Journal Policies

Editorial Oversight

JER’s editorial process is overseen by Founding Editor Ben Spatz. Since 2020, the core editorial team also includes Assistant Editors Rosemary Cisneros, Michele Feder-Nadoff, and Elizabeth de Roza. New editors and guest editors are invited by the core team, in consultation with members of the Editorial Advisory Board. Should the current Chief Editor step down, one or more of the Assistant Editors will take over this role. Co-editorship of the journal is possible if two or more of the Assistant Editors decide to enter into this arrangement. The decision on editorship of the journal is taken by the editors themselves, who may consult the Advisory Board on the proposed arrangement if necessary.

Editorial decisions for peer reviewed items are reached through a consensus process involving one or more editors, one or more peer reviewers, and guest editors where applicable. Because of the relative newness of the video article form, articles are rarely rejected outright. Instead, detailed feedback is provided that gathers together the concerns of editors, guest editors, and peer reviewers to explain what kinds of changes (including major changes to structure and content) would be needed in order for a given project to be published in JER. Disagreements between peer reviewers are mediated by the core editorial team, with input from the Editorial Advisory Board as needed.

In the near future, JER hopes to include selected non-peer-reviewed items (“Video Essays”) and is in the process of developing a curatorial strategy for that section, which would be editorially and logistically analogous to the “Book Reviews” section in other journals.

JER prioritizes geographic, gender, cultural, racial, and institutional, as well as disciplinary diversity in its editors, peer reviewers, and advisors. The peer review and editorial processes are conceived as conversations about the future of the field, incorporating diverse perspectives wherever possible including both relatively senior and junior researchers. As with many other journals based in the global north, there is a significant underrepresentation of researchers based in the global south and from Black and/or Indigenous backgrounds. We seek to correct this gradually through targeted outreach to contributors and guest editors, with the eventual inclusion of a budget dedicated to this purpose.

Peer Review Process

All submissions to JER are initially received by the Editor, who may take responsibility for them or pass them along to an Assistant Editor. Where a proposed video article does not follow the basic guidelines stated on the submissions page (for example, a short piece of video art with no discussion of methodology), the Editor may reject it with an invitation to develop a more contextualized video article around this body of work. Assistant Editors may also suggest this type of rejection or may propose to take an article into peer review.

An Editor or Assistant Editor oversees the peer review process, selecting reviewers to invite based on a variety of criteria. In general, two anonymous reviewers are found, allowing for divergent perspectives along a variety of axes (disciplinary, seniority, geography, relationship to journal, etc.). A more complex or interdisciplinary article may have three anonymous reviewers while a highly developed and situated article may only have one. Comments from the reviewers are combined with those from the Editor and, if involved, the Assistant Editor, in a letter to the author that sets out both required and suggested changes.

Editorials are not formally (anonymously) peer reviewed, however those produced by Assistant Editors and Guest Editors will receive comments and feedback from others in the core editorial team. Multiple video essays combined into a “composite” video article and multiple video articles within a special issue may be peer reviewed together rather than individually, again always with further input from the core editorial team. Assistant Editors receive guidance from an Editor throughout the process from review to publication.

JER’s peer reviewed articles always receive feedback from at least one anonymous peer reviewer, usually two and sometimes three or even four, as well as non-anonymous feedback from the editorial team (including Guest Editors where applicable). This allows the journal to support rigorous conversations about the future of the field, where the anonymity of the reviewer is understood to allow for a freely critical perspective on the submitted work.

Because JER exclusively publishes videographic scholarship in which the authors are very often present in an embodied audiovisual mode (most often visible onscreen), and because it aims to support research in which embodied practice is a core part of the method, the journal does not attempt to anonymize authors. In the context of embodied research, the identity of an author is understood as a legitimate dimension of the methodology.

JER explores the cutting edge of data ethics in relation to audiovisual material. At this point in time, the journal’s focus is on the presentation of audiovisual and other “data” in the form of a video article, hence we do not publish separate source material, code, etc.

The concept of peer review for embodied and artistic research is an evolving one. JER’s review process is informed by ongoing conversations around artistic research and practice research in Europe, as well as by feminist, queer, and critical race studies perspectives. Informed by these ideas, we associate the anonymity of authors with a particular mode of “objectivity” that is not always preferable. In the context of videographic embodied research, the audiovisual presence of the authors is very often a core part of the method and content of the research, hence we do not ask authors to anonymize their submissions. On the contrary, a submitting author who does not explicate or thematize their own embodied positionality may be requested to do so following the norms of situated research.

JER’s peer reviewers are selected from several overlapping pools: previously contributing authors; colleagues and professional contacts of the editors and Advisory Board; senior researchers in relevant fields; and those who have signed up to review via the journal’s website. When selecting reviewers, editors will often invite one person who is known to them (and may be more likely to accept the task) and another who is unknown to us and has an established reputation in a relevant field.

Where a submission is relatively distant from the expertise of the editorial team, suggested reviewers may be invited from the author, but an author-suggested reviewer would always be used in combination with a reviewer who has been independently invited to review by the editorial team.

