About the Journal

The Interdisciplinary Journal of Rural and Community Studies (IJRCS)  is a double-blind peer-reviewed "open access" journal established in early 2019 under the name "Journal of Education Research and Rural Community Development" with the publication of articles in education, rural and community studies. In January 2021, the journal was considered too encompassing during the forum's annual report and needed to be divided into two separate journals. Therefore, the rural and community development aspect was made an independent journal under the Interdisciplinary Journal of Rural and Community Studies (IJRCS), while the education research aspect was also designed to stand independently as the Interdisciplinary Journal of Education Research. This was how  IJRCS came into existence in January 2021.

Definition of Terms

  • ERRCDF defines "rural" as economically, socially, and politically disadvantaged locations, people, or entities.
  • ERRCDF defines "community" as the conglomerate of people, entities, locations, and organisations that share common or conflictual characteristics.  

Hosting & Publishing Information

IJRCS is hosted, archived and maintained by the University of the Free State Library and Information Services.

IJRCS is published by ERRCD Forum. ERRCD Forum is based in South Africa and publishes open access academic and peer-review journals in education, rural and community studies and social sciences. For more information, CONTACT US.

Publication Frequency

Prior to 2022, IJRCS published two issues on a continuous publishing model per year. From 2022, IJRCS publishes one issue per year, and a continuous publishing model applies. Therefore, articles ready for publication at any time of the year are immediately made available online on an article-by-article basis.

Starting in 2024, the Journal welcomes applications for special issues and encourages prospective special guest editors to submit their proposals. Interested individuals can find detailed guidelines and submission procedures in the Special Issue Policy.

Copyright and Licensing

IJRCS is an open-access journal that provides immediate access to its published contents. Authors retain unrestricted copyright and publishing rights for all articles published from August 2023 onwards. The authors also grant the publisher permission to publish the articles and be recognised as the original and the first publisher. Articles published are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), which permits commercial re-use (download, copy, redistribute, translate, remix, adapt, and build upon materials published, etc.) of open access articles, as long as the original author and source are properly attributed. The authors grant the publisher permission to apply a DOI to their articles and to archive them in databases and indexes such as DOAJ, SABINET, J-Gate, Scopus, EBSCO, ERIC, among others.  Authors also grant other third-party users the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors and citation details are acknowledged without prior permission from the publisher or the author.   

Note: All articles published prior to August 2023 are licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives.

Open Access Policy 

IJRCS provides immediate open access to readers and other users. This means that the readers and other users pay nothing to download, copy, read, print, distribute, link to the texts or use them for other lawful purposes. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. However, an Article Processing Charge (APC) is required by the authors for the life maintenance of their articles.

Self-archiving Policy

IJRCS permits and encourages authors to post items submitted to the journal on personal websites, institutional repositories, social networking sites, ResearchGate, and academia.edu, among others, both prior to and after publication while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in this journal. 

Publication Statistics

  • 2023: 23 articles submitted, 6 (23%) accepted and published, 17 (77%) rejected
  • 2022: 34 articles submitted, 6 (18%) accepted and published, 28 (82%) rejected
  • 2021: 40 articles submitted, 10 (25%) accepted and published, 30 (75%) rejected
  • 2020: 23 articles Submitted, 9 (39%) accepted & published, 19 (61%) rejected 
  • 2019: 37 articles Submitted, 13 (35%) accepted & published, 24 (65%) rejected