Article Types | Themed Issues

Nineteenth-Century Music Review locates music within all aspects of culture in the long nineteenth century (c.1789-1914), covering the widest possible range of methods, topics and concepts. Through themed and general issues, articles provide both depth and breadth in their contribution to this expanding field. A rich supply of book, CD, DVD, and score reviews reflects the journal's title and commitment to stimulate and advance critical discussion.

Article Types

Nineteenth-Century Music Review publishes:

• Book Review
• CD Review
• Digital Resource Review
• Digital Resource Review Article*
• DVD Review
• Multimedia Review
• Research Article*
• Review Article*
• Review Essay*
• Score Review
• Recording Review
• Letters to the Editor

Nineteenth-Century Music Review: Guidance on themed issues

Background: what is a themed issue?
A themed issue usually comprises from five to eight articles, as well as an introduction. Each article is roughly between 8-12,000 words; the introduction, 2-5,000 words. The individual word range can be adjusted. A guest editor may include more shorter papers, or fewer longer ones, for example.

A themed issue generally includes a broad thesis of some kind; a clearly articulated statement explaining methodologies; and a comment on the topic’s significance to readers of the journal and to other interested in the issue more broadly. Insofar as possible, the articles should represent a coherent, unified, and a conceptually interrelated set of essays, rather than a disparate and unrelated set of individual essays pulled together to reflect interest in a larger, single theme. A good themed issue should excite the interest of – and communicate accessibly to – readers not familiar with the topic, at the same time engaging specialists on the topic.

Submission process
Guest editors will need to submit a 500-word proposal, along with 300-word abstracts of each article, along with details on each contributor (affiliation/contact info). Individual abstracts should make a clear contribution to the overall theme and coherence of the issue. See: https://www-cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com/core/journals/nineteenth-century-music-review/information/author-instructions/preparing-your-materials

To arrive at that point, it is useful to contact the General Editors to make them aware of your intention. They will assign you a mentor from amongst our editorial team, who will act as your liaison with the journal. To help initiate the process, your mentor will advise on whether it is best to commission articles directly; circulate a CFP; or draw upon contributors from a relevant conference.

Once submitted, a proposal for a themed issue is circulated amongst the board for approval. Feedback is returned usually within two to three weeks. If revision is suggested, guest editors may resubmit their proposal for final approval. Once approved, a guest editor/s can confirm acceptance with their contributors, but individual articles are not guaranteed for publication until they are peer reviewed, and receive final approval for publication.

The role of the guest editor
The guest editor role goes far beyond the conception of the special issue and commissioning of articles. The guest editor should ensure that all articles address the theme of the issue, making a distinct contribution. This may require addressing coherence in terms of the language and terminology used, shared use of theories, methods and prior literature, shared structures, and cross-referencing. It would be useful to draft an introduction at an early stage so this can be shared with all contributors. You may wish to introduce a system of peer review among the contributors, to ensure that all authors are familiar with the content of other contributions and to foster coherence across the articles.

The guest editor should perform an initial review of articles before submission, ensuring the points above are addressed as relevant, and that all articles meet the journal style requirements. Articles should also be checked to ensure they are accessible to a general audience, as well as speaking to knowledgeable readers.

The guest editor will continue to perform a liaison role throughout the peer review process. Once articles are ready for final handover, it may be appropriate to share the full set among all authors.

Timeline

Receipt of proposal	Editorial comments within 2 to 3 weeks
Revision/approval of proposal	Editorial comments within 2 to 3 weeks
Submission of first draft of articles	Usually between 6 and 12 months of agreed list of contributors (a specific deadline for the submission of accepted articles can be included in the CFP or personal invitation)
Peer review of first drafts	Reports within 3 months
Revision time and submission of revised articles/second peer review	3 months
Submission of accepted articles	Within 3 months of receipt of feedback on the second draft
Production/publication on FirstView	Within 1-2 months of final acceptance
Publication	Articles will appear on FirstView as soon as the production process has been completed. Complete special issues are then usually assigned to a journal issue within one year of all articles being available on FirstView

Peer review/considerations
Occasionally, not all articles intended for a themed issues pass peer review, diminishing a set of perhaps 8 articles to 7 or even 6 contributions. When considering the number of articles in a themed issue, do please consider the real possibility of attrition (either as a result of peer review, or because individual authors sometimes fail to come through). If you maintain a critical mass of articles, the set can usually proceed.

Relevant book, recording, score and digital reviews
In addition to individual articles, guest editors will also want to consider working closely with our reviews team to provide relevant score/recording/book/digital reviews. When articles are ready for submission, please contact the general editors with suggestions for review material.

The introduction
The introduction usually ranges from 2 to 5K words, sometimes more depending on the extent to which the guest editor/s wishes to explore its various components. As with the proposal itself, the introduction should provide a much more extensive research context, theorise methodology, provide a rationale for the themed issue, articulate a thesis insofar as possible, ask clearly articulated research questions, and provide an outline without necessarily simply replicating the abstracts. It is also useful to explain why and in what ways the issue is important for readers who do not necessarily specialise in the topic; i.e., general readers of long nineteenth century music.

Like all material submitted for consideration as part of a themed issue, the introduction is subject to peer review. There are inevitably, however, complications associated with the peer review of an introduction which might otherwise divulge the identity of authors. We suggest the introduction is submitted either with all articles at the start of the process, or together with other articles after the first peer review stage. The names of authors should be redacted until acceptance.

Publication
Themed issues, like all other articles of the journal, are published online exclusively (not in hard copy). All research articles are published open access. The contract for publication is with the individual author, rather than the guest editor, and open access arrangements may therefore differ across the set of articles. If authors’ institutions do not have an open access agreement with Cambridge University Press, a waiver will be applied. See the journal website for further details.