Open Access

This is a Gold 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.

 

Copyright Notice

All authors submitting manuscripts to the African Cities Journal agree to the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license. Under this license, authors retain the copyright to their manuscripts while granting the Journal the right to publish and distribute the work under the terms of the CC BY-SA license. Other persons, including the authors, are free to share the manuscript on the medium of their choice. In the event of sharing a modified version of the manuscript, it is imperative to clearly indicate the parts where modifications have been made. 

Any derivative or adaptation of the work must be distributed under the same license conditions (CC BY-SA), to ensure that subsequent works retain the same level of openness and accessibility. This ensures that the work remains freely accessible and retains the same licensing conditions, thus promoting the principles of knowledge sharing and collaboration within the scientific community while safeguarding the rights and interests of the original authors. 

Regarding the reproduction and downloading of manuscripts in personal or institutional repositories, authors are generally authorized to archive preprints (version of the manuscript prior to peer review) or postprints (version reviewed and accepted for publication) in these repositories. In particular, authors can reproduce their postprints in their thesis (as a chapter). However, it is essential to respect the terms of the CC BY-SA license and duly cite the original version published in our journal. 

For manuscripts that have been accepted for peer review but have not yet been published in the African Cities Journal at the time of thesis submission, authors should mention that the chapter is the preprint version of a manuscript under review in the Journal. Consequently, authors retain copyright on their thesis chapters while granting the journal the right to publish and distribute the work under the CC BY-SA license.