Alternation FAQ Sheet

Launched in 1994, the year of South Africa’s first democratic elections, Alternation was founded as international, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal in 1996*.

The purpose of Alternation is the critical knowledge production, discourse analysis and interpretation, and the dissemination of original, innovative, transformational peer-reviewed knowledge, in the Arts and Humanities, in Southern Africa.

Amongst others, Alternation is interested in the developing of communities of praxis, and interpretive communities, where conceptual frameworks and theory inform critical practice, and critical practice informs, and impacts conceptual frameworks in context.

Alternation seeks to contribute to the promotion of universally just and equitable social democratic social formations, responsive to inequality, gender injustice, and the ecological challenges that confront the world.

Through its innovative and ground-breaking inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary research, Alternation promotes excellence in its literary, linguistic, historical, educational, anthropological, psychological, geographic, religion-focused, and management, governance, and information systems research outputs.

On the individual level, Alternation seeks to promote research that reinforces the values of freedom, human dignity, equity, social justice, accountability and social responsibility. Socially, it promotes and fosters values of socially responsive sociocultural formations, solidarity, partnerships, transparency, collaboration and teamwork.

Alternation’s motto is to do research in, with and for community.

Alternation has established itself as one of the leading scientific journals on the African continent.  

Alternation is an Open Access Journal, and supports the internationalising and open access online publication of all peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

Alternation subscribes to the National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review for South African Scholarly Journals (2008, and updated in 2018), and the “Terms of Reference of the National Scholarly Editors’ Forum of SA (NSEF)” (2008, and updated in 2018), of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

* The Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa, approved Alternation as international, interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal for Southern Africa, in South Africa, in 1996.