive right to publish, reproduce, archive and distribute the article in any format, and to supply it to indexing services and repositories.
Author reuse. Authors may reuse their own article without asking permission, and may deposit the published version in their institution's repository or on a personal website, citing the SJLIS as the original publisher.
Third-party material. Authors must have permission for any figures, tables or images they did not create, and must credit those sources in the article.
On every article. The licence and a copyright line (“© year The Author(s)”) appear on the article page and in the PDF.

3. Publication ethics

The SJLIS follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and uses COPE's flowcharts when it handles suspected misconduct. Editors, reviewers and authors are all expected to act with honesty, fairness and confidentiality.

Editors

Decide on a manuscript only on its quality, originality, relevance to the journal's scope and the reviewers' reports, never on the authors' nationality, gender, religion, institution or political views.
Keep manuscripts and reviewers' identities confidential.
Do not handle any manuscript where they have a conflict of interest, for example their own paper or one from a close colleague, student or their own department. Another board member then takes the editorial decisions.
Papers by editors or board members (including TLA office-holders) go through the same anonymous review, handled by an editor with no conflict.

Reviewers

Accept a review only if they have the expertise and can complete it within four weeks.
Declare any conflict of interest, and decline if they can identify the authors.
Treat the manuscript as confidential: do not share it, use its unpublished findings, or upload it to public tools, including generative AI services.
Give objective, constructive comments with reasons, and point out relevant work the authors have not cited.

Authors

Submit only original work that has not been published before and is not under review at another journal.
List as authors only those who made a substantial contribution, and acknowledge everyone else who helped.
Declare all funding and any conflict of interest on the title page.
Obtain informed consent and ethical clearance for research involving people, and keep participants' data confidential.
Report data honestly and keep it available to the editor on request.
Disclose any use of generative AI tools in writing or analysis in the methods or acknowledgements. AI tools cannot be listed as authors.
Tell the editor at once if they find a significant error in their published article.

Misconduct, corrections and retractions

Handling concerns. Anyone may report suspected misconduct to the Chief Editor, including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship disputes or undisclosed conflicts. The editor investigates confidentially, following COPE guidance, and lets the authors respond before any decision.
Corrections. A significant error that does not affect the conclusions is fixed by publishing a correction linked to the article.
Retractions. Articles with unreliable findings, plagiarism or serious misconduct are retracted. The article stays online, clearly marked “Retracted”, with a notice explaining why.
Appeals. Authors may appeal an editorial decision once, in writing to the Chief Editor, within 30 days. The appeal is considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision.

4. Plagiarism and originality

Every manuscript is checked for similarity with Turnitin or iThenticate at the initial evaluation, before it is sent to reviewers. Manuscripts that contain plagiarism are not reviewed.

What counts as plagiarism. Using another person's words, ideas, data or figures without credit. This includes self-plagiarism (reusing large parts of the author's own published text without citing it) and duplicate publication (submitting the same study to more than one journal).
How the report is read. The editor reads the similarity report rather than relying on a single percentage. An overall similarity above 20%, or above 5% from any one source, is looked at closely. Matches in the reference list, quotations and standard method phrases are not counted against the author.
Before publication. Minor overlap may be returned to the author to rewrite and cite properly. Substantial plagiarism leads to rejection, and the editor may inform the author's institution.
After publication. Plagiarism found in a published article is handled under the correction and retraction rules in section 3.
Earlier versions. A conference paper, thesis chapter or preprint may be developed into an article, provided it is substantially extended and the earlier version is cited and declared on the title page.

5. Archiving and preservation

The SJLIS keeps every published article permanently available. Each issue is stored in at least two places beyond the TLA website, so it survives even if the website changes or goes offline.

Journal website. Every issue and article stays online at its own permanent web address, with its PDF.
Repository deposit. Each issue is deposited, on publication, in an open long-term repository: a Tanzanian university institutional repository or Zenodo.
Legal deposit. Copies of each issue go to the National Central Library of the Tanzania Library Services Board.
Persistent identifiers. TLA is registering with Crossref so that every article receives a DOI, which keeps a citation working even if the web address changes.
Preservation service. After its first year, the journal will join a dedicated digital preservation service such as PKP PN, LOCKSS or CLOCKSS.
Self-archiving. Authors may deposit the published PDF in any repository, as set out in section 2.

6. Privacy

Names and email addresses entered in the submission form are used only for the journal's editorial work and are not shared for any other purpose. See the privacy policy.