HTS Theological Studies: Eighty Years of Theology, Open Access and in Scopus
Most theology journals with real standing sit behind a paywall. HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies does not, and it is not a minor exception: it is indexed in Scopus and in the DOAJ, published by AOSIS in South Africa, and it has been running since 1943.
Every article is free to read, released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, and reviewed in double-blind by independent experts. The online ISSN is 2072-8050; the print line, 0259-9422, goes back to the journal’s Pretoria origins.
Why a South African journal matters to a Brazilian reader
Because the questions are closer than the distance suggests — far closer. South African theology has spent forty years working on precisely what Latin American theology works on: churches inside deep inequality, the relation between confession and social structure, popular religion, and the theological status of a context that European scholarship treats as peripheral.
The CC BY licence adds something practical. It permits legal reuse with attribution, which means an article can be circulated to a study group, quoted at length in a dissertation, or translated for a seminar without asking permission. Few journals of this standing allow that.
Scope, and where practical theology sits in it
The journal describes itself as covering Christian praxis in its historical, theological and textual dimensions, and it publishes across biblical studies, systematics, ancient languages, sociology of religion, ethics and missiology. In volume, it is one of the largest open-access theology journals in the world.
That breadth is both the strength and the difficulty — the discipline is in filtering. Searching by keyword returns a great deal; the discipline is in filtering.
How to work it
- Search the journal directly, not through Google. The site’s own search handles the volume better and lets you sort by section.
- Filter by section before reading. Practical theology and missiology are separate sections; entering through them saves hours against a raw keyword sweep.
- Follow the South African authors backwards. Once an article proves useful, read what its author published earlier in the same journal. The archive rewards vertical reading.
- Note the licence when you quote at length. CC BY makes extended quotation and translation legitimate, provided the attribution is complete.
- Check the author fee side only if you submit. Reading is free; publishing in AOSIS journals normally carries a processing charge, which matters if you intend to place an article there.
Open the journal
HTS Theological StudiesArchive since 1943
