Editorial Policy of the Journal

Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies is an international interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal which aims to publish high-quality, original, conceptual and empirical writing relevant to Asia and Africa. Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to: anthropology, history, cultural, literary, source and media studies, Islamic studies, sociology, international relations and politics in Asia and Africa.

The journal welcomes critical investigations grounded in relevant illustrative, qualitative, evidentiary approaches. The journal encourages innovative contributions from established and new scholars that not only reflect current conceptual thinking but also draw upon Asia and Africa in order to question received theoretical and methodological paradigms.

The main objective of the Journal is to create an open intellectual forum for leading experts and specialist researchers in the areas of Asian and African studies both in Russia and abroad.

The Journal pursues the following priorities:

  • furtherance of cutting edge research in the Asian and African studies;

  • identifying and investigating insufficiently explored areas of scholarship;

  • forming novelty approaches to methodology;

  • introducing scholarly use of rare textual sources;

  • interdisciplinary studies noted for their scholarly freshness, salience and ingenuity.

The Journal encompasses a broad spectrum of subject domains and topical areas:

  • re-evaluation of relations between Russia and Asia/ Africa;

  • languages of Asia and Africa;

  • Asia and Africa: history and source studies;

  • Asia and Africa: literature and literary theory;

  • Asia and Africa: geocultural spaces and cultural codes;

  • foreign policy, economics and international relations of Asia and Africa.

The Journal furthers a development of a unique direction in Asian and African studies, dedicated to research into bonds that bind Russia to Asian and African countries in specific areas, such as language, culture, politics, economics, etc.

Publishing research of insufficiently explored or wholly unexplored sources in oriental languages has invariable precedence. For example, the rubric «History and Source Studies» regularly sees appearance of papers on descriptions of rare manuscripts from the collections of both Russian and international libraries, museums and research centers. Some manuscripts will now only be found in hard-to-reach areas of Asia and Africa and are quite often revered as objects of immense cultural importance. When putting together the rubric «Linguistics» precedence is accorded to papers representing fieldwork concerned with little-studied or vanishing languages.

The Journal publishes research which improves and develops the geocultural theory and geocultural approach to Asian and African studies. The content of the rubric exemplifies and develops Wang’s idea that “the discussion on geocultural theory has underscored the urgency for us to re-examine the way cultural differences are handled in academic discourse”.

The Journal postures itself as a forum for publicizing results of current research projects (both Russian and international). The Editorial Board is in constant cooperation with a large number of universities, research institutions and museums worldwide, thus ensuring inclusion of cutting edge scholarship and latest research achievements in the areas of Asian and African studies.


Target Audience

The publication is aimed at specialist Asian and African scholars, and should likewise be interesting to researchers studying typology problems in the spheres of Arts and Humanities.


Main Principles of Editorial Policy

The Journal rigorously selects submitted manuscripts. Members of the Editorial Board specializing in the respective fields of history anonymously evaluate all submissions distributed to them by the Editor and offer a list of appropriate peer reviewers. After this stage, the manuscripts are subjected to the international double-blind peer review. Following the results of this reviewing process, the Editorial Board decides on the manuscripts to be included in the next issue of the Journal. The Journal involves the scholars from the leading Russian and foreign universities and academic institutions in the peer-reviewing process. In its policy, the Editorial Board follows the recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and Peer Review Guidelines.

Although the Journal is bilingual allowing articles published both in Russian and English languages, publication of materials in the English language is and will be prioritized, as it serves to integrate the Journal within the international academic community.

All manuscripts are formatted in compliance with the world standards and are furnished with abstracts, keywords and references. Since 2016, DOI names have been assigned to all the articles published in the Journal.

The Journal accepts scholarly articles, book reviews and reports on various academic activities in the field.

Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies is covered by the following databases: EBSCO, Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory, ERIH PLUS, eLIBRARY.ru, EastView, CyberLeninka, Russian Science Citation index (included in multidisciplinary resources of Web of Science).

The Journal is included in the list of the leading refereed academic journals and periodicals recommended by the Higher Attestation Committee at the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, assigned for publication of the key results of doctoral dissertations (including the both Russian doctoral degrees: the PhD and the Doctor of History).


Peer Review Statement

All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous double-blind refereeing by two referees, whose area of expertise is as close as possible to the subject of the submitted manuscript.


Anti-plagiarism

In order to ensure the high quality of published materials, as well as to verify the authenticity of plagiarism (borrowing) all submitted articles are tested by the “Antiplagiat-Rukontext” system.