1.3.1 Language

British English is the official medium of communication in all manuscripts/articles

1.3.2 Format

Manuscript(s) should be formatted & printed in A4 size, font 12, single-spaced, times new Roman, paragraph not numbered; a maximum of three level headings is required

1.3.3 Pagination

Should be in Roman & Arabic numerically formatted to appear at the centre of the page

TICD JOURNAL is an open access journal which implies that all the articles
published by the journal can be accesses freely without any charge to all users. 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 non-commercial purposes, without asking prior
permission from the publisher or the author provided the author(s) and the journal are
properly acknowledged. In connection to this, the journal does not require manuscript
processing charges or any other author fees.

This journal operates a double anonymized review process. All contributions will
be initially assessed by the editor for suitability for the journal. Papers deemed
suitable are then typically sent to a minimum of two independent expert
reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible
for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's
decision is final. Editors are not involved in decisions about papers which they
have written themselves or have been written by family members or colleagues
or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest.

Double Anonymized Review
This journal uses double anonymized review, which means the identities of the
authors are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa. To facilitate this,
please include the following separately: Title page (with author details): This
should include the title, authors' names, affiliations, acknowledgements and any
Declaration of Interest statement, and a complete address for the corresponding
author including an e-mail address. Anonymized manuscript (no author details):
The main body of the paper (including the references, figures, tables and any
acknowledgements) should not include any identifying information, such as the
authors' names or affiliations.

As per the Journal's Open Access Policy, authors are entitled to make their articles in any version
including, the submitted version; the accepted version and the published version available publicly
in various domains and repositories including the institutional or other repositories of their own
choice according to the terms of the CC BY-SA license which is used by the Rural Planning
Journal.

Plagiarism is a serious violation of the standards of academic integrity and ethical conduct in
publishing research articles, review articles, and conceptual papers in the Rural Planning Journal
(RPJ). This implies that by submitting a manuscript to the RPJ, authors must ensure that their work
is original and free from plagiarism. It should be clear that references are not considered as a part
of the content to be subjected to plagiarism check. Plagiarism occurs when authors copy someone
else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author
and source. Self-plagiarism occurs when an author utilizes a large part of his/her previously
published work without using apt references. This can range from getting the same manuscript
published in multiple journals to modifying a previously published manuscript with some new
data.

All published articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. It means that authors reserve all proprietary rights such as patent rights
and the right to copy and redistribute the material of published works in any medium or format.
Also, they have the right to use all or part of the article in their future works (e.g., lectures, press
releases, and reviews of textbooks), remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose,
even commercially.
Under the Creative Commons end-user license, the readers can reuse portions or extracts from the
published article in their works by including attribution to the original work and its author(s).

The Rural Planning Journal (RPJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal that
publishes cutting-edge research of interest relating to rural development
planning. Thematic areas of interest include Rural Development; Poverty
Reduction; Development Planning and Management; Economic and Investment
Planning; Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition; Environment, Climate
Change and Energy; Population and Development; and, Cross-Cutting Issues.
Specific focus areas include public policies, social services, agriculture, regional
planning, public health, development finance, environment, gender, governance,
business and entrepreneurship, and natural resources management. RPJ is an
interdisciplinary journal and welcomes papers from theoretical and
methodological approaches, which contribute to sustainable development
planning in thematic areas of interest and identified focus areas.

Editor-in-Chief

Dr. Solomon MHANGO, Tengeru Institute of Community Development (TICD), Tanzania

Associate Editor

Jackob Kilyamulya, Tengeru Institute of Community Development (TICD), Tanzania

Board Members

Prof. Innocent J.E. Zilihona, Institute of Rural Development Planning (IRDP), Tanzania
Prof. Wakuru Maseka Magigi, Moshi Cooperative University (MoCU), Tanzania
Prof. Baltazar Mlagara Lyamongo Namwata, Institute of Rural Development Planning (IRDP), Tanzania
Prof. John Nshimba Jeckoniah, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania
Dr. Priscila Izar, Virginia Tech, College of Architecture and Urban Studies, USA.
Dr. Emanuel Emilian Chingonikaya, Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Tanzania
Dr. Christian Tobias Malamsha Kitala, Moshi Cooperative University (MoCU), Tanzania
Dr. Nawa Shalala Mwale, University of Zambia (UNZA), Zambia