About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The journal Music and Arts in Action (MAiA) emerges from international, cross-disciplinary work that not only examines the social shaping of the arts within particular "art worlds", but takes a wider, holistic approach in researching the dynamic role of music and the arts in social life and cultural experience. In doing so, MAiA will unite research from a wide variety of fields, including musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, anthropology, applied drama, cultural sociology, social ecology, institutional and micro-ethnography, psychology and arts education. Cutting-edge work in this area actively considers how aesthetic experiences and artistic forms are unconsciously, semi-consciously and actively used by individuals and groups to structure social relations, situations, environments and action. Simply put, a topic-led approach is needed to examine precisely how, when and where music and art do something, how music and art matter.

Music and Arts in Action accomplishes this through publishing work related to the empirical study of the everyday interplay of people and the arts. Particular interest is accorded to exploring the tacit uses of music and arts found in a wide range of social situations, from intimate encounters to public spectacles. The key focus is on individuals, groups, activity and communication, while also keeping the artistic work, performance, score or experience (along with questions of aesthetics and affordances) at the centre of the enquiry. To encourage a broad and inclusive academic look at issues relating to music and art in society, Music and Arts in Action welcomes contributions from beyond academia to develop a dialogue between researchers, educators, journalists, art historians, artists, practitioners, cultural professionals, NGOs and others. Hence, in addition to academically-oriented articles, we also promote contributions in the form of case-studies, interviews and documentations of past or ongoing interventions throughout the world.

Music and Arts in Action is a peer reviewed journal, initially presented in an online, dynamic format that supports the integration of images, sound and video in the text. In the longer-term, a paper-based edition will be published, though retaining the link to these online, multimedia capabilities.

Peer Review Process

All submissions to MAiA judged as relevant to the journal's aims and scope by the editors will be peer reviewed by one senior scholar and one junior scholar in closely related areas of research (double-blind peer review). Authors will be notified within 2 weeks if their article will be entered into the peer-review process, and, if so, authors will have a final decision from the editors within 4 months from date of submission.

Publication Frequency

Music and Arts in Action is published one to three times a year, including general issues, thematic issues (indicated by a call for papers on a particular theme), and special issues (documenting and refereeing the proceedings of specific meetings or conferences). Each issue will feature referred articles, in addition to invited editorials, discussion and relevant multimedia and data-based content.

Open Access Policy

Music and Arts in Action is freely available online and encourages contributions from anyone with an interest in music and the arts in everyday life. Only registered users are able to view and use MAiA's integrated reader tools, including article-linked commenting and disccusion forums.

MAiA is an Open Access journal and its contents published from Volume 5 - Issue 2 (2016) onwards are licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) – full information available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Please note that any requests to reprint material published in MAiA should be made to the individual author(s).

Archiving

MAiA's contents are digitally archived and distributed both via LOCKSS (see LOCKSS Publisher Manifest page) and the Open Research Exeter repository services (ORE) of the University of Exeter.

Sources of Support

Thanks to Clay Thompson and Jonty Valentine for their invaluable help with MAiA's website design and graphic identity.