Submissions

Submission Preparation Checklist

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.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice or Microsoft Word file format.
Where available, DOIs for the references have been provided.
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.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, including APA 7 reference style.
In-text references match with the reference list and vice versa.
If using an automatic citation tool, please convert citations to static text.

Author Guidelines

Currently Research in Arts and Education accepts submissions only through thematic calls published on the journal website. If you are interested in proposing a thematic issue for the journal, please contact the editor-in-chief Juuso Tervo.

Research in Arts and Education welcomes four types of submissions: Research Articles, Visual Essays, Commentaries, and Media Reviews.

Research Article

Research articles approach and study their topic mainly through academic means. The recommended length for research articles is 6,000 words, including references. All research articles go through a double-blinded peer-review process.

Visual Essay

Visual essays approach and study their topic mainly through artistic means. Artistic content must be accompanied by a written component in which the author describes, analyses, and/or reflects their artistic practice. The recommended length for visual essays is 3,000 words, including references. The minimum word count for a visual essay is 1,500 words, including references. All visual essays go through a double-blinded peer-review process.

Commentary

Commentaries are short and concise texts aiming to stimulate academic discussion on topical issues, both among the journal authors and in the academic community in general. The recommended length for commentaries is 3,000 words, including references. Commentaries are not peer-reviewed.

Media review

Media reviews can include book reviews, exhibition reviews, or reviews of other publications. The recommended length for media reviews is 3,000 words, including references. Media reviews are not peer-reviewed.

Every Research in Arts and Education submission must adhere to the following guidelines.

Language

Research in Arts and Education publishes articles written in English or Finnish. The title, abstract, and keywords must also be provided in English if the article is written in Finnish. For English language articles, please use US English spelling and the serial comma.

Structure

Every submitted manuscript must include the following components in the following order:

Separate cover page that includes the title of the manuscript, author list, and author information (see below)
Separate page for abstract and keywords (see below)
Main text, including the title of the manuscript (see below)
References (see below)
Endnotes (if any, see below)
Appendices (if any, see below)

When submitting your manuscript, please divide components 1 and 2-6 into two separate files (see “Submitting your manuscript” below for details).

Title

The title must be descriptive and reflect the content of the article. Please avoid overly lengthy titles.

Author List

If the manuscript has one author, they automatically act as the corresponding author. If the manuscript has multiple authors, the authors should decide themselves who serves as the corresponding author as well as the order of the names listed in the manuscript. The first author listed in the author list serves as the corresponding author for the submission and must be the one who submits the manuscript to the journal.

Author Information

The following information should be provided for all authors contributing to the article: 1) Author name, 2) Affiliation and 3) Email address.

Abstract

The abstract should be up to 100 words and summarize the manuscript’s main points. It should be written in the third person using the present tense. Do not include citations, references, or numbered notes in the abstract.

Keywords

Please provide 3–5 keywords to help potential readers to discover your article. Avoid too general keywords (e.g., “art,” “education,” “design”) and instead use keywords that reflect the theoretical, methodological, and/or contextual framework of your manuscript.

Main Text

All manuscripts must follow APA 7th edition reference and citation style. You can find more information about APA requirements here. Manuscripts that do not follow this style will be returned to the authors or rejected.

The text must be double-spaced and written in a 12-point font. If the manuscript includes multiple headings and/or subheadings, please indicate clearly the level of each heading (e.g., Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.). Quotes longer than 40 words must be placed as block quotes (see APA guidelines). Make sure the main text includes the title of the manuscript.

Authors are responsible for revisions and possible language checks. It is highly recommended to ask someone to read through the manuscript before submitting it to the journal. This can help to identify potential issues with form, content, and/or language.

References

Every manuscript must include a reference list. The reference list must be placed after the main text and follow APA 7th edition. DOI numbers must be included for every reference except for references that have not been assigned a DOI number.

Endnotes

All additional notes should be placed as endnotes (not footnotes), and they need to provide additional and/or critical information regarding the article’s discussion and the reader’s engagement. The maximum length of endnotes should not be longer than one paragraph. All endnotes should be numbered and placed on a separate page after references. Place the endnote after punctuation (e.g., the sentence ends here.³). Please do not make endnotes manually, but use the automatic endnotes tool in your text processing software (e.g., Microsoft Word). Make sure that all references mentioned in endnotes are also included in the reference list.

