The South African Journal of Botany is a respected publication in the field of plant sciences. This article provides a detailed overview of the journal, covering its history, scope, key metrics, and guidelines for authors.
The South African Journal of Botany is a Web of Science indexed journal that publishes research in the area of Plant Sciences.
The South African Journal of Botany has been publishing since 1982 till date.
South African Journal of Botany is published Quarterly.
The publisher of the South African Journal of Botany is ELSEVIER.
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The pISSN number is 0254-6299 for the South African Journal of Botany.
The ISSN of this journal is 1727-9321.
The full journal title is South African Journal of Botany, with the abbreviation S. Afr. J.
Aim and Scope
The South African Journal Of Botany is a research journal that publishes research related to Agricultural and Biological Sciences.
The journal covers a wide range of topics including [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object], [object Object].
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Here’s a look at the journal's key metrics:
- CiteScore: 4.3
- Impact Factor: < 5
- Scite Index: 0.92
- 5-Year SI SNIP: 1
Impact Factor
The latest impact factor of SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY and all the other Web of Science journals was released on 20th June 2025 by Clarivate.
The Impact Factor of South African Journal Of Botany is 2.7.
The impact factor (IF) is a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year. It is used to measure the importance or rank of a journal by calculating the times its articles are cited.
The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia.
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Impact factors began to be calculated yearly starting from 1975 for journals listed in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR).
According to Clarivate's JCR, journals indexed in SCIE/SSCI have an impact factor.
The latest Impact Factor list (JCR) was released in June, 2025.
Impact factor data has a strong influence on the scientific community, affecting decisions on where to publish, whom to promote or hire, the success of grant applications, and even salary bonuses.
Here is a summary of the impact factor from 2018-2025:
| Year | Impact Factor |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 1.442 |
| 2019 | 1.504 |
| 2020 | 1.792 |
| 2021 | 2.315 |
| 2022 | - |
| 2023 | 3.1 |
| 2025 | 2.7 |
Journal Ranking and Indexing
Based on the Scopus data, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of south african journal of botany is 0.558.
The latest Quartile of south african journal of botany is Q2.
Each subject category of journals is divided into four quartiles: Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Q1 is occupied by the top 25% of journals in the list; Q2 is occupied by journals in the 25 to 50% group; Q3 is occupied by journals in the 50 to 75% group and Q4 is occupied by journals in the 75 to 100% group.
The south african journal of botany is indexed in:
- UGC CARE
- Scopus
- Web of Science (SCIE)
An indexed journal means that the journal has gone through and passed a review process of certain requirements done by a journal indexer.
The Web of Science Core Collection includes the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI), and Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
SCI is a multidisciplinary citation index. Science Citation Index covers 9,000+ journals across 177 scientific disciplines. SCI was established in 1900 to the current. SCI-indexed journals are indexed by SCI and SSCI. SCI is described as the world's leading journal.
Publication Details
The publication time may vary depending on factors such as the complexity of the research and the current workload of the editorial team.
Journals typically request reviewers to submit their reviews within 3-4 weeks.
African Journal of Botany levies an article-processing charge of $500 (USD) for each article accepted for publication. The journal does not charge a submission fee.
Authors are required to pay the manuscript handling fee only after their manuscripts have been reviewed and accepted for publication by an editor.
ISJ offsets publication expenses - including the cost of peer review management, journal production, and online hosting and archiving - by charging an Article Processing Charge (APC), to authors, institutions or funders for each article published.
Peer-review is the system used by African Journal of Botany to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published.
Manuscripts submitted to this journal will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be required to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication.
The editors of ISJ take a very serious stance against any evidence of plagiarism including self-plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to them.
Authors of articles published in any of our journals are permitted to self-archive the submitted (preprint) and accepted (peer-reviewed) version of the article at any time. There is no embargo period.
At ISJ, we continue to work hard to support our authors who trust us with their works.
Open Access: Our research is freely available to all, from the time of publication.
Rigorous peer-review: ISJ is operated by a team of experienced professional editors.
Copyright: Authors retain the copyright to their works.
Formatting References for Submission
This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Journal of Botany. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.
Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:
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- Paperpile: The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
- EndNote: Download the output style file
- Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others: The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
- BibTeX: BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.
Examples of Journal Articles
Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.
Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.
- A journal article with 1 author: Greer, A., 2003. Chemistry. Enhanced: a view of unusual peroxides. Science 302, 235-236.
- A journal article with 2 authors: Ruhl, H.A., Smith, K.L., Jr, 2004. Shifts in deep-sea community structure linked to climate and food supply. Science 305, 513-515.
- A journal article with 3 authors: Conaway, R.C., Brower, C.S., Conaway, J.W., 2002. Emerging roles of ubiquitin in transcription regulation. Science 296, 1254-1258.
- A journal article with 4 or more authors: Raghavan, S.C., Swanson, P.C., Wu, X., Hsieh, C.-L., Lieber, M.R., 2004. A non-B-DNA structure at the Bcl-2 major breakpoint region is cleaved by the RAG complex. Nature 428, 88-93.
Books and Book Chapters
Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.
- An authored book: Brown, T., Andrews, G.J., Cummins, S., Greenhough, B., Lewis, D., Power, A., 2017. Health Geographies.
- A chapter in an edited book: Huber, S.G., Muijs, D., 2010. School Leadership Effectiveness: The Growing Insight in the Importance of School Leadership for the Quality and Development of Schools and Their Pupils, in: Huber, S. (Ed.), School Leadership - International Perspectives. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 57-77.
Web Sites
Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for South African Journal of Botany.
- Blog post: Luntz, S., 2014. Galactic Umbrella’s Tale Revealed [WWW Document]. IFLScience.
Government Report
If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".
- Government Accountability Office, 1986. The Job Training Partnership Act Performance Standards and Information Systems (No. 129345). Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Theses and Dissertations
Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.
- Doctoral dissertation: Perkins, J., 2017. “Inside of each story was a piece of my story”: Applied folklore addressing stigma around perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.
News Paper Articles
Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.
- New York Times article: Walsh, M.W., 2016. Failed Talks Raise Specter of Biggest Default in Puerto Rico Crisis. New York Times A15.
In-text citations
References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:
- This sentence cites one reference (Greer, 2003).
- This sentence cites two references (Greer, 2003; Ruhl and Smith, 2004).
Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:
