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About Pythagoras

This page includes information on the focus and scope of Pythagoras as well as the policies and publication procedures. For details on how to prepare and submit a manuscript via the online manuscript submission system, please see the instructions for authors.

Please select the applicable link below:

Focus and scope ↑

Pythagoras is a scholarly research journal that provides a forum for the presentation and critical discussion of current research and developments in mathematics education at both national and international level.

Pythagoras publishes articles that significantly contribute to our understanding of mathematics teaching, learning and curriculum studies, including reports of research (experiments, case studies, surveys, philosophical and historical studies, etc.), critical analyses of school mathematics curricular and teacher development initiatives, literature reviews, theoretical analyses, exposition of mathematical thinking (mathematical practices) and commentaries on issues relating to the teaching and learning of mathematics at all levels of education.

Open Access ↑

Open Access refers to free and unrestricted access via the Internet to articles published in Pythagoras. This free access has usage limitations as stipulated in the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) usage license. The license allows redistribution and reuse of all articles on the condition that Pythagoras is appropriately credited.

Peer review policy ↑

Pythagoras has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. The editors do not inform the reviewers of the identity of the author(s). The reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to the authors either. The reviewers’ comments as well as recommendations regarding an article’s form may be passed on to the corresponding author and may also include suggested revisions. Manuscripts that are not approved for publication will not be returned to the submitting author in any format. Please note that AOSIS OpenJournals do not retain copies of rejected articles.

The peer review process aims to ensure that all published articles:

  • present the results of primary scientific research
  • report results that have not been published elsewhere
  • are scientifically sound
  • provide new scientific knowledge where experiments, statistics and other analyses are performed to a high technical standard and are described in sufficient detail so that another researcher will be able to reproduce the experiments described
  • provide conclusions that are presented in an appropriate manner and are supported by the data
  • are presented in an intelligible and logic manner and are written in clear and unambiguous English
  • meet all applicable research standards with regard to the ethics of experimentation and research integrity
  • adhere to appropriate reporting guidelines and community standards for data availability.

The journal publisher, AOSIS OpenJournals, is a member of the CrossCheck plagiarism detection initiative. In the event of suspected plagiarism in submitted works CrossCheck is available to the editors of Pythagoras to detect instances of overlapping and similar text. AOSIS OpenJournals endorses and applies the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which promotes integrity in peer-reviewed research publications.

Publication frequency ↑

Pythagoras publishes one issue per year. Individual articles are published as soon as they are ready for publication by adding them to the table of contents of the 'current' volume and issue. In this way, Pythagoras aims to speed up the process of manuscript publication from submission to becoming available on the website. Since 2010, each second issue of Pythagoras is dedicated to the publication of articles themed and focused on practical theology.

Special issues may be added on an ad hoc basis to the journal throughout a particular year and will form part of consecutive issues thereafter.

Authors will be able to check the progress of their manuscript via the submission system at any time by logging into the journal website’s personalised section.

Monographs and special issues that formed part of Pythagoras through the years:

Indexing ↑

After publication in Pythagoras, the complete text of each article is deposited immediately and permanently archived in major bibliographic databases:

Additionally, Pythagoras uses the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to create a distributed archiving system amongst participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

The journal is always seeking to establish a LOCKSS-compliant archive with university libraries. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for Pythagoras is: http://www.pythagoras.org.za/index.php/pythagoras/gateway/lockss 

Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.

DoHET accreditation ↑

The following lists are regarded as accredited journals by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (DoHET):

Journals appearing on the IBSS:

Journals appearing on the three indices of Thomson Reuters products:

List of approved South African journals: Journals that do not appear in the abovementioned international indices but are published in South Africa and meet specific criteria may be included in this list.

In conclusion: Pythagoras meets the criteria of the DoHET (see List of approved South African journals as maintained by the DoHET and Arts and Humanities Citation Index). It is therefore accredited and approved by the DoHET for its inclusion in the subsidy system for being a research publication for South Africa.



ISSN: 1012-2346 (print) | ISSN: 2223-7895 (online)Follow us on:

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