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Mission statement

Our mission is to empower undergraduate and graduate students of anthropology in Utrecht to feel that their work matters. As such, we work to create a collaborative and independent intellectual space for all students.

Goals

Our goals are measured against the highest possible degree of accessibility. We are an open-access journal and all of our output is free and available online.

1. To facilitate knowledge exchange

Our first goal is to create a space centered around knowledge exchange in the broadest sense of the term. In doing so, we strive to move away from the top-down structure of a university. This platform allows students to share their knowledge whilst having the opportunity to develop skills in reviewing, or learn new concepts and techniques through reading the works of others. That is why at SCAJ, we do not ask to see authors’ grades. Neither do we require our reviewers to have any experience in reviewing.

2. To foster student engagement​

Our second goal is to engage students in every step of our process. The university’s grading system is more favorable to some than to others. We have seen how this causes some students to feel delegitimated in their academic work. SCAJ, however, belongs to everyone. Consequently, everyone who wants to take part in the creation of SCAJ should be able to do so. Utrecht-based anthropology students make up our authors, reviewers, and core team members, making SCAJ a student-led journal through and through.

Values

1. Inclusivity

We profoundly believe that SCAJ relies upon the valuable input of all students of anthropology in order to further develop as a platform. We aim to represent anthropology students in Utrecht in all their diversity. As such we strive to take into account different needs, wishes and thoughts within our team, collaborators and audience. Through democratic processes, open communication and careful reflection we let our decisions be guided by the pursuit of inclusivity.

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2. Transparency

SCAJ belongs to all students of anthropology, and thus all students of anthropology may appeal to this platform. For this to be true, we value transparency in all of our teams, selections and processes. As such, we strive to ensure that there is no mystery as to how we operate. We do this by keeping detailed records of the review-and selection process, which we explain in every publication. We work to keep this threshold low by encouraging readers, reviewers and authors to provide us with feedback, and by offering rejected authors the opportunity to receive feedback from the core reviewer responsible for that particular selection process.

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