Manuscript structure and templates

• Title (maximum of 95 characters including spaces)
• Authors (name and surname and ORCiD IDs of each author as well as corresponding author name and email)
• Affiliation details (include city and country)
• SDGs (list the UN Sustainable Development Goals to which your article contributes, if any, OR state ‘None’)
• Acknowledgements: Any significant help received in conceiving, designing or carrying out the work, as well as provision of a service or material must be acknowledged. Authors should always acknowledge outside reviewers of their drafts.
• Funding: Authors should acknowledge all sources of funding that supported their research. Authors will be able to select funding bodies under the Funding field during the submission process. If not applicable, indicate ‘No funding’.
• Data availability – [select from these options (more information here) and elaborate]
  • Open data set
  • All data included
  • On request from authors
  • Not available
  • Not applicable
• Authors’ contributions (if more than one author): Contributions of each author are to be listed as per the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), for example:

A.B.C.: Conceptualisation; methodology; data collection; sample analysis; data analysis; validation; data curation; writing – the initial draft; writing – revisions. D.E.F.: Student supervision; project leadership; project management; funding acquisition. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

• Potential conflicts of interest (if any, OR state ‘None’)

 Abstract, Significance, Keywords

• Abstract (maximum 250 words)
• Significance of the main findings (maximum 100 words)
• Five keywords

Body

• Headings to be determined by the author/s.
• Numbered paragraphs/sections are not permitted.
• Footnotes are not permitted.
• A superscript number should be assigned in numerical order to each in-text citation.

References

• To be formatted as per the journal referencing style.

Other elements

• Ethical approval: If applicable, please add the following note to your Methods (to maintain anonymity for peer review): “Ethical approval was obtained for this research. Details were disclosed to the journal upon submission.”
• Declaration of AI use: If used, in accordance with the Policy on Use of AI and LLMs, please detail such use in the Methods or Supplementary Material.

• Figures and Tables
  • To be numbered, and referred to within the text
  • Authors must obtain permission from the copyright owner for the use of quotations, illustrations, tables and other materials taken from previously published works that are not in the public domain. The original source(s) must be mentioned in the figure legend or as a footnote to a table.

Author Declaration

• Submissions must be accompanied by the Author Declaration signed by all authors

 Publishing agreement

• Submissions must be accompanied by a Publishing Agreement signed by all authors

 Cover letter

• The cover letter should outline the study and the article’s relevance to the broad readership of the South African Journal of Science. The cover letter should identify the author to whom all correspondence should be addressed and include the names and contact details (including affiliation and email) of the suggested reviewers.