ISSN

2709-7420 (PRINT)
2617-7471 (ONLINE)

Focus and scope

The African Journal of Career Development (AJCD) is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that provides a forum for the dissemination of cutting-edge research relating to career development predominantly in Africa (but also to career development elsewhere in the world). The core aim of the AJCD is to facilitate the reporting of research related to promoting sustainable decent work for all. Here, decent work is regarded as a basic human right for all those who are willing and able to work.

Historic data

Fundamental shifts in the workplace oblige career counsellors to continually rethink the theory and practice of career counselling (Duarte, 2017; Guichard, 2013; Hartung, 2015; Maree, 2018; Savickas, 2015). Whilst acknowledging the role of new technologies in creating new jobs – and welcoming advances brought about by, for instance, the Fourth Industrial Revolution – people and their best interests should always lie at the heart of any technological advance. In response to the fundamental changes in the occupational world over the past 100 years or so, career counselling research and practice have been guided by the following triad of paradigms: vocational guidance, career development and life designing. A current occupational phenomenon requiring serious attention is the fact that few workers today will spend their entire working lives in the employ of one employer: workers across the world will in future work for numerous employers during their work-lives. Attendant challenges include merging work and life roles, remaining employable and staying relevant in the world of work. This new work scenario will require changes in the contracts or arrangements between employees and employers.

The sweeping changes in the occupational world are simultaneously causing uncertainty amongst the unemployed and current and prospective workers; making long-term career decisions increasingly problematic. According to Doyle (2017, p. 1), ‘upgrading one’s employment status has become an ongoing process,’ whilst Wolfe (2017) maintains that including workers’ lives and careers in one concept is no longer possible. Enhancing people’s employability (instead of short-sightedly focusing merely on helping them find work) is, therefore, the new imperative (Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). Career counselling today is aimed at enhancing people’s ability to adapt to rapidly changing work contexts in order to become more adaptive in general. The emphasis has shifted from ‘matching’ people to jobs to improving their capacity to deal with change and its impact. The need for career development (helping people navigate different life phases and strengthening their attitudes, beliefs and competencies (ABCs) to enable them to execute a wide array of career-life roles) has never been greater (Hartung, 2011).

People have to be assisted to develop their career adaptability, that is, their career related concerns, control, curiosity and confidence (Di Fabio, 2017; Hartung, 2011; Rossier, Ginevra, Bollmann, & Nauta, 2017; Savickas, 2015; Savickas & Porfeli, 2012). Career adaptability refers to the mastering of career related developmental tasks to contend with repeated occupational crossroads and associated changes in people’s career-lives. Wolfe (2017) stresses the need to help workers develop competencies that cannot easily be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Accordingly, people should strive to develop and apply the five critical skills (C’s) of critical thinking, curiosity, creativity, collaboration and communication. As these skills are currently beyond the capability of robots and artificial intelligence, workers who can master them will be more (career) adaptable, employable, career resilient and more secure in occupational contexts characterised by rapid change.

We, as career counsellors, have to respond to such change and its impact on our clients by continually and critically reflecting on our theory and practice given the major developments taking place: in information communication technology (ICT), which is closely associated with the Fifth Information Wave (the digital revolution) in general, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in particular. A basic standpoint of AJCD is that the right to work is a fundamental human right, yet more and more people are not enjoying this right. The dramatic increase in the global population (in developing countries in particular) means that fewer people, relatively speaking can find employment. Also, owing to advances in the field of ICT (propelled by Work 4.0), many workers are being replaced by artificial intelligence and robots – for the most part in the interests of cost minimisation and profit maximisation.

This situation has a negative impact on the workers’ sense of meaning-making in the workplace. Blustein (2015) maintains that ‘[w]hen work is going reasonably well, we have a sense of purpose in life. It makes people feel part of something bigger’. Work is a crucial strand in the social fabric, as without work people tend to lose hope in themselves and in society at large. Without work, people cannot support themselves, their families and their communities, financially and emotionally. Their sense of self and identity is undermined, and it is usually very difficult to restore their self-image and confidence. Society at large needs to note the gravity of the situation and to strive towards facilitating sustainable decent work for all across the diversity continuum. Whilst unemployment may well be an unpalatable fact of economic life in the postmodern era, it remains morally indefensible and poses a significant threat to global peace.

The challenge facing us as career counselling researchers, theorists and practitioners in the early part of the 21st century is how we can individually and collectively join hands to promote sustainable decent work for all. We need to maintain our dialogue until the challenge has been met fully and resolved successfully.

Publication frequency

The journal publishes one volume each year. Articles are published online when ready for publication and then printed in an end-of-year compilation. Additional collections 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:

• Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
• EBSCO Host
• GALE, CENGAGE Learning

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://ajcd.africa/index.php/ajcd/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.

The journal is accredited by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). This accreditation enables AOSIS to offer Continuing Education Units (CEU) certification to authors, co-authors and reviewers of the journal.