Musicae Scientiae
MUSICÆ SCIENTIÆ (the Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music) publishes peer-reviewed empirical, theoretical and critical articles directed at increasing the understanding of how music is perceived, represented and generated. To that end, all empirical work, including replication studies and meta-analyses, within the music-related domains of empirical musicology, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, music education, artificial intelligence, and music theory will be considered for publication
Individual subscriptions to the journal are available through membership of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. Please see the society web page for more details: http://escom.org/society-membership.html
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
MUSICÆ SCIENTIÆ (the Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music) publishes peer-reviewed empirical, theoretical and critical articles directed at increasing the understanding of how music is perceived, represented and generated. To that end, all empirical work, including replication studies and meta-analyses, within the music-related domains of empirical musicology, psychology, sociology, cognitive science, music education, artificial intelligence, and music theory will be considered for publication.
| Jane Ginsborg | Royal Northern College of Music, UK |
| Irène Deliège | University of Liège, Belgium |
| Andrea Schiavio | Karl-Franzens University, Graz, Austria |
| Ruth Herbert | University of Kent, UK |
| Michele Biasutti | University of Padova, Italy |
| Karen Burland | University of Leeds, UK |
| Hauke Egermann | Technical University Dortmund, Germany |
| Klaus Frieler | Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany |
| Ruth Herbert | University of Kent, UK |
| Timothy Justus | Pitzer College, California, USA |
| Reinhard Kopiez | Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany |
| Alexandra Lamont | Department of Psychology, Keele University, UK |
| Ioulia Papageorgi | University of Nicosia, Cyprus |
| Jonna Vuoskoski | University of Oslo, Norway |
| Allan Vurma | Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, Estonia |
| Anna Wolf | University of Hamburg, Germany |
| David M. Greenberg | Bar-Ilan University, Israel |
| Rytis Ambrazevicius | Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania |
| Porta Navarro Amparo | Jaume I University, Castellón de la Plana, Spain |
| Claudia Bullerjahn | Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany |
| Clément Canonne | CNRS-IRCAM, France |
| Julian Cespedes Guevara | University of Icesi, Colombia |
| Alice Chirico | Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy |
| Anthony Chmiel | University of Sydney, Australia |
| Ana Clemente | University of Barcelona, Spain |
| Susanna Cohen | Bar Ilan University, Israel |
| Nathaniel Condit-Schultz | Georgia Institute of Technology, USA |
| Anja-Xiaoxing Cui | University of Osnabrück, Germany |
| Caroline Curwen | The University of Sheffield, UK |
| Franziska Degé | Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt, Germany |
| Alison Farley Raffle | University of Georgia, USA |
| Alinka Greasley | University of Leeds, UK |
| Carl Hancock | University of Alabama, USA |
| Niels Christian Hansen | Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark |
| Erkki Huovinen | Royal College of Music, Stockholm, Sweden |
| Kelly Jakubowski | Durham University, UK |
| Haley Kragness | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Oswaldo Lorenzo | University of Granada, Spain |
| Lucy Mawang | Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya |
| Luc Nijs | Ghent University, Belgium |
| Ariadna Ortiz Brugués | Albert Ludwigs University, Freiburg, Germany |
| Clorinda Panebianco | University of Pretoria, South Africa |
| Emily Payne | University of Leeds, UK |
| Friedrich Platz | University of Music and Performing Arts, Stuttgart, Germany |
| Sarah Price | University of Liverpool, UK |
| Mark Reybrouck | Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium |
| Jesper Rydén | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden |
| Kai Siedenburg | University of Oldenburg, Germany |
| Michael Silverman | University of Minnesota USA |
| Eline Smit | Western Sydney University, Australia |
| João Soares-Quadros Jr | Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil |
| Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg | Norwegian Academy of Music, Norway |
| Miloš Stankovic | Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany |
| Jochen Steffens | Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, Germany |
| Jan Stupacher | Aarhus University, Denmark |
| Marco Susino | Flinders University, Australia |
| Caitlyn Trevor | University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Marc Vidal | Ghent University, Belgium |
| Cecilia Wallerstedt | University of Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Matthew Woolhouse | McMaster University, Canada |
| Joanne Yeoh | Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia |
| Naomi Ziv | College of Management, Israel |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Musicae Scientiae
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/MSX to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Musicae Scientiae will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Musicae Scientiae does not accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research ethics and participant consent
2.7 Redundant publication
2.8 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Musicae Scientiae, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Contributions will be published in English. They should be submitted as either research reports (between 1000 and 3000 words in length) or notes and comments (not exceeding 1000 words), or as articles (between 5000 and 7000 words); they should be accompanied by an abstract of between 200 and 250 words in length.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication. Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
- Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
- Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
- Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
Musicae Scientiae requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
It is the policy of Musicae Scientiae to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.
Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here.
2.6 Research ethics and participant consent
Musicae Scientiae requires that any manuscripts involving human participants must include the following statements:
Ethical approval statement
Upon submission, authors will be asked to state the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number. Where exemption from ethics approval has been granted by an appropriate body, this should be specified and the reason for exemption should be provided. Manuscripts should include statements that provide a clear explanation as to why ethics approval and/or informed consent was not sought for a given study in a specific country or region..
Informed consent
Authors are required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent (for inclusion, collection/use of data or samples, and/or publication, as applicable) and whether the consent was written or verbal.
2.7 Redundant publication
The Editors of Musicae Scientiae ask authors to declare if any data reported in their submission have been published previously wholly or in part. For example: the reanalysis of a previously published dataset by a different set of authors would need to be declared. The publication of multiple articles using the same dataset with somewhat related outcomes could be considered inappropriate. Within the cover letter and methods section, authors should declare if datasets or participants reported in their submission overlap with any prior published work to help a thorough Editorial assessment of the study.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Musicae Scientiae and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Musicae Scientiae offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files.
Musicae Scientiae adheres to the APA reference style. View the APA guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Musicae Scientiae is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/MSX to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
Submissions must be in one of the following languages: English, German, or French. An abstract in the language of the manuscript as well as a translation in English (if not the original language), are required. Materials submitted must not have been published elsewhere, nor should they be presently under review for publication in any other journal. In particular circumstances, the editorial committee may decide to republish translations of articles published earlier, if these are likely to clarify concerns of current research.
All submissions must take the following form:
- Pages should be numbered consecutively throughout. Page 1 should consist of the title of the article and the authors' names and affiliations, with the name and complete address for correspondence at the bottom of the page.
- Page 2 should consist of an abstract of between 200 and 250 words summarising the principal hypotheses, methodologies, findings and conclusions of the article.
- The full text of the article should start on a separate page; references, footnotes, table captions and figure captions should follow the main body of the text in the order given. Each category of ancillary material should start on a new page, with tables and figures following, each on a separate page.
Formatting and manuscript style is in accordance with the style manual of the American Psychological Association (APA; 7th edition). APA has also published standards for citation of electronic references (websites, multimedia content, blogs etc.). Please consult the APA website for further information (http://www.apastyle.org).
The submission should be accompanied by a letter of submission to the editor with a clear statement that:
- all authors have agreed to submitting the paper to this journal
- the article submission procedures have been followed
- the article is not under consideration anywhere else.
In the letter of submission authors should answer the following three questions:
- What is it that the reader will learn from this article that he or she did not (or could not) have known before?
- Why is that knowledge important?
- If published, what will this paper be cited for in the future?
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID IDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID ID you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID ID will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Musicae Scientiae editorial office as follows:
Jane Ginsborg
Royal Northern College of Music
124 Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9RD
Email: jane.ginsborg@rncm.ac.uk