SAGE Publishing announces a partnership with the Society for
Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE) to launch a new open
access journal Music & Science, providing a platform for engaged
debate and insight into music research from a wide range of scientific
perspectives. Scientific research is integral to gaining a greater
understanding of how music is a cultural phenomenon and is yet
grounded in our biology. Interdisciplinary in scope and focus, the
journal will publish research from a wide cross-section of disciplines
and perspectives that will illuminate—or that can be illuminated
by—scientific approaches to understanding music, from cognition,
neuroscience and psychoacoustics to computational approaches and
studies in digital culture. The first papers are due to be published
in September 2017.
The journal's point of departure is the idea that science—or, more
accurately, the sciences—can help us to make sense of music and its
significance in our lives. Music exists in complex and diverse forms
across historical time and within and across different societies;
music is indisputably a cultural phenomenon but our musicality is
grounded in our biology; we need to draw on the sciences to address
music's biological materiality, but we must also be attuned to the
distinctive functional and discursive properties that are embodied in
different cultures' musics.
Hence the need for this journal, which is intended to provide a
peer-reviewed platform for researchers to communicate important new
insights in music research from the full spectrum of relevant
scientific and scholarly perspectives to the widest possible audience.
It aims to publish research across the field of music and science as
broadly conceived, encompassing studies in cognition, neuroscience and
psychoacoustics; development and education; philosophy and aesthetics;
ethnomusicology and music sociology; archaeology and ethology; music
theory, analysis and historical studies; performance science and
practice-based research; computational approaches and studies in
digital culture; acoustics, sound studies, and soundscape studies;
music therapy; and clinical implications and approaches, including
psychoneuroimmunology, health and well-being. Its goal is to be truly
interdisciplinary: to give researchers from the many different
scientific traditions that have been applied to music the opportunity
to communicate with—and to learn from—each other, while encouraging
dialogue with music scholars whose work is situated in artistic,
performative or humanistic domains. In short, it aims to publish
research from any discipline or perspective that can illuminate—or
that can be illuminated by—scientific approaches to understanding
music.
Music & Science welcomes original research, commentaries and reviews,
and sets no upper or lower limit on article length. As the journal is
online it can host audio and video files. It has an open data policy;
authors should be prepared to share and to make freely available data
sets as well as relevant musical materials—audiovisual, sonic and
notated. Authors are also encouraged to publish a summary of their
research in audiovisual or podcast form alongside their submission to
highlight for a non-specialist audience the significance of their
research in the broad field of music and science as well as its
potential impact.
Together with SAGE, the editors aim to ensure that Article Processing
Charges (APCs) are kept as low as possible so as to stimulate
submissions from international researchers at all stages in their
career. For its first year of operation, there will be no APC;
subsequently the APC will be set at £400, and there will be a discount
of 50% for members of SEMPRE. Publication will be continuous and the
editors will aim for a turn-around time for submissions that is as
fast as is commensurate with a rigorous reviewing process.
Find out more about the journal:
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/music-science/journal202491.
