SudaGene Scientific Journal (SGSJ)

From the founding editor

Research on Sudan has long been published far from Sudan — in journals Sudanese readers cannot afford, by teams in which Sudanese scientists appear as field hosts rather than authors. The literatures that describe the Nile corridor — population genetics, clinical medicine, archaeology — have grown in separate faculties and rarely read one another.

The SudaGene Scientific Journal exists to put that work in one place and in the open. It publishes original research, reviews and working papers across four sections, free to read and free to publish, with every article carrying abstracts in Arabic and English.

We ask one thing of every paper: that its claims be stated at their actual strength, with their sources shown. A careful research agenda that names what the evidence cannot yet answer is as welcome here as a finished result.

— Dr. Mohamed Gibbril, Founding Editor

Who we publish

Who this journal is for

Sudanese science is larger than its indexed record. Much of it was written in Arabic, outside medicine, or by people now separated from their laboratories and archives. SGSJ is built for them.

i

Researchers cut off from their materials

If war or displacement has separated you from your samples, notebooks or field site, our research desk can help you test a hypothesis from where you are — through meta-analysis of published data and computational modelling, with you as author.

ii

Scholars from the humanities

Historians, linguists, anthropologists and writers who want to work on medicine, heredity and the biology of the Nile Valley will find co-authors, methods support and reviewers who take the work seriously.

iii

Scientists in fields outside the mainstream

Field natural history, local and traditional knowledge, Arabic-language science: work pursued across a career with no journal to send it to. We publish synthesis of local knowledge on its own terms, not as a copy of imported models.

iv

Students and independent researchers

No institutional affiliation is required. Early-career and independent authors receive the same review as everyone else, with mentoring through revision.

Inaugural programme

The inaugural programme — in preparation

The first papers are released as working papers ahead of peer review, so that colleagues can read and respond to them. Each is labelled with its status.

Section III · Bioarchaeology & Nile Corridor Heritage

Working paper · SGSJ-WP 2026/01 Open access

The Pastoralist Heuristic: Testing for Empirical Trait-Selection in Middle Nile Pastoralism — A Research Agenda Bridging Zooarchaeology, Archaeogenetics, and Biomolecular Method

Mohamed Gibbril¹ · Yahia Fadl Tahir²

Abstract

The empirical logic of heredity — trait, transmission, selection, outcome — has a documented pre-formal history. Wood and Orel (2001) established this as a historiographical category for European livestock breeding. This paper asks whether Middle Nile pastoralism — cattle- and caprine-herding at the Third Cataract and Kerma — constitutes a genuine regional instance of this category, and concludes that the current evidentiary record cannot yet answer that question.

Four literatures describing the same corridor — zooarchaeology, archaeogenetics, modern population genomics, and biomolecular archaeology — have developed in near-total separation. Read together, they show that the ratio data usually cited as evidence of selection are confounded by at least three alternatives (drought-driven culling, wealth retention, ritual practice), and that species-level identification at Wadi Farja remains unresolved. Rather than assert a conclusion the evidence cannot support, the paper sets out a staged programme — geometric morphometrics, ZooMS, and dental-calculus proteomics — following published precedent from the same excavation population. No priority claim is made.

Keywords: Kerma · Wadi Farja · Third Cataract · zooarchaeology · ZooMS · palaeoproteomics · archaeogenetics · history of heredity

¹ Gene Academy / SudaGene Consortium; Institute of Endemic Diseases, University of Khartoum (graduate programme). ² Department of Archaeology, University of Khartoum.

Suggested citation

Gibbril, M. & Tahir, Y.F. (2026). The Pastoralist Heuristic: Testing for empirical trait-selection in Middle Nile pastoralism. SudaGene Scientific Journal, Working Paper SGSJ-WP 2026/01. https://geneacademy.net/journal.html#wp-2026-01

In preparationSections III / IV

The Dar al-Manasir Oral & Toponymic Archive: Field Toponymy and Cultural Salvage along the Fourth Cataract

Authors to be announced

Section I · Population Genomics & Molecular Clines

In preparation

Category Instability as Evidence Against Biological Essentialism in Nile Basin Clinal Gradients

Authors to be announced

Section II · Endemic Clinical Medicine & Neglected Tropical Diseases

In preparation

The Epidemiological Inversion: Infectious and Neglected Tropical Disease Burden in Sudanese Frontline Practice

Authors to be announced

Section IV · Resilient Health Technology & Medical Education

In preparation

Dual-Register Clinical Vignettes: Bridging Sudanese Colloquial Dialect and Arabizi to Mechanistic Medical Reasoning in Post-Conflict Licensure Preparation

Authors to be announced

Scope

Four sections, one corridor

Each section has its own editor and reviewer pool. Papers that cross sections are encouraged and handled jointly.