Appendixes

If you have additional material that cannot be placed in the body of the article (such as experimental data or material, detailed tables, videos, or series of photos), please place them at the end of the manuscript as one or more appendixes. If you use appendixes, please make sure you refer to them in the text (e.g., Appendix 1 shows…).

Visual Material

Research in Arts and Education welcomes authors to use visual material as part of their submission, including photos, images, charts, diagrams, or mind-maps. Images used in the article need to be relevant to the discussion.

In the manuscript, please indicate a placeholder for each image/illustration (e.g., “Figure 1 here”). At the initial submission phase, visual material does not have to be submitted separately and may be embedded in the manuscript. High-resolution images should be provided after the first round of revisions and uploaded as separate files. Every image should have a figure number and caption (see below).

As the journal is published in a PDF format, it is not possible to embed videos or audio files directly into the articles. If you wish to use multimedia components in your article, please provide external links to the material. Authors are responsible for hosting all external material and ensuring it remains available to the readers. Research in Arts and Education does not currently provide hosting services for external material.

Authors are responsible for ensuring they have the right to use any copyrighted visual material in the manuscript.

Captions

In research articles, commentaries, and media reviews, all visual material must be numbered and captioned. The caption must include the figure number. If the caption includes text, the text should follow the figure number (for example, Figure 1. Caption text). If the caption includes copyright information, this information should follow the caption text (for example, Figure 1. Caption text. Photo: XXX XXX). Please make sure you use figure numbers in the text when referring to the images (for example, “Figure 1 shows…;” “As visible in Figure 1…;” etc.).

In visual essays, captions are not required if the author(s) discuss the images thoroughly in the written component. However, every image included in visual essays must be numbered according to the order of their appearance in the text. This will ensure that the images retain their correct order in the layout phase.

SUBMITTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT

When submitting your manuscript, please adhere to the following guidelines:

First submission

In the initial submission phase, please upload two separate documents:

Document that contains the cover page and
Document that contains the abstract, keywords, and a masked version of your manuscript. See the instructions above for what to include in the cover page, abstract, and keywords.

When masking your manuscript, please remove all personal information (including names, affiliations, references to the author’s previous work, institutional information, etc.) from the main text (see "Ensuring a blind review" section below). If your manuscript includes acknowledgments, please include them in the same file as the cover page, abstract, and keywords.

Please note that Research in Arts and Education is not responsible for masking manuscripts. If an unmasked version is uploaded at this initial stage, the authors will be asked to re-upload a masked version instead.

If the manuscript includes images or other visual material, please place them in the document. You do not need to send them separately at this stage.

Resubmission(s)

When submitting a revised version of the manuscript, please upload a masked version to the submission portal.

In addition to the manuscript, please submit a separate document (i.e., "Response to Reviewers") in which you provide a summary of the revisions you made and explain how did you address reviewers' comments.

Final submission

When submitting the final, approved version of the manuscript, please upload an unmasked version to the submission portal. This version should include the cover page, abstract, keywords, and the main text in one and the same file. Make sure that the abstract (max 100 words) and keywords (3–5) match the final version of the manuscript.

If the manuscript includes visual material, please upload this material separately as high-resolution files. Each file must be named according to the figure number indicated in the manuscript. Please name each image in the following way: firstauthorlastname_Fig_#.jpg. For example: Smith_Fig_1.jpg. Make sure that the file names match the figure numbers used in the final version of the manuscript.

Ensuring a blind review

To ensure the integrity of the blind peer review for submission, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken concerning the text and the file properties:

The document’s authors have deleted their names from the text, with “Author” and year used in the references and footnotes instead of the authors’ name, article title, etc.
The authors of the document have removed personal information from the file properties by taking the following steps:
- Microsoft Word for Windows:
  - Go to File
  - Select Info
  - Click on Check for Issues
  - Click on Inspect Document
  - In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the checkboxes to choose the type of hidden content you want to be inspected.
  - Click Remove All
  - Click Close
  - Save the document
- Microsoft Word for MacOS:
  - Go to Tools
  - Click Protect Document
  - Select Remove personal information for this file on save
  - Click OK and save the file

Plagiarism

All submitted manuscripts are subject to a potential plagiarism check if the reviewers and/or editors consider them to be relevant.

