Call for Submissions

Open Access Musicology (OAM) encourages submissions of 3,000-6,000-word essays in all areas of music scholarship, including ethno/musicology, theory, performance studies, and sound studies. Essays should be written in a style and at a level appropriate to the undergraduate music classroom. OAM essays ensure that cutting-edge research inspires classroom practice, provides diverse and methodologically transparent models for student research, and introduces different modes of inquiry to inspire classroom discussion and varied assignments. Addressing a range of histories, methods, voices, and sounds, OAM embraces changes and tensions in the field to help students understand music scholarship as the product of critical inquiry.

Our peer-review process is double-blind and involves both rigorous scholarly review as well as classroom-based student review. OAM cannot consider essays that have been published elsewhere or are under consideration by another journal.

Editorial inquiries and correspondence should be sent to the editors at openaccessmusicology@gmail.com.

Submission Guidelines

To facilitate the anonymous review of submissions, authors are asked to remove all self-references in the body of the paper and in the notes of their submissions. In the cover letter authors are also asked to include a one- to two-paragraph reflection on their subjective position with respect to the topic and/or methodology: in short, why this topic, and why you? After your essay is accepted, this reflection will be published as the front matter for your piece. (See also our Guidelines for OAM Writers for more details.) Finally, cover letters should include an abstract of the article suitable for RILM.

Tables, illustrations, musical examples and other materials which sup­plement the prose should appear in both the original article and as separate, individual files. Tables should be saved as text files; music and illus­trations should be saved as graphics files. Authors are responsible for securing the use of copyrighted materials in their articles to the OAM.

Although there are no minimum or maximum lengths for articles, the Editors encourage submissions of approximately 3,000–6,000 words (10–20 pages, double spaced). The journal uses the most recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style as its style guide with citations in numbered footnotes on each page. Authors should include a bibliography in addition to footnotes. NB: Footnotes count toward the 3,000-6,000 suggested wordcount, but bibliographical information does not.

Submission Preparation Checklist:

  1. As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission’s compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  2. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in the cover letter to the Editors).

  3. The submission file and cover letter are in Microsoft Word or RTF document file format.

  4. Media files you would like embedded are appropriately documented in the Media and Metadata Template.

  5. Where available, DOIs for the references have been provided.

  6. The text is double-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

  7. We encourage you to read thoroughly the Guidelines for OAM Writers, which explains how your work will be reviewed.

Review Process

All submitted essays go through a double-review process. They are evaluated by two scholars with expertise in the essay topic content area, with the identities and institutions of both authors and reviewers remaining anonymous. They are also sent to three different institutions where students evaluate the efficacy, relevance, and accessibility of the essay. Scholarly reviewers are provided with the following guidelines:

Peer-Review Evaluation Guidelines

The essays in our collection unite up-to-date scholarship with awareness of pedagogical and curricular concerns. Thus we ask that you consider the following criteria, used by our editorial board and readers, as you create a successful OAM essay.

  • Accessibility: Undergraduate students, both majors and non-majors, must be able to comprehend and engage with the argument and substance of the essay without previous knowledge of musical terms, notations, and scholarly debates. That does not mean, however, that critical thinking must be dumbed down. On the contrary, we believe that clarity of thought is possible without requiring that the reader have a PhD or the ability to translate jargon. We expect that writers take the opportunity to define within the context of the thesis the relevant technical language or theory and/or refer to other essays in OAM for clarification and expansion.

  • Originality: Essays may contain ground-breaking arguments/research that would be publishable in other scholarly journals. But essays may also serve as insightful and critical syntheses of current thinking and research, thereby providing readers with a framework with which to approach a given topic. We expect writers to move beyond overviews and literature reviews but may, instead, provide an argument that guides readers through the state of a given field.

  • Relevance: What does the essay offer students that’s applicable, extendable, or transferable? Are the questions and methodologies that drive the essay made clear? No single topic, even those traditionally within various canons, is inherently significant.

  • Self-positioning: In your autobiographical introduction or in the essay itself, do you acknowledge how your own subjectivity informs your desire to write about the topic? Are you transparent about the biases or personal experiences you bring – as a scholar, but also a human – to your inquiry and argument? Ultimately, we expect every essay to begin with a one- or two-paragraph reflection on the author’s relationship to the topic (why this topic? why you?) but you may also choose to embed such reflection into the essay itself.

  • Prompts/Questions/Follow up: Does the essay leave the instructor and student with a series of further questions for discussion? These can be explicit at the end or embedded within the essay. Would this essay facilitate a productive lecture and/or class discussion?

  • Collaboration with Writers/Reviewers: Would you be willing to continue to collaborate with our writers, should the recommendation of “accept” or “revise and resubmit” be accepted? The editors of OAM recognize that writing these kinds of essays is difficult and unusual and would like to support writers in their endeavors in a manner that is as transparent and productive as possible.

Student reviewers answer the following questions using a Google form:

  • Please try to restate (in your own words) the author’s main point/argument. Where in the essay is the argument most clearly articulated?

  • What was the most persuasive support for the author’s argument?

  • What is the relevance of this essay to your course?

  • What question(s) motivated the writing of this essay?

  • What context does the author provide (e.g. previous scholarship, contrary positions, etc.) to support the argument and is the context sufficient?

  • Was the essay easy or difficult to read and understand? Explain.

  • If you have any other thoughts or suggestions for strengthening this essay, please share them here.

Models

In addition to already published OAM essays, we encourage you to use essays published elsewhere as models for how you might balance scholarly techniques with accessible, student-centered writing. Such models include work by Alex Ross (in the New Yorker), Richard Taruskin (especially his writings for the New York Times or The New Republic), Bonnie Gordon (her articles for Slate.com), William Cheng (writings for Slate.com and Huffington Post), and Nicholas Cook (in particular his Short Introduction to Music). You might also think of the best conference papers you have given or heard: these anticipate expert and non-expert audiences, they work within a time limit by carefully choosing the evidence they present in support of an argument, and they attempt to engage audiences with humor, self-reflection, and creative language. We hope, however, that these writings inspire rather than limit the possibilities.

Copyright

Authors who publish with this journal sign a contributor’s agreement with Lever Press that includes these and other terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant OAM and Lever Press right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication.

  • Should the contribution contain any copyrighted material of others, you agree to obtain promptly written permission from the copyright proprietor and to include the permission with your contribution when you send it to the Editor(s). The permission obtained for these materials must clearly indicate that the rightsholders agree to the use of their work in a publication that will be released on an open-access basis, consistent with the Creative Commons Attribution License.