Where to Publish? An Interdisciplinary Guide

When research is externally evaluated, and even when it isn’t, the choice of venue for your research publications could hardly be more important. The journal you choose, or the publisher you contract with, determine the readership for your research writings, and – to some extent - determine, in addition, the quality ascribed to your work. Whether or not this is as it should be is a separate issue to that of having to respond (a) to the fact that different journals and publishers have diverse strengths and weaknesses, and (b) that hierarchies of judgement will be applied to your work on publication.

In my field, design history, there are only a handful of dedicated journals. The Journal of Design History is world-leading, while Design Issues and Design and Culture each relate to design cultures in distinctive ways. Beyond this small group, many of the journals in which design historians choose to publish are either design journals, more broadly defined, or journals representing the large number of neighbouring or other fields which connect in various ways with the diverse subject of design and its histories. The former group includes The Design Journal, and more specialised journals such as Interiors, Fashion Theory etc.

See the following on design journals:

• ‘Design Research Journal Ranking Study: Preliminary Results’ by Ken Friedman, Deirdre Barron, Silvana Ferlazzo, Tania Ivanka, Gavin Melles and Dr. Jeremy Yuille (2008).
• Ranking of Design Journals Based on Results of the UK Research Excellence Framework: Using REF as Referee, Neil J. Mansfield, The Design Journal 19:6 (2016): 903-919.
• ‘Quality perceptions of design journals: The design scholars’ perspective’, Gerda Gemser, Cees de Bont, Paul Hekkert, Ken Friedman, Design Studies 33: 1 (January 2012): 4-23.

Beyond design, there is a wealth of resources available to colleagues wishing to make an informed choice about which journals, or presses to publish with. Some other rankings for specific disciplines that TVAD researchers may be interested in are:

• ERIM, the Erasmus Research Institute of Management which ranks journals in management through its ‘ERIM Journals List (EJL) 2016-2021’ (updated 29 January 2016).
• AACSB International—The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) publishes a ‘Journal Rankings and Indices of Research Productivity’ which covers mostly business. 

More broadly, a standard resource is the European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS). It was produced by the European Science Foundation (ESF) in 2008. It is now maintained by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data. Initially it covered the humanities only, but now it also covers the social sciences.

Scopus is the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature across the sciences, arts and humanities. It offers ‘CiteScore’, ‘essentially the average citations per document that a title receives over a three-year period’.

The most well-known indicator in the JCR is the Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This provides a ratio of citations to a journal in a given year to the citable items in the prior two years. Journal Citation Reports® (JCR) published by Clarivate Analytics (2017) offers a combination of impact and influence metrics from 2016 Web of Science source data covering more than 11,000 journals from 81 countries.
 

Eigenfactor was set up in January 2007 by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West to use ‘recent advances in network analysis to develop novel methods for evaluating the influence of scholarly periodicals, for mapping the structure of academic research, and for helping researchers navigate the scholarly literature.’ It focuses on sciences and social sciences.

Princeton’s Wendy Laura Belcher has worked with some Princeton students on this digest of ‘Reviews of Peer-Reviewed Journals in Humanities and the Social Sciences’ (Princeton 2017) https://journalreviews.princeton.edu/ranking-peer-reviewed-journals/ This blog reviews more than 70 journals. Belcher recommends her own book Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success (SAGE 2009) and the introduction and chapter one can be downloaded from the SAGE website.

Judgments about journal quality can directly inform perceptions of a researcher’s worth. See David Adams', Publish or Perish v. 5 (2017). Consider also this promotion document from the London School of Economics: http://www.lse.ac.uk/intranet/staff/humanResources/reviewingAndRewarding/promotionAndReview/pdfs/JournalsLists-16-17.pdf

The information is arranged by subject area, including some interdisciplinary topics such as gender studies. The journals regarded as the best are shown for each field. The document also advises on academic publishers with some surprising results: Palgrave Macmillan may not be so closely associated with the group of university presses by everyone who expresses an opinion. Conversely, Bloomsbury Academic is a relatively new addition to the Bloomsbury publisher which may not yet have made an impression on the compilers of such lists.

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Prof Grace Lees-Maffei with Dr Veronica Manlow.

New WVC issue: Between Texts and Cities

“Between Texts and Cities” was prompted by a suggestion by Grace Lees-Maffei that Michael Heilgemeir and I guest-edit an issue of Writing Visual Culture, the journal of the TVAD research group. The issue is part of our joint project Texts+Cities, an exploration of the relations between texts and urban spaces in contemporary societies. We both have a keen interest in contemporary cities and urban issues: Michael’s book The Nomadic Studio explores temporary artist-led spaces and their role within the redevelopment of cities, and my research is on urban regeneration, focusing on London Docklands and the Greenwich Peninsula.

Fig. 1: Michael Heilgemeir (2013): The Nomadic Studio.

Our first Texts+Cities activity was the seminar Texts/Cities: From the 1970s to the Present, which took place at the University of Hertfordshire in January 2014. In conceiving the seminar, Michael and I were guided by a number of questions:

·       How do urban spaces relate to artistic, political, or economic texts and ideologies, and vice-versa?

·       What transformations occur between the designing and imaging of urban spaces, and the building and eventual inhabiting of those spaces?

·       How do the technologies employed in designing and imaging architectural and urban spaces (computer modelling and simulation, CGI renderings of future buildings, etc.) contribute to the ‘idea’ or representations of a city?

