A note from the Editor-in-Chief
The South African Journal of Science is committed to multidisciplinarity as part of our mission, and we are interested in publishing on issues of broad local and continental concern. However, working, thinking and debating across disciplines is often easier said than done.
For this reason, we were delighted to receive an approach for a special issue showcasing the achievements and challenges of a Community of Practice (CoP) and its work in action – the outcome of which is the current special issue on ‘Sustainability Science Engagement and Engaged Sustainability Science’. Because the Guest Editors are part of the CoP, our editorial process with this special issue had to pay special attention to questions of independence of review processes. As members of a CoP may have a vested interest in the outcome of reviews of submissions from that same group, review processes were undertaken by our usual editorial team, none of whom is affiliated with the CoP. We did ask the Guest Editors for suggestions of reviewers and expert readers, but we did not necessarily follow their suggestions – we considered these as we would consider suggestions from authors themselves.
We are very pleased, therefore, not only to be publishing a special issue on very important issues for science in our context, but also that, with the kind cooperation of the Guest Editors, we are able confidently to state that all papers in the special issue (and those that were not accepted) were subject to the same levels of rigorous assessment as all other submissions to our Journal.
We thank the Guest Editors, Prof. Heila Lotz-Sisitka, Prof. Janice Limson and Prof. Lesley le Grange, for convening and guest editing this special issue, and I thank the Associate Editors and our in-house team (Phumlani Mncwango, Nadia Grobler and Dr Linda Fick) for their sterling work on this issue and for doing this work with such cheer and collegiality.
Leslie Swartz, Editor-in-Chief