Publishing in specialized journals allows you to communicate your ideas with the rest of the community and demonstrate your impact within your field. In addition, having a track record of published articles is also essential for your career development.
How to write for the International Journal of Music
Editorial policy
Before submitting your work to the International Journal of Music, we invite you to familiarize yourself with our Editorial policy. This document outlines our guidelines for various types of submissions, including qualitative interviews, research articles, essays, reviews, recording case studies, musical technique studies, music scene reports, and editorials. Understanding our editorial standards and peer review processes is crucial for a successful submission. Please take a moment to review our Editorial Policy, ensuring that your contribution aligns with our commitment to academic excellence and scholarly discourse. We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions to the field of music.
Submission guidelines
Please refer to the Submission Guidelines [PDF – 164 kb] for advice on submitting papers to the International Journal of Music.
These guidelines refer to three versions of the contribution:
- Original submission: This is the version submitted by the author before review.
- Accepted manuscript: This version includes updates made by the author after review (before any typesetting for the magazine). It is usually the version accepted by the editor.
- Final edition: This is the version edited and typeset by the editor (the same version published on the magazine’s website).
Production process
- Communication: We are aware of and understand the authors’ desire to see their work published, so we maintain regular contact with authors throughout the production process.
- Proofs: We will email proofs to the corresponding author. Please return corrected proofs as soon as possible or within the requested time frame not to delay the publication process.
- Complimentary access: We grant authors 1-month access to the International Journal of Music.
- Continuous publication: Our magazines operate a constant publication model in which articles are published online as soon as they have completed the production process.
Please contact us if you have any questions regarding the production of your article.
We value your feedback to ensure we continue to improve our service levels to authors.
Help readers find your article
Today, Google accounts for much of the referral traffic to the IJM. The search engine is of paramount importance so that your article can be found easily.
We already take many steps to ensure that the IJM is indexed in the major search engines. However, a search engine will take over 100 factors into account before deciding how to rank your article in their search results, and the starting point is the quality of the content you write.
Taking a few simple steps to optimize your article will help your work get discovered, read, used, and cited in the work of others.
What can you do to help?
- Carefully choose 3 or 4 key phrases for your article. Remember that people search for key phrases, not single words; for example, “French pianists,” not “pianists.”
- Decide on the main key phrase. Be sure to include it in the title and as close to the beginning of the article as possible.
- Get the title right. Make sure the title is descriptive, unambiguous, accurate, and reads well.
- Use key phrases without overuse. Imagine the phrases that a musician might search for if your article were of interest to them. Google can detect abuse of this, so don’t overdo it; just mention the 3 or 4 key phrases in your abstract, as well as throughout the article, as naturally as possible.
- Link your article. Link to your article on different online platforms and encourage others to do so, as the number of backlinks is Google’s primary signal to determine the authority of a page. As with the previous guidelines, don’t go so far as to be “spammy.”
Publishing agreement
The IJM requires the author, as a rights holder, to sign a Publishing agreement for all articles we publish. This is a licensing agreement under which the author retains the copyright to the work but grants the IJM the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of the copyright.
Download our Publishing Agreement [PDF – 204 kb].
Open access
The International Journal of Music also offers authors the choice of open access publication of articles at a fee of US$ 360 per article. This paid service allows for articles to be disseminated to a much wider audience, on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode).
Where an author does not opt-in to this paid service, then the author’s article will be published only on the International Journal of Music’s standard membership-based access, at no additional cost to the author.
1 article, open access: $360 payment link
Submit
Once your article is completed, be sure to send us the following materials to submityourpaper@ijm.education:
- Article in Word or Pages format, with abstract and your current positions included in the file.
- High-resolution headshot.
- Any image/video/sound files named as described in the Submission Guidelines.
- Publishing Agreement duly completed and signed.
- Only if you choose to publish in open access: Receipt of payment.