·       In what ways can Big Data, New Media, and Imaging Technologies influence understanding of, and policies within cities?

Poster for seminar Texts/Cities: From the 1970s to the Present, University of Hertfordshire, 2014. Poster design: Michael Heilgemeir; photograph: Hong Kong 2003 © Daniel Marques Sampaio.

The exploratory nature of the seminar enabled us to identify the central issues on which to focus, and the present issue of Writing Visual Culture springs from that process. Our call for papers for the issue produced responses from scholars within an interdisciplinary range of humanities, social sciences, art, design, and media practices.

Between Texts and Cities (WVC # 6) cover. Design and photograph © Michael Heilgemeir.

The seven contributions in “Between Texts and Cities” were selected from abstracts received from the UK, the USA, Belgium, Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia, Russia, and South Africa. Our imaginations were sparked by their themes: cityscapes of exclusion; liminal, interstitial spaces between city and country; places of refuge for sexual and racial minorities; modernist utopian designs ill-equipped to respond to the dynamics of contemporary Capitalism; imagined cities that amplified traits of existing ones to the point of entropy.

These all related to the concerns outlined in our call for papers. However, the variety of approaches and the specificities of some of their cultural and geographical settings required us to contextualise them very carefully in relation to our project. In this we benefited enormously from our conversations with Susan Parham, Head of Urbanism at the Centre for Sustainable Communities here at the University of Hertfordshire. Susan’s comments and advice were always given in a spirit of openness and generosity, and we enjoyed immensely working with her.

I invite readers (shameless plug alert!) to have a look at the Introduction to the issue, which sets out a context for the papers within the thematic scope of the Texts+Cities project. That context invokes the literal and metaphorical ruins of Modernism’s urban utopias, and the emergence of a new political and economic configuration in the wake of the structural crises of Capitalism of the 1970s. Naturally, such context, “narrative arc” even, is only one of many possible contexts, and we welcome debate on alternative ways of reading this issue.

A final note on the issue: there are two versions of “Between Texts and Cities” on the TVAD website. The first version follows the prevailing model of digital delivery in journal publishing, whereby journal articles within an issue can be accessed individually as pdfs. If you need to print an individual article, that’s the place to go (mind the trees!).

In addition to this, we have brought all the papers together in a single volume, soon to be uploaded on the WVC site. Michael designed and produced photographs for the volume, which is designed to be read/viewed/studied/devoured on screens/tablets. This second version aims to preserve the papers’ place in the wider context of the issue (that “narrative arc”), and emphasise the dialogue between the articles. We also intend it to explore a bit more the visual side we have always felt is a strong aspect of the Texts+Cities project, in an attractive publication that hopefully will help us communicate the project in future activities.

Daniel Marques Sampaio

The masculinization of dressing up

‘Dressing-up’ has often been seen as a gendered activity. In particular, costuming – the design and creation of costumes – has been viewed as a female pursuit. However, Barbara Brownie's latest article, recently published in Clothing Cultures (vol. 2, no. 2), explores contemporary events and artefacts which frame dressing-up in contexts that are more acceptable to male audiences. As a result, a new generation of men are becoming more engaged with costume.

If costume can be justified as a functional object, particularly in that is associated with the very masculine act of combat, it can be distanced from feminine acts of vanity, and childish acts of play. Historical and military reenactment invites participants to consider clothing not as frivolous fashion items but as the tools of war, and a means of recording history. In multiplayer online games (such as World of Warcraft), the dressing and preparation of the avatar is a significant part of the player’s gaming experience. Fron et al. (2004) observe that male gamers devote a lot of time and effort into developing their costume, justified by their use of terminology such as ‘gear’ rather than ‘costume’. Such terminology suggests that the avatar’s wardrobe is primarily a matter of function rather than style. These environments introduce quantifiable measures of a costume's success - including numerical scores for effectiveness in battle scenarios, or point-by-point assessment of authenticity.

The notion of costume as functional object has also made the practice of dressing-up more acceptable to mainstream cinema audiences. Christopher Nolan took great pains to justify Bruce Wayne’s costume in his recent cinema incarnations of Batman (The Dark Knight, 2008, and its sequels), in which the Batman costume is depicted as pseudo-utilitarian. The superhero genre also presents numerous masculine characters actively involved in the design and creation of costume, including Spider Man, who is seen sewing his own suit. In the domestic space of his aunt’s home. In sci-fi and fantasy fandom, fans acquire cultural capital through the design and creation of costume. Through accuracy and authenticity in costume, a cosplayer may position himself as an authority. The organized ‘masquerades’ that take place at cosplay events add a masculine element of competition to this traditionally feminine act.

Barbara's article identifies contemporary influences on the perception of the wearing and construction of costume, particularly with regards to costume as an expression of masculine ideals. It discusses the costume as a marker of hypermasculinity, authority, or preparedness, and identifies how traditionally feminine domestic spaces and activities have been co-opted by a new generation of males. It presents domestic activities such as sewing as rites-of-passage on the path towards masculinity.

Grace Lees-Maffei appointed Managing Editor of the Journal of Design History

Following interviews, The Design History Society and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Design History have appointed Grace Lees-Maffei to the post of Managing Editor of the Journal of Design History for a five year term. Grace will work alongside a newly appointed Chair of the Editorial Board, Prof Cheryl Buckley (Northumbria University).
http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org/
http://www.designhistorysociety.org/