ISSN

0379-8577 (PRINT)
2223-6279 (ONLINE)

Focus and scope

Curationis is the official journal of the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa. Curationis is a scholarly research journal that aims to provide a forum for the exploration of issues and experiences relating to, and supporting, nursing and midwifery best-practice development through research learning and problem-based knowledge sharing across the African continent. The knowledge gained and shared by authors and reviewers who publish research results in Curationis support the grounds for decision makers on matters regarding health, health care, nurses and nursing. The journal therefore serves as a repository (archive or store) of relevant data that enhances the practice of responsible and professional nursing, caring and midwifery. The journal will seek to publish innovative research and reviews on all aspects of nursing and midwifery with particular emphasis on the developing African context, including, but not limited to best practices, research, and policy roles of nurses and midwifes and the settings in which they practice. The intention of the publishers are to encourage authors to provide stimulating and thought-provoking information based on research that will further the improvement, management and development of nursing in Africa. Aspects that are typically covered in the publication include, amongst others:

• role of nurses, midwifes and health care workers
• education and training of workers in the nursing profession
• support and advisory services provided by nurses and midwifes in forming public awareness of health matters
• guidelines in dealing with public perceptions and views regarding diseases and health matters
• prevention of diseases
• community-oriented nursing and health care
• challenges encountered in the nursing profession.

Historic data

Curationis was founded in 1980 and at the time was published by the South African Nursing Association (SANA). Since 1996 the journal has been adopted and transformed by the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA). During the initial stages of change, the role of journal editor was filled by Prof. Uys from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which has subsequently changed to an editor appointed by DENOSA. In June 2011, a new phase was introduced in the operational history of Curationis when AOSIS (African Online Scientific Information Systems) started publishing Curationis on a rolling publication basis. The journal has since grown from strength to strength considering its wide focus, credibility, accreditation and Open Access format which actively promotes the dissemination of nursing knowledge and the development of research capacity within the country.

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:

• African Index Medicus
• Cabells Journalytics
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• EBSCO Host
• Embase
• GALE, CENGAGE Learning
• Google Scholar
• Hinari
• Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1
• ProQuest
• PubMed / MEDLINE
• PubMed Central
• SciELO SA
• SCOPUS

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://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/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.