Submissions

About

Journal of Embodied Research is the first peer-reviewed, open access, academic journal to focus specifically on the innovation and dissemination of embodied knowledge through the medium of video. With an editorial advisory board drawn from across the arts and humanities, it aims to pioneer the scholarly video article as a new form supporting development of diverse embodied research projects.

Focus and Scope

Embodied knowledge encompasses a wide range of fields and disciplines that are continually undergoing transmission and innovation through practice — including but not limited to those that support globally diverse performing, martial, healing, and ritual arts. While embodied research is as old as humanity, the possibility to share it through high quality video articles is relatively new.

JER is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes in performing arts, sport studies, disability studies, cultural studies, anthropology, and other fields. We are particularly interested in articles that articulate marginalized knowledges and take a critical (e.g., queer, feminist, disabled, decolonial, antiracist, anticapitalist) perspective on established methodologies. JER is intended as a platform where authors, editors, and peer reviewers can have structured conversations about the future of videographic research and the relationship between audiovisuality, textuality, and embodiment.

Please note that JER, at least for now, publishes exclusively videographic works. We do not publish reviews or any textual articles or essays, nor do we have the capacity to host nonlinear formats such as websites or 360° video, except where all of these media can be integrated within a linear video file. The focus of the journal is on videographic form and the way in which other media, including text, can be integrated within it. If you are wondering whether your project is appropriate for JER, please contact the Editor.

Submission Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items. To avoid unnecessary delays, please ensure that your submissions do adhere to them.

1. The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration.


2. The submission includes the required textual information: title, author(s), abstract, and keywords. These materials will eventually have to be included within the video itself, but at submission stage they can be in a separate text document.


3. Any third-party-owned materials used have been identified, with appropriate credit lines, and permission obtained from the copyright holder (for all formats of the journal) where necessary.


4. All authors have given permission to be listed on the submitted video and satisfy the authorship guidelines. JER recognizes authorship credit as an ethical and political issue (like citation itself) and is committed to developing appropriate authorship taxonomies that reflect the complexity of embodied research. Editors work closely with submitting authors to consider when and how those whose audiovisual bodies appear onscreen (performers, participants, informers, co-researchers) can be appropriately credit for their embodied contribution to the research.


5. DOIs have been provided for all references, where applicable. Again, reference lists will eventually need to be integrated within the video file itself, but at submission stage these can be included in a separate text document


6. The video includes all required metadata: title, authors with affiliations, keywords, and abstract.


7. A link to the streaming video file has been provided in the submission document, with password if necessary. Please note that video files are usually too large to upload directly to the submission system, so you MUST include a stream link to your draft video.

Copyright Notice

JER encourages authors to publish under a Creative Commons Attribution License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. However, we understand that this is not possible in all cases, especially where artistic work and/or vulnerable co-researchers are involved. See below for a list of stricter CC licenses that can also be used.

Peer Review

All submissions are initially assessed by the Editor, who decides whether or not the video article fits the scope of the journal and is suitable for peer review. The journal operates a single-blind peer review process, meaning that reviewers remain anonymous but the author is known to them. The review process will usually take about six weeks, but longer in some circumstances. 

Journal of Embodied Research is dedicated to the exploration and advancement of videographic scholarship. In recognition that this is a new kind of research (related to but distinct from visual anthropology, video art, and video essays, as well as conventional textual essays and articles), we see JER above all as a platform for substantive conversations between authors, peer reviewers, and editors.

Perhaps one day, there will be a "style guide" for videographic scholarship. For now, we welcome experimental approaches to the inclusion of diverse media within a video work. The simplest form of the "video essay" is a montage of audiovisual clips overlaid by voiceover. Voiceover is the most common way of including verbal/textual information in a video article. However, JER is also interested in developing alternatives to the voiceover.

Authors seeking to explore the videographic form may be interested in the following resources:

1. this JER video article recorded on a GoPro with live "voiceover" during the recorded practice
2. this JER video article using animated visualizations to conceptualize dance practice
3. this JER special issue focusing on annotating (or "illuminating") uncut video recordings
4. this article by JER Editor Ben Spatz on the politics of artistic research and videographic form
5. digital dance projects like Motion Bank and Synchronous Objects
6. performer training documentation like Arts Archives and the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training blog
7. the emerging field of videographic film studies, as in Audiovisualcy and the journal [in]Transition
8. this series of short video essays on "Practices of Viewing" by Johannes Binotto
9. experimental approaches to screen media practice research, as in the journal Screenworks
10. in the sciences, the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVe) and Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR)

JER editors work closely with authors to respond to peer review feedback and produce the strongest version of each video article. Overall, the journal aims to demonstrate the validity and scope of videographic research as a medium for transmitting embodied knowledge. We understand peer review as the heart of the journal and a forum for advanced discussion about the video article form and its relationship to both textuality and embodiment. Our peer review process aims to be ethical, rigorous, innovative, and interdisciplinary, opening new possibilities by supporting the careful creation and composition of a new kind of research article. We approach every video article as a unique response to questions about the relationship between textuality and audiovisuality, where form and content are closely interwoven.

Licences

Journal of Embodied Research allows the following licences for submission:

• CC BY 4.0 - More Information  
  Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Publication Fees Publication Cycle

Journal of Embodied Research is published continuously online, with video articles made available as they become ready. General submission articles are usually published as part of issue #1 in any given year/volume. Proposals for special issues or sections are also welcomed. These will usually be published as issue #2 of any given year/volume.

Please note that all JER video articles are published alongside a complete transcript of its textual material (including words spoken in the video, voiceover, and text appearing onscreen). The transcript PDF is not a substitute for the video article and may not even make sense on its own, but it is important for indexing and accessibility. The transcript is produced after the video article itself is finalized. The author is responsible for producing an initial transcript, which is reformatted by the editorial team and then goes through the standard PDF production process that is normally applied to textual articles.

Where possible, JER will provide some proofreading support. However, because of the limitations of video editing technologies, it is not possible for JER editors or the production team to fix errors in the video directly. Therefore, the primary responsibility for proofreading and error correction lies with the author.
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