ISSN

1609-9982 (PRINT)
2074-7705 (ONLINE)

Focus and scope

Verbum et Ecclesia is an international, South African open-access, peer reviewed and accredited, online journal. Only original research is considered for publication. This periodical is juridically connected to the Centre for Ministerial Development (Excelsus), located at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Pretoria. English, Afrikaans and Sepedi are the languages of publication which makes the journal unique. In addition, articles are also published in German, Dutch and Flemish. Occasionally articles will be published in an indigenous South African language. The journal seeks to create an intra- and interdisciplinary space for the conversation between theology and the sciences from a contextual perspective. It encourages research that challenges traditional discourses within and between the fields of biblical, religious, social and human sciences as well as the constructive engagement with the natural sciences. Verbum et Ecclesia is thus an instrument of engagement between theological disciplines, on the one hand, and theology and other disciplines, on the other. The journal intends to publish research from an annual interdisciplinary congress at the Faculty of Theology and Religion with a special focussed theme. The Editorial Board of Verbum et Ecclesia strongly encourages contributions from Africa, from women and young academics and from minority groups. Nascent global religious developments and especially reflection on these developments in the global South will be given preference. It impacts the methodology and thus the possibility that “texts” from these contexts can be engaged with. Special editions or Festschrifts will appear occasionally. These editions will reflect an independent theological theme or own character of a specific theological discipline. Only publications of the best academic quality will be considered for publication. Submissions which do not comply with the abovementioned criteria will not be considered for publication. Criteria must be reflected in the abstracts of a submission to be considered for publication.

Historic data

Verbum et Ecclesia was founded in 1980 and at the time was called Skrif en Kerk. The journal is owned, since 2000, by ‘the structures of ministerial education and development’ of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) and is situated in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Pretoria (UP). During the early period of the journal’s existence, Prof. Dr W.S. (Riempies) Prinsloo was its first Editor (1980–1995) and played a major role in building the journal’s national and international academic stature; his successor was Prof. Dr Cas J.A. Vos (1998–2001) and thereafter, Prof. Dr Dirk J. Human (2002-2015). In 2016, Prof. Dr Danie P. Veldsman took over as the Editor-in-Chief of Verbum et Ecclesia. The journal has operated under the auspices of two centres at the faculty, namely the Centre for Theology and Community (CTC) and the Institute for Ecumenical Research (IMER) from 2000–2007. Since 2008 the journal functioned under the newly founded Centre for Ministerial Development (CMD) at UP. The Lecturers’ Council at UP consists of professors linked to the Dutch Reformed Church who represent the Centre for Ministerial Development in cooperation with an international Advisory Editorial Board as managing body of the journal. In view of the University of Pretoria’s policy of internationalisation and due to broader accessibility of the journal, its name was changed in 2001 from Skrif en Kerk to Verbum et Ecclesia. As a result, the journal grew in international stature and publishes one (and sometimes two) print editions annually, but individual articles are published on the website as soon as they are available. 

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:

• ATLA Religion Database
• Bibliographical Information Bank in Patristics
• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• EBSCO Host
• GALE, CENGAGE Learning
• Google Scholar
• New Testament Abstracts, Boston College School of Theology and Ministry
• Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, Level 1
• Old Testament Abstracts, Catholic University of America
• ProQuest
• Religious and Theological Abstracts
• 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://verbumetecclesia.org.za/index.php/ve/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.