As part of our living values, which are a core part of our stewardship persective in ENVISION2030, we are proud to annouce the successful accreditation of the pioneer accredited journal – African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies – from the Durban University of Technology.

The initiative to launch an in-house journal was the brainstorm of Ms Vaneshree Govender and Dr Kunle Oparinde from the Directorate for Research and Postgraduate Support and supported by the DVC responsible for Research, Innovation and Engagement, Professor Sibusiso Moyo, a few years ago. The concept for the journal was derived upon introspection that there is a wealth of knowledge on the African continent that is worthy of bringing to the fore to share with the wider South African and African communites as part of our African Engagement agenda. The journal has crossed many milestones since its inaugural issue and has received great attention from both local and international academics as evident in the geopraphical variations of the publications.

In a communication with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: RIE, she remarks that this is a great achievement worthy of celebration. She states further that there has to be a balance though of internal versus external authors as guided by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) to ensure the highest quality and standards are maintained. DUT Research and Innovation must be pursued with the highest integrity and excellence as this forms part of who we are as DUT and what our University strategy, ENVISION2030, expects us to live by. She also acknowledged the enabling environment that has been created by the RPS Director, Dr Linda Zikhona Linganiso, who took over the leadership of the Direcotrate and is “jetting” us to ENVISION2030.

The RPS Director, Dr Linda Zikhona Linganiso, also expressed her views congratulating the team for the hardwork that has led to such a great achievement for the university. In her words, she notes that as a University we must continue to provide platforms for our students and staff to share their findings and also becoming a knowledge base for our region, country, African continent and elsewhere. We would like to invite our colleagues in our higher education institutions to contribute to the journal.

The Research Capacity Development (RCD) Coordinator, Ms Vaneshree Govender, conveyed her great satisfaction and welcomes this accomplishment as an added feather to the RCD unit, and the University as a whole. Through series of special issues, and book publications, and article writing workshops, the unit has continued to contribute significantly to the growth rate of research outputs from the university. She reflects that a dream that many thought could not be achieved has finally been achieved. She appreciates all the members of the editorial committee, who have contributed to the realization of this achievement. We particularly thank our team of editors composed of internal and external members who can all be found: https://journals.dut.ac.za/index.php/ajims/about/editorialTeam. A special thanks to our internal editorial members for the dedication and commitment at all times: Prof. Julian Pillay, Dr Nereshnee Govender, Dr Rufus Adebayo, Ms Sara Mitha (Library representative) as well as Mr Sagren Moodley and Mr Sean Carte from the DUT Library who have assisted greatly with piloting the journal on an open access platform and related IT support.

The journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr Kunle Oparinde who is a DUT Alumni, acknowledges that he is extremely elated with this development especially as he has being able to achieve this feat even as a postdoctoral fellow at the University where he studied. He mentions that he applied to enlist the journal on Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in 2020, which is a database that has now been adopted by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in the year 2021. He states that “although we faced a lot of challenges, we are happy that our hardwork finally paid off”. He concludes by saying that the journal will continue to ensure high standards in its processes and the next stage is to get the journal listed on databases such as International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS), Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus.

The entire DUT community is happy with this development and congratulate the team who have worked tirelessly to achieve this objective. African Journal of Inter/Multidisciplinary Studies