ISSN

1683-7584 (PRINT)
2071-078X (ONLINE)

Focus and scope

The SA Journal of Human Resource Management (SAJHRM) explores aspects related and relevant to Human Resource Management (HRM) in various organisational settings. It aims to emphasise and promote the theory and good practices of HRM within Africa’s vulnerable labour market groups which has unique economic, cultural, political and social concerns. Aimed at the improvement of people management throughout business-relationship structures (policies and systems), topics of interest include, but in no means are limited to:

• Education, Training and Development Practices
• Human Resource Maintenance and Retention
• Compensation Practices
• Performance Management Practices
• Employee Relations.

The SAJHRM's focus lies in providing a critical link between quality academic research and the practical implications for business practice within South Africa and the African continent.

Historic data

Background: Professor Gert Roodt and his colleagues, at the Department of Human Resource Management (Rand Afrikaans University), started building on the brilliant initiative to establish the SA Journal of Human Resource Management. A few prominent academics from abroad and esteemed local colleagues were approached to serve on the editorial advisory committee of the journal. They eagerly agreed because South Africa was more than ready to welcome such an academic title. At that stage three editions per year were published. Since AOSIS Publishing took over, the journal is now published on an Open Access, rolling publication basis, with one hard copy issue published each year. It might be that other special issues are added on an ad hoc basis to the journal throughout a particular year, which will form part of consecutive issues thereafter.

Focus: Latest developments — such as the growth of the economic, agricultural, public and higher education sectors in South Africa — lead to ‘Human Resource Management’ being a very necessary and respectable practice. South Africa needed the input such professionals could offer, in order to help improve their business-relationship structures. The SA Journal of Human Resource Management stood out as a means to capture such knowledge and preserve it for many generations to come. Prominent role players in the field of Human Resource Management succeeded in consolidating fragmented interest groups and sub-fields in a single Education and Training Quality Assurance body (ETQA). These events can indeed be viewed as a milestone on the developmental road of Human Resource Management as an independent discipline in South Africa.

Criteria: The following contextual variables informed the decision to establish a Human Resource Management journal:

• There was no other journal in South Africa, at that time, which was focused on the broad field of Human Resource Management.
• There was a pressing need for presenting published research in the field of Human Resource Management in an integrated way.
• There was also a need at different academic institutions for a relevant journal in which peer-reviewed research contributions could be published.
• There was pressure mounting to establish and develop the identity of the Human Resource Management profession.

A journal of this nature would also contribute to the development of a professional image of the Human Resource Management profession.

Publication frequency

The journal publishes at least one issue each year. Articles are published online when ready for publication and then printed in an end-of-year compilation. Additional issues may be published for special events (e.g. conferences) and when special themes are addressed.

Types of articles published

Read full details on the submissions guidelines page.

Open access

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. Learn more about the journal copyright, licensing and publishing rights.

Review process

The journal has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. Read our full peer review process.

Marketing

AOSIS has a number of ways in which we promote publications. Learn more here.

Membership

AOSIS is a member and/or subscribes to the standards and code of practices of several leading industry organisations. This includes the Directory of Open Access Journals, Ithenticate, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, CrossRef, Portico and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Learn more here.

All articles published in the journal are included in:

• AGORA
• Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide 2021
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• EBSCO Host
• GALE, CENGAGE Learning
• GOALI
• Google Scholar
• Hinari
• OARE
• ProQuest
• Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1
• SciELO SA
• SCOPUS
• Web of Science Other Coverage, Emerging Sources Citation Index, ESCI

We are working closely with relevant indexing services to ensure that articles published in the journal will be available in their databases when appropriate.

The full text of the journal articles is deposited in the following archives to guarantee long-term preservation:

• AOSIS Library
• Portico
• SA ePublications, Sabinet
• South African Government Libraries

AOSIS is also a participant in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) initiative. LOCKSS will enable any library to maintain their own archive of content from AOSIS and other publishers, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for the journal is, https://sajhrm.co.za/index.php/sajhrm/gateway/lockss. Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.

A journal's Impact Factor was originally designed in 1963 as a tool for libraries to compare journals, and identify the most popular ones to subscribe to. It was never intended to measure the quality of journals, and definitely not the quality of individual articles.

The Impact Factor is a journal-level measurement reflecting the yearly average number of citations of recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher Impact Factors are often deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. Therefore, the more often articles in the journal are cited, the higher its Impact Factor.

The Impact Factor is highly discipline-dependent due to the speed with which articles get cited in each field and the related citation practices. The percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly amongst disciplines. Accordingly, one cannot compare journals across disciplines based on their relative Impact Factors.

We provide several citation-based measurements for each of our journals, if available. We caution our authors, readers and researchers that they should assess the quality of the content of individual articles, and not judge the quality of articles by the reputation of the journal in which they are published.