Focus and Scope

This Journal publishes scientific articles related to multidisciplinary critical and intensive medical care and the emergency care of critically ill humans.

Section Policies

Guest Editorial

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

News

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorial

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Reviews

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Opinion

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Letter to editor

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case reports

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Obituaries

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Short Report

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book reviews

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Guideline

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Abstracts

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Position Statement

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Case series

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Consensus statement

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Vote of Thanks

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

Editors are responsible for managing and monitoring the peer review process and ensuring the fairness, timeliness, and thoroughness of the peer-review editorial process. A double blind review process is followed, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from each other throughout the review process.

The Editor-in-Chief completes an initial review of all submitted manuscripts to determine whether they fit within the scope of the journal. A decision to reject or accept for further review is made and the article may be assigned to an Associate Editor, who is responsible for selecting two external reviewers with suitable expertise, from a pool of reviewers registered with the journal. Once the invite to review is accepted, a reviewer is given three weeks by which to submit their report and make a recommendation to the Editor. It is difficult to predict how long a peer review will take as there is no mechanism by which to enforce the time frames to reviewers.

Once reviewer feedback is received, the handling editor makes a decision and communicates this to the author. Authors are requested to attend to the queries and comments of reviewers and once a revised version has been resubmitted, the handling editor will either make a final decision or send the manuscript for a second round of review.  The Editor-in-Chief has the final decision on any submitted manuscript.

Publication Frequency

Three issues are published per annum.

Open Access Policy

The South African Journal of Critical Care is an Open Access Journal and provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. In accordance with the definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative all content published by the SAJCC is made free to users without any subscription or other charges. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of these articles, or use them for any other lawful, non-commercial purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

 

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Comments Policy

The posting of comments to published articles requires registration with this journal website. Only constructive comments that relate to the published material will be permitted. Posted comments solely represent the opinions of the respective user and not those of the SAJCC, and do not imply endorsement by the SAJCC. The SAJCC reserves the right to remove comments without notice that are abusive, threatening, defamatory, contain advertising or spam, or violate another user’s privacy. The SAJCC reserves the right to revoke the privileges of users that post inappropriate material. Such material may be brought to the attention of the publisher (publishing@hmpg.co.za). The SAJCC reserves the right to modify this policy without notice.

Notifications

Readers of the SAJCC are encouraged to register with the journal website to receive notifications of new issues online (open access).
 

• Already a registered user? Login to the journal website and edit your profile to include 'Reader' as a role.
   
• Not a registered user? Register with the journal website and specify 'Reader' as a role in your user profile. For assistance contact publishing@hmpg.co.za. Please read our privacy policy regarding registration.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as the use of another's work, words or ideas without attribution or permission, and representation of them as one’s own original work. Plagiarism may take many forms, ranging from major plagiarism (the copy-and-paste of large amounts of text), to minor plagiarism without dishonest intent (e.g. when an author uses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper) and even self-plagiarism (the reuse of significant, identical or near-identical portions of one's own work without citing the original version).

The journal subscribes to CrossCheck, an initiative to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. All manuscripts submitted to the journal are automatically scanned against the CrossCheck database to verify originality. 

Manuscripts containing plagiarism will not be considered for publication in the journal. If plagiarism is brought to light after a manuscript has been published, the journal will proceed to conduct a preliminary investigation. Suspected misconduct will be reported to the institutes and funding agencies of the authors concerned. The journal reserves the right to formally retract such manuscripts and publish statements to reference material as plagiarism.

Publication fees

There is no charge for submissions and no article processing charge (APC) for accepted manuscripts.

Licensing Information

 

The SAJCC is published under an Attribution-Non Commercial International Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-NC 4.0) License. Under this license, authors agree to make articles available to users, without permission or fees, for any lawful, non-commercial purpose. Users may read, copy, or re-use published content as long as the author and original place of publication are properly cited. 

 

Publishing Rights

Authors grant the Publisher the exclusive right to publish, display, reproduce and/or distribute the Work in print and electronic format and in any medium known or hereafter developed, including for commercial use. The Author also agrees that the Publisher may retain in print or electronic format more than one copy of the Work for the purpose of preservation, security and back-up.

 Authors are required to complete and sign an Author Agreement form that outlines Author and Publisher rights and terms of publication. The Agreement form should be uploaded along with other submissions files and any submission will be considered incomplete without it. In undertaking this agreement, the Author represents, and warrants, either as the sole author or on behalf of the co-authors, that the Work is their own work and that the Author has the authority to enter into the Author-Publisher Agreement.

 

Data sharing policy

SAJCC encourages authors to share their data and other items supporting the results in the paper, by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors may provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published in their paper. Shared data should be cited.

 

All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data.

Advertising policy

Conflicts of interest policy

 

Conflicts of interest can derive from any kind of relationship or association that may influence authors’ or reviewers’ opinions about the subject matter of a paper. The existence of a conflict – whether actual, perceived or potential – does not preclude publication of an article. However, we aim to ensure that, in such cases, readers have all the information they need to enable them to make an informed assessment about a publication’s message and conclusions. We require that both authors and reviewers declare all sources of support for their research, any personal or financial relationships (including honoraria, speaking fees, gifts received, etc) with relevant individuals or organisations connected to the topic of the paper, and any association with a product or subject that may constitute a real, perceived or potential conflict of interest. If you are unsure whether a specific relationship constitutes a conflict, please contact the editorial team for advice. If a conflict remains undisclosed and is later brought to the attention of the editorial team, it will be considered a serious issue prompting an investigation with the possibility of retraction.

Protection of rights

Research Participants

Information that would enable identification of individual research participants should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, radiographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given informed written consent for publication and distribution. Refer to Protection of Research Participants. The signed consent form for case reports should be submitted with the manuscript to enable verification by the editorial team.

Other individuals

Any individual who is identifiable in an image must provide written agreement that the image may be used in that context in the SAJCC.