Copyright & Licensing Policy

The Africa Digital Governance and Law Review (ADGLR) is committed to protecting authors' intellectual property rights while promoting the broad dissemination, accessibility, and responsible reuse of scholarly research in digital governance, law, technology, and related fields.

Copyright

Copyright in articles published by The Africa Digital Governance and Law Review (ADGLR) remains with the respective author(s), unless otherwise expressly stated.

By submitting a manuscript to ADGLR, authors retain ownership of the copyright in their work while granting the journal the necessary non-exclusive rights to publish, reproduce, distribute, archive, index, and make the article publicly available in electronic and other scholarly formats.

Licensing

Unless otherwise indicated, articles published by ADGLR are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence.

The CC BY 4.0 licence permits users to:

  • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
  • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial purposes.

Users must provide appropriate credit to the author(s) and ADGLR, provide a link to the applicable licence, and indicate whether changes were made.

The full licence terms are available through the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.

Author Rights

Authors retain the right to:

  1. Share their published articles through personal websites, institutional repositories, and recognised academic platforms.
  2. Use their articles for teaching, research, conference presentations, and other legitimate academic purposes.
  3. Deposit copies of their published work in institutional and subject repositories.
  4. Reuse portions of their published work in subsequent books, theses, dissertations, and other scholarly publications, provided appropriate acknowledgement is given.
  5. Retain the moral right to be identified as the author of their work.
  6. Develop and build upon their published research in subsequent scholarly work.

Third-Party Materials

Authors are responsible for identifying and obtaining permission for copyrighted materials belonging to third parties, including photographs, tables, figures, datasets, substantial quotations, software, and other protected content.

Third-party materials that are subject to separate copyright restrictions are not automatically covered by the CC BY 4.0 licence. Users wishing to reuse such materials must obtain permission from the respective copyright holder where required.

Attribution and Responsible Reuse

Anyone reproducing, distributing, or adapting an ADGLR article must provide appropriate attribution, including:

  • The name(s) of the author(s);
  • The title of the article;
  • The Africa Digital Governance and Law Review (ADGLR);
  • Relevant publication details;
  • A link to the original publication; and
  • A link to the applicable Creative Commons licence.

Any substantial modification, adaptation, or translation should be clearly identified as such and should not misrepresent the original work or imply endorsement by ADGLR or its authors.

Copyright Infringement

ADGLR does not permit plagiarism, unauthorised reproduction, copyright infringement, fraudulent attribution, or other unlawful use of published material.

Where a credible copyright or intellectual-property complaint is received, the journal will investigate the matter and may take appropriate action, including correction, removal of material, publication of a notice, or retraction of an article where warranted.

Copyright Notice

The recommended copyright notice for articles published in ADGLR is:

© [Year] The Author(s). Published by The Africa Digital Governance and Law Review (ADGLR).

Where an article is published under the CC BY 4.0 licence, the applicable Creative Commons terms govern its subsequent reuse and distribution.

The Africa Digital Governance and Law Review (ADGLR) supports responsible open scholarly communication while respecting the intellectual property, legal, and moral rights of authors and other rights holders.