Guidelines for Submission
1. Papers must be submitted to submission@musicandmeaning.net.
Please read all of the following paragraphs thoroughly before submitting a contribution. If a submission is not in accordance with the guidelines listed below, it will not be considered for publication until the defects have been corrected.
A good rule of thumb: Regard your submission as if it were being sent to a print journal which requires photo-ready copy.
2. The structural language for JMM is English, and the editorial staff requests that discussions which take place within the various fora of JMM be conducted in English.
In order to ensure maximum accessibility to international readers, all contributions submitted to JMM must be submitted in an English version, where the level of English is of publishable quality. All articles submitted to JMM should be of a quality which reflects that they have been proofread by a native speaker of English with academic competencies appropriate to the contribution in question. The Editorial Staff may reject any submitted text (that is, paper, research report, essay or book review) that is not up to this standard. In such a case, the same text can of course be resubmitted after thorough linguistic revision.
SHOULD AN AUTHOR FEEL THAT IT IS IMPORTANT FOR A PARALLEL VERSION OF A CONTRIBUTION TO APPEAR IN SOME OTHER LANGUAGE THAN ENGLISH, HOWEVER, THE EDITORIAL STAFF WILL BE HAPPY TO DISCUSS THIS SOLUTION ON A CASE-TO-CASE BASIS, SINCE JMM IS INTERESTED IN EXPLOITING AND DEVELOPING ITS POTENTIAL AS AN INTERNET-BASED ACADEMIC JOURNAL. It goes without saying that we can only consider parallel versions in languages which are mastered by one or more of the associate editors on our editorial board. As of this writing, the additional languages are: German, French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Dutch. It goes without saying that the same requirements regarding linguistic quality apply to parallel versions as apply to the principal English version.
3. Submitted papers must not exceed 40 pages of 320 words/2400 characters each, or a total of 13000 words/96000 characters.
4. Please enclose a 200 word/1500 character abstract of your paper (this does not apply to reviews and reports) as well as a short biographical note on the author, not exceeding 150 words/1000 character.
5. Submitted papers must be formatted in Microsoft Word for Windows.
6. Submitted papers should follow JMM’s official stylesheet that can be downloaded here. The stylesheet uses the standards of The American Psychological Association. If you have questions regarding the guidelines specified in the stylesheet, please contact the Editorial Staff. Alternatively you can consult the general APA style guidelines located at the homepage of Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL).
Items in your list of references must be complete and precise; for journal articles and chapters in books, page numbers are required. These are examples:
Books
Tarasti, E. (2002). Signs of Music: A Guide to Musical Semiotics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Journal Articles
Carr, D. (2004). “Music, Meaning and Emotion”. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 62 (3), 225-234.
Chapters
Camurri, A. & Leman, M. (1997). “Gestalt-based Composition and Performance in Multimodal Environments”. In: Leman, M. (ed.), Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 495-508.
7. If your paper includes multimedia please use the following formats:
Still pictures: standard formats for the Internet like .jpg or .gif. Please do not insert pictures directly into your manuscript. In stead we prefer that you attach pictures as independent files and only indicate in your manuscript where you would like them inserted. We also prefer that you create your pictures with a picture editing program and not simply by means of the tools of your text editor (like Microsoft Word). If, however, this is your only option, we accept it, but we may have to edit (and change) these pictures for the Internet. Pictures that you want inserted in the text must not exceed a width of 580px. If there are special reasons we accept larger pictures, but these will be displayed in separate popup windows.
Sound files: please use the .mp3 format for all kinds of music. Only in special cases, e.g. for samples of technical sounds where high precission is needed, will we also accept the .wav format. Please write the Editorial Staff at info@musicandmeaning.net if you encounter any problem concerning conversion of formats, e.g. from a CD or .wav to .mp3 format. Remember to indicate in your manuscript where you would like to have the sound files inserted.
For video and animation: The video files must be in a format compatible with either Quicktime or Windows Media Player.
For further guidelines concerning the inclusion of multimedia examples, see paragraph 5 in our stylesheet.
If your paper includes multimedia please be aware of copyright issues. Use non-copyrighted material if possible. Please consult the Editorial Staff if you are in doubt concerning the copyright status of multimedia material included in your paper.
8. Papers will be peer-reviewed anonymously by our Editorial Board (this does not apply to book reviews and reports). JMM will be produced and distributed by our Editorial Staff in cooperation with our Web Consultant.
Please do not hesitate to write to the Editorial Staff at info@musicandmeaning.net if you have any questions concerning these guidelines or JMM in general.
9. As of October 2006, JMM has adopted a rolling deadline policy. Authors are encouraged to submit material whenever they feel that it is ready for consideration in the category of their choice. When a submission is accepted for publication, it will appear in the earliest possible issue in which there is space.
