Journal History

Al-Irsyad: Journal of Islamic and Contemporary Issues (IJICI) has demonstrated a significant evolutionary trajectory since its inception in 2016. The proposal for the establishment of IJICI was submitted by the Chairman of the Publications Committee at the Islamic Academy, Kolej Universiti Islam Selangor (KUIS) on 11 March 2016. The application was approved by the Meeting Members of the Research, Publications & Conferences Committee, KUIS, in issue 2/2016, dated 24 March 2016. Successfully, IJICI was first published in December 2016 (Vol. 1, No. 1), led at the time by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Abur Hamdi Usman.

As part of efforts to enhance its quality, IJICI applied for an ISSN on Thursday, September 22, 2016, and received the print ISSN with the number: 0128-116X. IJICI was then applied to an online ISSN and received it on Monday, February 6, 2017, with the number: 2550-1992.

The year 2017 marked a crucial milestone in the journal's evolution with the implementation of an online version in December with its volume 2, number 2, substantially enhancing the accessibility and dissemination of content. The subsequent issue in the same year introduced methodological innovations in the form of a new template and author guidelines, as well as a transition to an online journal management system. This positive development occurred because, in 2017, when KUIS was led by the Fourth Rector, Profesor Dato' Dr. Ab. Halim Tamuri (2013-2021), his Excellency issued a policy mandating that journal management systems move online using the Open Journal System (OJS) application. In addition, new regulations were introduced that required journals to have names more specifically related to certain fields of study. As a result, IJICI will reflect the increasing focus on Islamic contemporary issues.

Initially, the journal's aims are to serve as a cohesive scholarly platform for the dissemination of information and research on Islamic contemporary issues, incorporating original peer-reviewed research, case studies, and reports from a manifold of international authors. Over more than a decade, the journal experienced gradual development in terms of the quantity of articles published per edition. The period of 2022 was marked by the consistent publication of ten articles per edition.

Concurrently, IJICI provides a conducive platform for scholars and researchers to publish their current and noteworthy research to contribute to academic inquiry by positioning Islamic sciences as its main focus and encouraging its contributors to comprehensively consider the different facets of Islam. The journal's commitment to growth and relevance continued, with a substantial escalation of five to ten articles per edition beginning in 2021, a practice maintained to the present.

Throughout its existence, IJICI has consistently provided an academic platform for researchers, scientists, and academics to contribute their findings and insights regarding the response of Islamic law to socio-cultural transformations. Its thematic coverage encompasses various aspects such as Islamic Theology, Comparative Religion, Quranic and Hadith Studies.

The Editorial Board of IJICI agreed to apply the journal’s licensing to CC BY-NC 4.0. Additionally, the copyright for articles published in IJICI was fully transferred to the authors. This change is intended to broaden the distribution and accessibility of the scholarly works published while also providing authors with greater freedom to distribute and utilise their work under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Furthermore, starting from the June 2024 edition, the journal implemented a new article template format. This update aims to enhance the presentation and consistency of the published articles, ensuring a more standardised and professional appearance.

IJICI was first applied for MyCite accreditation in 2016 and accepted in 2017 to present. For the Malaysian context, MyCite (Malaysian Citation Index) will analyse and provide citation data only for domestic citations. Authors may use MyCite to find out who has cited their papers published in Malaysian scholarly works. From MyCite, it is possible to identify which paper cites whose paper, the impact of a journal and an article. MyCite also provides users with easy access to Malaysian scholarly works over the Web. The setting up of MCC is in line with the Ministry of Education's (MOE) aspiration specifically and the government of Malaysia in general to improve Malaysian university ranking by improving the quality of Malaysian publications, especially scholarly journals. MCC would be the one-stop centre that would help internationalise Malaysian journal publications, making their contents accessible globally and indexed locally by MyCite as well as proposing their indexation by international indexing agencies such as Scopus and the WoS databases.

IJICI applied for Scopus indexing on May 9, 2022, but the submission was rejected by the Scopus Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) on December 13, 2022.

Since 2016, IJICI has had one editor-in-chief, Associate Professor Dr. Abur Hamdi Usman (Scopus ID: 56301129900), whose missions are to implement the operational guidelines for scientific journal management, to increase the involvement of international editors and reviewers in IJICI's business processes, and to professionalise IJICI's management so that it can be on par with other reputable international journals.