I

Population Genomics & Molecular Clines

Human genetic diversity in Sudan and the Nile Basin, studied as gradients rather than categories.

HbS, G6PD and malaria-selection clines
Ancestry and admixture history
Pharmacogenomics in African populations

Section editor · nominations open

First issue forthcoming

II

Endemic Clinical Medicine & Neglected Tropical Diseases

Clinical evidence from Sudanese practice, where infectious and neglected disease shapes the case mix.

Mycetoma, leishmaniasis, PKDL
Tropical dermatology
Diagnostic gaps in primary care

Section editor · nominations open

First issue forthcoming

III

Bioarchaeology & Nile Corridor Heritage

Where ancient DNA, faunal remains, landscape and oral history meet along the Middle Nile.

Zooarchaeology and palaeoproteomics
Holocene pastoralism and climate
Toponymy and heritage salvage

Section editor · nominations open

First issue forthcoming

IV

Resilient Health Technology & Medical Education

Teaching, assessment and health systems that keep working through conflict and displacement.

Clinical reasoning and licensure preparation
Low-bandwidth and offline tools
Displaced-workforce studies

Section editor · Dr. M. Gibbril (interim)

First issue forthcoming

Publisher and partners

Published and supported by

SGSJ is published by the SudaGene Consortium through Gene Academy. It operates independently of any university, ministry or council.

Institutions wishing to join as partners — nominating reviewers, hosting seminars or co-publishing themed issues — are welcome to write to the editorial office.

Diamond open access

Our open-access commitments

Knowledge about Sudan should be readable in Sudan. These seven commitments govern everything SGSJ publishes.

Free to readEvery article is openly available on publication — no subscription, no paywall, no registration.
Free to publishNo article-processing, submission or page charges. Costs are carried by the consortium, never by authors.
Authors keep their rightsArticles are published under CC BY 4.0. Authors retain copyright and may deposit their work anywhere.
Credit where the work was doneField collectors, clinicians and local collaborators are credited using CRediT contributor roles; authorship follows ICMJE criteria.
Two languagesEvery article carries abstracts in Arabic and English, so findings reach the communities they describe.
Claims with their sourcesEach claim is paired with its evidence. Data are deposited openly wherever ethics and consent allow.
Open to responsePublished papers invite signed commentary and replies, which are reviewed and published alongside the original.

Publication ethics

Standards we follow

Our editorial policies are written against the recognised international frameworks below. Where a formal membership or listing is still in progress, we say so.

COPE

COPE Core PracticesPolicies on misconduct, appeals, conflicts of interest and corrections follow the Committee on Publication Ethics framework.Policies aligned

DOAJ

DOAJ listingSGSJ is built to DOAJ's criteria and will apply once its publishing-history requirement is met.Application planned

CC

CC BY 4.0Open licence on every article; reuse with attribution.In force

ICMJE

ICMJE authorshipClear authorship criteria and disclosure forms for every manuscript.In force

CRediT

Contributor rolesFourteen-role taxonomy recorded for every author and contributor.In force

FAIR

FAIR dataFindable, accessible, interoperable, reusable data deposits where consent permits.In force

ISSN

ISSNInternational Standard Serial Number for the online edition.Application pending

DOI

Crossref DOIsPersistent identifiers for every peer-reviewed article.Registration planned

Policy

Independence and affiliation

SGSJ is editorially independent. It is not an organ of any university, ministry, council or existing journal, and works with them by agreement.
An author's affiliation records where they work. It does not imply that institution's endorsement of the paper.
Editors and reviewers serve in a personal scholarly capacity, not as representatives of their employers.
The journal's voice is academic. The personal views, teaching and public outreach of its founder and members are their own, are labelled as such, and play no part in editorial decisions.
No editor handles a manuscript they have written or co-written.

Policy

Use of AI and computational tools

Tools used by the editorial office — for screening, translation support and in-silico analysis — are named publicly, tested adversarially before use, and audited. Criticism of them is welcome and published.
AI systems are never authors. Authors state any AI assistance in their methods.
Every AI-assisted analysis is checked by a named person who takes responsibility for it.
Results from computational modelling are labelled in-silico and treated as hypothesis-generating until confirmed by empirical work.

