** This list is managed by Dr Evangelos Himonides (UCL), on behalf of the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research (sempre), and aims to serve as a discussion forum for researchers working at the shared boundaries of science and music. This list was previously managed by the Institute of Musical Research. **

MESSAGE FOLLOWS:

SAGE Publishing announces a partnership with the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE) to launch a new open access journal Music & Science, providing a platform for engaged debate and insight into music research from a wide range of scientific perspectives.  Scientific research is integral to gaining a greater understanding of how music is a cultural phenomenon and is yet grounded in our biology. Interdisciplinary in scope and focus, the journal will publish research from a wide cross-section of disciplines and perspectives that will illuminate—or that can be illuminated by—scientific approaches to understanding music, from cognition, neuroscience and psychoacoustics to computational approaches and studies in digital culture. The first papers are due to be published in September 2017.

The journal's point of departure is the idea that science—or, more accurately, the sciences—can help us to make sense of music and its significance in our lives.  Music exists in complex and diverse forms across historical time and within and across different societies; music is indisputably a cultural phenomenon but our musicality is grounded in our biology; we need to draw on the sciences to address music's biological materiality, but we must also be attuned to the distinctive functional and discursive properties that are embodied in different cultures' musics.

Hence the need for this journal, which is intended to provide a peer-reviewed platform for researchers to communicate important new insights in music research from the full spectrum of relevant scientific and scholarly perspectives to the widest possible audience.  It aims to publish research across the field of music and science as broadly conceived, encompassing studies in cognition, neuroscience and psychoacoustics; development and education; philosophy and aesthetics; ethnomusicology and music sociology; archaeology and ethology; music theory, analysis and historical studies; performance science and practice-based research; computational approaches and studies in digital culture; acoustics, sound studies, and soundscape studies; music therapy; and clinical implications and approaches, including psychoneuroimmunology, health and well-being.  Its goal is to be truly interdisciplinary: to give researchers from the many different scientific traditions that have been applied to music the opportunity to communicate with—and to learn from—each other, while encouraging dialogue with music scholars whose work is situated in artistic, performative or humanistic domains.  In short, it aims to publish research from any discipline or perspective that can illuminate—or that can be illuminated by—scientific approaches to understanding music.

Music & Science welcomes original research, commentaries and reviews, and sets no upper or lower limit on article length.  As the journal is online it can host audio and video files.  It has an open data policy; authors should be prepared to share and to make freely available data sets as well as relevant musical materials—audiovisual, sonic and notated.  Authors are also encouraged to publish a summary of their research in audiovisual or podcast form alongside their submission to highlight for a non-specialist audience the significance of their research in the broad field of music and science as well as its potential impact.

Together with SAGE, the editors aim to ensure that Article Processing Charges (APCs) are kept as low as possible so as to stimulate submissions from international researchers at all stages in their career. For its first year of operation, there will be no APC; subsequently the APC will be set at £400, and there will be a discount of 50% for members of SEMPRE.  Publication will be continuous and the editors will aim for a turn-around time for submissions that is as fast as is commensurate with a rigorous reviewing process.

Find out more about the journal: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/music-science/journal202491.