Peer reviewers are requested to review a single video that is available either as a file (such as an mp4 sent via WeTransfer) or streaming (on YouTube or Vimeo). This is shared with the reviewer in the form of a short text document that may or may not include the submission’s metadata or transcript. In order to foreground creative exploration of the video article form, JER does not allow authors to include other kinds of materials, such as multiple video files, separate textual explanations, or images. In other words, all text, images, data, and metadata must be incorporated within a single composed video at the point of submission.

The JER peer review form is lightly adapted from the standard journal peer review form in JER’s publishing platform, Janeway, to indicate that the submission under review is a video article. We encourage reviewers to approach the process as a conversation, focusing on how a given article could make a valuable contribution to their field. Because the formal possibilities of video composition are so vast, we ask reviewers to speak freely from their own perspectives about the strengths and weaknesses of a given submission.

At the present time, JER does not publish peer review reports or the names of its reviewers. Peer review data is held securely and privately within the journal’s publishing platform, where it is accessible to authors and editors as needed.

The editorial team is currently discussing the possibility of opening some aspects of the review process. This could be valuable for the future development of the field of videographic embodied research but will require additional labour from the editors.

Organisation and Governance

Journal of Embodied Research is an independent journal that has been published by the Open Library of Humanities (OLH) since 2018. It is led and managed by a core editorial team, with support from a broadly interdisciplinary Editorial Advisory Board, and receives a small amount of administrative and financial support from the Centre for Experimental Practices (CXP) at University of Huddersfield. The aim of JER is to support the development of videographic research in fields of embodied and artistic practice, including but not limited to theatre, dance, music, contemporary art, cultural studies, and anthropology.

The current Editorial Advisory Board was assembled in 2017 in order to launch the journal. It is currently undergoing a process of revision to support the further development of the journal. Inquiries from experienced scholar-practitioners who are aware of current developments in videographic scholarship are welcome.

The Editorial Advisory Board is consulted on major issues related to the editorial direction of the journal, for example with regard to the development of the style guide or plans for special issues. Members also undertake peer review in areas of their expertise; recommend additional peer reviewers; and help to promote awareness of and interest in the journal by sharing it with their networks.

Advertising and Direct Marketing

JER now offers subscription to its own mailing list, which is hosted by Mailchimp and follows GDPR regulations. Individuals are invited to sign up via the journal website, after which they will receive occasional emails announcing substantial new content (such as a new issue) and calls for submissions. All information provided about the journal in our email announcements is truthful and not misleading. Any information about other topics will be closely related to the topic of the journal and will be unobtrusively included in an already scheduled announcement. Every email announcement from JER will include a link to unsubscribe.

JER also occasionally pays to share its announcements via a third party, such as the professional network Society for Artistic Research. Such announcements are specifically targeted at networks where there is likely to be interest in JER.

JER does not permit advertising on its website.

The publisher, OLH, employs a Marketing Officer who undertakes general marketing activities for the publisher including the promotion of its journals. The Marketing Officer does not, however, engage in direct marketing for any OLH journals and this does not affect the editorial decisions of OLH journals in any way.

Other Revenue

JER is primarily funded by OLH’s Library Partnership Subsidy Model. A small amount of additional funding and administrative support is made available by the Centre for Experimental Practices at the University of Huddersfield, for example to allow for annual announcements of JER’s open call via the Society for Artistic Research. This support does not affect the editorial decisions of the journal.

Special Issues

JER publishes special issues in order to highlight particular themes and topics. special issues may be proposed by members of the editorial team, the Editorial Advisory Board, or anyone else with an interest in advancing the journal. Anyone wishing to propose a special issue should send the following to the Chief Editor.

a cover letter with a proposed theme and rationale;
an indicative table of contents, including contributors and/or networks to invite;
a proposed timeline, from CFP through publication;
the guest editor’s CV, demonstrating relevant experience with videographic research.

Decisions regarding the acceptance and timeline of special issues are made by the core editorial team and overseen by the Chief Editor. The timeline for special issues is separate from the regular annual timeline and responds to the needs and capacities of the editors, authors, and peer reviewers. Special issues follow the same process as for any JER article, although articles and composite articles within a special issue may be grouped together and peer reviewed by one reviewer rather than individually.

Preprint Policy

JER does not publish preprints. Video articles are peer reviewed and must constitute original research. Where material has already been published in another venue but may be worth formally presenting in the context of JER, it can be submitted to the “Video Edition” section. This section is not peer reviewed and is intended to support the publication of a “version of record” for a selection of carefully curated archival video materials.

Data and Reproducibility

Consent and Ethical Considerations

JER investigates the ethics and politics of collaborative embodied research. While we expect that all submissions will have passed through relevant institutional ethics review for “human subject” research, we also understand that the subject/object division itself is limited in its capacity to understand and care for the dynamic collaborative relationships that produce videographic embodied research. Our approach to ethics navigates between standard institutional protocols (which are most often designed for “hard” sciences and social sciences) and the differently rigorous and process-focused approaches developed by critical humanities including feminist, queer, and critical race studies. The ethics of videographic production and co-authorship are frequently topics of explicit discussion amongst editors, peer reviewers, and authors, responding to each specific submission.

Publisher Policies

In addition to the above, JER follows the policies set forth by its publisher, Open Library of Humanities. You can view those policies here.