submission

All submissions to JIMS must address a musically relevant issue, have at least two authors, and report the results of a collaboration between humanities and sciences. Submissions may be purely empirical, purely theoretical, or a mixture of the two.

In a broad definition, both humanities and sciences may include applications of research in musical practice. "Musical practice" may in turn be broadly defined to include not only performance, composition and improvisation, but also education, therapy and medicine. Thus, the humanities aspect may involve musical practice (e.g., the history of performance practice, compositionally oriented music theory, or the teaching of ethnomusicology), and the science aspect may involve scientifically oriented musical practice (e.g. the psychology of music performance, music medicine, or musically relevant engineering applications).

The main academic backgrounds of the first two authors should correspond to humanities and sciences. JIMS assumes that no individual author can represent both.

JIMS welcomes contributions from researchers at all stages in their careers. The peer review procedure focuses on the content of the submission, not the qualification of the authors. JIMS determines the main academic background of each author on the basis of the disciplinary infrastructures in which s/he is qualified and/or has published, and whether these disciplines or infrastructures are normally considered to belong to humanities and sciences - without considering the quantity or quality of those qualifications and publications.

The first author is responsible for all communication with the editors and for informing the other author(s) about all such communications.

Manuscripts should be submitted as a single pdf file that includes all text, figures, tables and other information and is numbered from start to finish. The format should conform to the JIMS template document (you can download it here either as word or pdf) and either the Chicago Manual of Style (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html) or the American Psychological Association Manual (http://www.apastyle.org/). Figures must be black and white unless their content makes color unavoidable and the authors meet any additional printing costs. Each new submission should be accompanied by a statement of Authorship, Conflict of Interest, and Copyright

All submissions are reviewed by experts in the submission's two main disciplines (review form). When a manuscript is accepted for publication, acceptance is generally conditional on adequate revision in accordance with reviewers' comments. All subsequent communication between the first author and action editor should be electronic (email with attachments).

The revised manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter that responds to every comment by every reviewer in the following format:
· The reviewer's comment, copied verbatim from the text of the review.
· A linking sentence, e.g. "This comment has been addressed in the revised manuscript as follows" or “From the revised manuscript:”
· One or more extracts from the revised text of the article that make it clear that the authors have responded constructively to the reviewer's comment (again, copied verbatim).
 

When this guideline is followed, it is unnecessary to refer to page and line numbers in the old or new texts or in the reviews. A reviewer's comment may be ignored only if the authors can convince the reviewers and action editor that the comment was erroneous, inappropriate, or irrelevant.

The cover letter should also document any further substantive changes that may have been made to the text since the original submission (i.e., changes that do not follow from the reviews) in the following format:
· The reason for the change
· (Extract from) The corresponding new text
 

Responsibility for accepting or rejecting such additional changes lies with the action editor.

The final manuscript should be submitted in both text processor format (e.g. Microsoft Word) and pdf. No paper copy is required.

JIMS welcomes submissions that have been rejected by one or more journals on the provision that the first author discloses all relevant correspondence (e.g. letters from action editors) and all relevant anonymous reviews at the time of submission.
 

Common problems and suggestions

Submissions whose first authors are scientists are often considered to be weak by the humanities reviewers, and vice-versa. Such submissions can often be improved as follows. Make sure that every point made in the two background sections is carefully elaborated in the main text, focusing especially on the section corresponding to the second author's expertise. As the main text proceeds, it should become increasingly clear that a balanced synergy is emerging between the material in the abstract's two backgrond sections. Towards the end of the paper, consider the implications of the main conclusions for both sciences and humanities. If the central part of the paper is biased toward sciences, pay particular attention in the final part of the paper to implications for humanities, or to placing the findings in a humanities context; and vice versa.
 

Reviews
JIMS also publishes reviews of books and conferences that fulfil the following conditions:
· The book or conference promotes synergetic interactions among humanities, sciences and practically oriented disciplines in the area of music.
· The book or conference has a strongly international flavour and is internationally clearly visible.
· The academic contents of the book or conference have been accepted or selected and (if deemed necessary) revised in the context of a rigorous peer-review procedure.
· The text of the review does not exceed 2000 words.
 

            Note: These guidelines were current on 1 July 2009 and may be revised at any time without notice.