JAR publishes three issues each year. Since 2020, publications in JAR as well as in the JAR Network space are covered by the Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Please make sure that you are happy with this before proceeding.

We accept and review submissions on a rolling basis, but please refer to our Calls page for key dates. All submissions published in the journal are peer-reviewed. Please continue reading if you plan to submit an exposition for peer-review. If you want to propose a contribution to the JAR Network space, the op-ed section of the journal, which is not peer-reviewed, please continue reading here https://jar-online.net/en/network

In the present climate, the editorial review process typically takes between eight months and a year from submission to publication.

JAR invites submissions from all fields and disciplines in which artistic research may be relevant, including areas that are not usually conceived of as artistic. We welcome submissions from practitioners with or without academic affiliations. JAR’s format for publishing artistic research, the exposition, invites authors to combine text, image, film, and audio material on expandable web pages, challenging the dominance of writing in traditional academic research. The languages currently accepted are English, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Submissions in other languages are accepted, if accompanied by an English translation, which will act as master version. Multilingual expositions are also welcome as long as translations are provided.

JAR does not charge any fees. Authors retain copyright to their submission.

Please refer to our Publication Ethics page for further information on workflows, roles and responsibilities.

Submission Requirements

To be considered for peer review and publication in JAR, authors must create, design and submit an exposition using the Research Catalogue (RC).

Submissions to JAR are reviewed first by JAR’s Managing Editor. To be considered by JAR’s editorial board, an exposition must meet the following basic requirements:

  • The content must not have been previously published; if parts have been published, the JAR submission must add substantially new meaning to the work. IMPORTANT: in the Research Catalogue sharing preferences, do not select "public: anyone on the internet can see this research," otherwise the exposition will count as already published.
  • The research must not currently be considered by another journal.
  • The exposition must not be too long: a reader should be able to access all essential aspects of the exposition in the period of an hour of investigation. Archiving supporting material and references, which may demand longer attention of the reader/viewer, on separate linked pages, is acceptable. Expositions that take much less than an hour to view will be rejected on the grounds of lacking sufficient detail and weight.
  • It must include the author’s name, a title, an abstract and a list of key words. For non-English submissions, we will need the title, the abstract and the key words also in English.
  • Adhere to the detailed submission checklist, which can be found towards the end of this page.

    • In determining whether to send the exposition to peer review, the board considers:

  • Whether the exposition exposes artistic practice as research. This goes beyond simply documenting, describing, or writing about work. It engages with questions and claims about knowledge within practice. For an articulation of this please read the editorial to JAR0. A more detailed description can be found in Michael Schwab's text 'Expositionality,' which can be downloaded here.
  • The degree to which the exposition is conceptually and artistically strong, considered, and significant to the field.
  • Whether the multimedia and design capacities of the RC have been used effectively and meaningfully to support the argument or understanding of the research.

    • JAR encourages unorthodox or ambiguous approaches to writing and design. Given the complexities that come with this, we strongly recommend spending a sufficient amount of time checking whether a submission works – technically, on different computers and operating systems, and artistically, with the help of friends and colleagues.

    Design

    All submissions to JAR must be designed on the Research Catalogue. Please follow this link for a short introduction and take note that not everything that is technically possible on the Research Catalogue is supported by JAR, as specified in the checklist below.

    JAR welcomes variety in the design of expositions. Form, scale, number, and balance of contents are flexible. Text or media can be placed anywhere on a page. Design should support the exposition of practice as research and not simply “style” a page. An exposition’s design influences the reader’s experience and understanding of the research. Reviewing past issues of JAR in our archive is the best way to get a sense of the RC’s possibilities. We strongly recommend that you upload your media files and text and take time to experiment with the RC’s layout capabilities to find a design and structure that best articulates your specific research.

    Please note that all media need to be uploaded to the RC (no embedding). JAR only accepts submissions made with the RC’s graphical or block editor (we do not accept submissions made with the  text-based editor, imported html expositions, or iFrames).

    Submission checklist

    Designing and compiling an exposition and submitting it to JAR is a detailed process. This checklist of instructions should be used to ensure that all essential elements of the submission, both formal and technical, are considered fully by the author so that JAR's editors and reviewers can focus on the nuance of the research itself. Please read it carefully before creating an exposition and again before submitting it.

    • Declaration to the Managing Editor: declare if parts of the submission have been published already and where. Explain how this submission is different to any prior publication. Please do so on an extra page of your RC exposition. As an alternative, get in touch with the managing editor via the web contact form.
    • Author biography and thumbnail image: should be up to date on the RC, if appropriate including affiliations.
    • Title/subtitle: should adequately reflect the contents of the exposition.
    • Abstract: in 125–250 words, should describe the exposition’s topic, the author’s methodology, and the significance and contribution to the field; it should draw the reader in. Please note that the anonymised abstract is sent to prospective peer reviewers and of vital importance to finding the best possible reviewers for your submission.
    • Keyword field: at least five keywords should be entered in the exposition properties dialogue and should relate to your abstract. Please note that the Research Catalogue manages keywords in English only; the JAR website itself operates across the different languages in which we publish.
    • Licence: select CC BY-NC-ND. Note you should select this for the expositions as a whole as well as for all the individual media files used in the exposition. In case you will need a different licence for specific media files, please make sure to select the correct license and that you have the permission to use the file in accordance with the Research Catalogue Terms of Use.
    • Table of contents: should be complete and linked to respective exposition contents pages. Input this using the exposition properties dialogue. 
    • Media files and images: upload files into the RC rather than embed external links, which can break over time; ensure adequate image/sound/video quality for web display keeping in mind that larger files, due to loading times, disadvantage readers with slow internet connection; select the appropriate mode of documentation and display for your research (e.g., video vs. images, slide show vs. single image); test whether media files work on other computers.
    • Text: in general, it is better for text to be typed or copied into the text editing tool rather than placing it in the exposition as a pdf document, unless this is part of the design. It must be copyedited and spell checked. When copying text into the RC, it is advisable to copy the text from a basic editor (e.g. TextEdit, Notepad etc.) rather than Microsoft Word as this will not carry over unwanted styling commands. For fonts and basic font settings, please use the page properties dialogue. We urge you to select one of the fonts hosted by the RC (https://guide.researchcatalogue.net/#fonts) – other fonts may not result in stable page representations.
    • Formatting, Citations and References:  We ask authors to use the MHRA style guide, downloadable at http://www.mhra.org.uk/pdf/MHRA-Style-Guide-3rd-Edn.pdf. For citations we specifically request that authors use the author-date system and list all referenced publications at the end of the exposition in a section entitled ‘References’ (for formatting guidance see section 11.4 of the above linked guide). 
    • Hyperlinks: external hyperlinks should open in a new window; footnote hyperlinks should be functional and consistently styled.
    • Copyright: should be secured and noted as needed.

    If you have questions about you research’s suitability, the submission process, guidelines, or any other aspect of JAR, contact the Managing Editor using the JAR contact form.