Editorial board

Editors

The founding board is being formed. Members are listed here once they have accepted their appointment.

MG

Dr. Mohamed GibbrilFounding Editor
MBBS, University of Khartoum · MSc candidate in Molecular Medicine, Institute of Endemic Diseases

I

Section I editorPopulation Genomics & Molecular Clines — to be announced

II

Section II editorEndemic Clinical Medicine & NTDs — to be announced

III

Section III editorBioarchaeology & Nile Corridor Heritage — to be announced

IV

Section IV editorResilient Health Technology & Medical Education — to be announced

Open call

Call for Editorial Board nominations

SGSJ invites nominations — including self-nominations — for section editors, associate editors and reviewers across all four sections. We particularly welcome Sudanese scientists working in Sudan or abroad, and colleagues from the wider Nile Basin.

Doctoral degree or equivalent standing, with a publication record in the field
Willingness to handle or review about four manuscripts a year
Commitment to the journal's open-access and ethics standards
Declaration of any competing interests

Nominations are reviewed on a rolling basis ahead of the 27 October 2026 launch.

For authors

Publishing with SGSJ

STEP 01

Prepare

Write in English or Arabic, with a structured abstract (≤ 300 words) in both languages if you can — we help with translation. Cite with DOIs where they exist.

STEP 02

Submit

Send your manuscript, a cover letter, CRediT roles and competing-interest statements. Research on people needs ethics approval and consent details.

STEP 03

Review & publish

Editorial screening within two weeks, then double-anonymised review by at least two referees. Accepted papers publish online as soon as they are ready.

Article type	Length	Purpose
Research article	4,000–8,000 words	Original findings with methods, data and limitations stated plainly.
Review	5,000–10,000 words	Systematic (PRISMA) or narrative synthesis of a field.
Research agenda	3,000–7,000 words	A precisely framed open question, the evidence gap, and the methods that would close it.
Working paper	Any	Shared before peer review for discussion; clearly labelled as such.
Field report	1,500–4,000 words	Clinical series, survey or excavation data from Sudan.
Commentary & reply	≤ 1,500 words	Signed response to a published SGSJ paper.

What every accepted paper receives

No fees, everWe do not charge to submit, review or publish.

A source auditEvery reference and claim is checked before publication.

Two languagesArabic and English abstracts, with translation help.

FindabilityKeywords, metadata and markup prepared so search engines and Google Scholar can index the paper.

A permanent recordA stable citation, an archived copy and a persistent identifier once registered.

An audienceAnnouncement to the consortium network and an open launch seminar.

Support for your scholarly identity

Good work goes uncited when its author cannot be found. Many Sudanese scientists have no professional email, no ORCID record and no public profile, because nobody was there to set them up. We do that with you.

A professional email addressEditorial board members receive an address at geneacademy.net. Authors and members without an institutional email may request one for scholarly correspondence.

Your research profiles, set up with youWe help you register an ORCID iD and build your Google Scholar and ResearchGate profiles, so your papers are gathered under your name and counted.

GemIInI VerifiedA member with a Gene Academy profile and membership ID, featured on the main site, with access to the GemIInI app at members.geneacademy.net. It confirms membership. It is not an academic degree or a professional licence.

Programme in preparation

The Sudanese Science Record

There is no single gathered, citable record of what Sudanese scientists have published. The work exists. Much of it is hard to find: printed in journals that were never digitised, written in Arabic without English metadata, issued without identifiers, or held in private collections.

SGSJ is compiling an audited, open bibliography of Sudanese scientific work from the 1950s to the present, organised by field, institution and decade. It will be published as a citable dataset and kept up to date.

Each entry is checked against its source before it is listed. Nothing is added on reputation alone.

41,030: works with a Sudan affiliation in the OpenAlex index
116 → 12,478: works per decade, 1950s to 2010s
4%: are in Arabic
1%: are in the arts and humanities

First pass, counted from OpenAlex on 1 October 2026. Not yet audited; older and Arabic-language work is under-counted.

Forum & consortium

A journal meant to be shared

SGSJ papers are written to be read, discussed and built on — by scientists, clinicians, students and the communities they describe.

Respond

Every paper has a "Respond to this paper" link. Substantive, signed responses are reviewed and published beside the original, with a right of reply.

Seminars

Each issue is launched with an open online seminar where authors present and take questions. Recordings are archived with the issue.

Consortium

Universities, research institutes and societies can join as partner institutions — nominating reviewers, hosting seminars and co-publishing themed issues.