Copyright Notice

LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR PUBLISHING CC-BY

A. TERMS OF USE

1. The Contribution text will be made Open Access under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the Contribution is properly cited.

The Creative Commons license does not apply to artwork or other images.

The journal articles may be cited if the Author, the Article name, Research in Arts and Education with Issue Number and URL for the citation reference have been provided.

2. For an understanding of what is meant by the terms of the Creative Commons License, please see Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0

3. Aalto may (but is not obliged to) require changes to the Contribution, including changes to the length of the Contribution, and/or elect not to publish the Contribution if, for any reason, such publication would be inconsistent with good scientific practice as described in ‘Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland’, published by the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, would result in legal liability or violation of Aalto’s Code of Conduct Code of Conduct | Aalto University. If Aalto decides not to publish the Contribution, the Contributor is free to submit the Contribution to any other journal or publisher.

B. RETAINED RIGHTS

The Contributor(s) retain their ownership of copyright and all other intellectual property rights, such as design or trademark rights.

C. LICENSE FOR WORKS

If the Contribution includes artwork, photographs, audio files, audiovisual files or any other works besides text, Aalto is granted a perpetual, non-exclusive license to publish these works in electronic and print editions of the Journal.

4. Aalto will store audio and audiovisual files in Aalto Media Repository from the beginning of 2022. The journal will archive all multimedia materials for the journal starting in 2022.

E. COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Aalto and the Contributor agree that all copies of the Contribution, or parts of it, will include the notice of copyright and a full citation to the final published version of the Contribution in the Journal as published by Aalto.

F. CONTRIBUTOR'S REPRESENTATIONS

The Contributor represents that:

(i) the Contributor and all co-Contributors have the full power to enter into this Agreement, to grant the rights and license granted herein and to perform the obligations of this agreement;

ii) neither the Contributor nor any co-Contributor has granted exclusive rights to, or transferred ownership of their copyright in, any version of the Contribution to any third party;

(iii) the Contribution is the Contributor’s original work, all individuals identified as Contributors actually contributed to the Contribution, and all individuals who contributed are included;

(iv) if the Contribution was prepared jointly, the Contributor has informed the co-Contributors of the terms of this Agreement and has obtained their permission to execute this Agreement on their behalf as their agent;

(v) the Contribution text is submitted only to this Journal and has not been published before, has not been included in another manuscript, and is not currently under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere;

(vi) if excerpts from copyrighted works owned by third parties are included, the Contributor shall obtain written permission from the copyright owners if use is not permitted as a citation under Copyright Act;

(vii) the Contribution and any submitted Supporting Information contain no libellous or unlawful statements, do not infringe upon the rights or the privacy of others, do not breach any confidentiality obligation, do not violate a contract or any law, or do not contain material or instructions that might cause harm or injury, and only utilize data that has been obtained in accordance with applicable legal requirements and policies; and

(viii) there are no conflicts of interest relating to the Contribution, except as disclosed.

Accordingly, the Contributor represents that the following information shall be clearly identified on the title page of the Contribution: (1) all financial and material support for the research and work; (2) any financial interests the Contributor or any co-Contributors may have in companies or other entities that have an interest in the information in the Contribution or any submitted Supporting Information (e.g., grants, advisory boards, employment, consultancies, contracts, honoraria, royalties, expert testimony, partnerships, or stock ownership).

G. USE OF INFORMATION

The Contributor acknowledges that Aalto may process the Contributor’s personal data, including storing or transferring data outside of the country of the Contributor’s residence, to process transactions related to this Agreement and to communicate with the Contributor. By entering into this Agreement, the Contributor confirms that the Contributor has informed all other contributors of the processing of their personal data. For more information, see Research in Arts and Education Privacy Statement.

Privacy Statement

of Research in Arts and Education

The names and email addresses entered in the Research in Arts and Education journal site will be used exclusively for this journal's stated purposes and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and Aalto University, as Journal Manager for this journal, are joint controllers of personal data. The respective responsibilities of Aalto University as Journal Manager and the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies as Site Administrator are described in the Journal.fi Privacy Policy.

The contact person for matters concerning the use of personal data in this journal is the chief editor of Research in Arts and Education Juuso Tervo, juuso.tervo@aalto.fi.

The data protection officer of Aalto University is Anni Tuomela, dpo@aalto.fi.