Aims & Scope
Media Theory is an independent (scholar-led), online and (libre) open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical interventions into all aspects of media and communications. Resolutely international and interdisciplinary in scope, the editors encourage submissions that critically engage with the theoretical frameworks and concepts that tend to be taken for granted in national or disciplinary perspectives.
Although the journal privileges an emphasis on theory, the editors are not only concerned with theory for theory’s sake. Rather, we are interested in how theoretically-informed and -engaged interventions can contribute to the interpretation of empirical research and critique, as well as to the deprovincialization of theoretical debate – helping us understand, rather than dismiss or describe, objects of critique, and making us reconsider the validity, efficacy and legitimacy of our own particular methodological approaches.
With that in mind, we are keen to stretch the definition of ‘media’, and to receive articles that critically debate the necessity of an emphasis on ‘theory’, or which prefer to emphasise ‘theories’ or ‘philosophy’ instead. As an open access journal, we would also like to provide a forum for debates on open access, peer-review and the future of academic publishing.
The journal is online only, open access and published twice a year. No fees are charged to either readers or authors. All articles are published under a Creative Commons licence (2017-2023 (vols 1 to 7.1): CC-BY-NC-ND; 2023 (vol. 7.2) onwards: CC-BY). Authors retain copyright of their articles and are free to republish them as they wish.
If you would like to propose an article or special issue, please contact the editors directly at: editors@mediatheoryjournal.org
Publisher & Partners
Media Theory is an independent (scholar-led) journal owned by the Media Theory Association, a nonprofit organization registered in France. The Association is made up of the members of the editorial board of the Journal (currently 37 members). Members meet at least once a year in a General Assembly for the Association and Editorial Board meeting for the Journal. The Association elects the Council from among its members. The Council is made up of the two editors-in-chief of the Journal, who also perform the roles of president, secretary and treasurer of the Association, and who are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Journal. Currently, Joshua Synenko (Trent University, Canada) is treasurer of the Association, and Simon Dawes (UVSQ-Paris Saclay, France) is secretary and president of the Association.
Media Theory is published by:
Trent University Library & Archives, 1600 West Bank Drive, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, K9L 0G2
The journal is also supported by:
the Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines (CHCSC), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) and Université Paris Saclay, France: https://www.chcsc.uvsq.fr/
and the Cultural Studies Graduate Program, Trent University, Canada: https://www.trentu.ca/culturalstudies/
The journal is also a member of the Radical Open Access Collective.
Media Theory is indexed with DOAJ (the Directory of Open Access Journals): https://doaj.org/toc/2557-826X
The journal website is hosted by Scholars Portal, a trusted repository of the Ontario Council of University Libraries.
Journal Submission Guidelines
All submissions to Media Theory are double-blind peer-reviewed (meaning that the identity of both authors and reviewers are known only to the editors), so contributors should take care to remove any obvious indications of authorship; when citing your own work, replace your name with ‘Author’ in both the body of the text and in the references.
Once an article is received, the editors assign at least two external peer-reviewers whose research interests correspond to those covered in the article. Some members of the journal’s editorial board will also be asked to comment on the article. Referees and board members are asked to send their comments to the editors within 3-4 weeks. Once all comments have been received, the editors make a decision, sometimes in liaison with additional members of the board, before contacting authors with the decision and feedback. This refereeing process normally takes 2-3 months.
Articles may be accepted or rejected, though in most cases either minor revisions will be requested prior to formal acceptance, or substantial revisions may be required before a final decision can be made. Authors asked to make revisions will normally be given 6 weeks to do so (though this varies depending on the extent of revisions required). When the decision is ‘Revise’, the revised article will be returned to the original referees for their comments. The editor’s/editors’ decision is final.
Editorial decision categories are as follows:
ACCEPT: The article is accepted in its current form and authors will be asked to provide a final version before copyediting begins.
ACCEPT WITH MINOR REVISIONS: The article is accepted subject to satisfactory completion of specified and minor changes. The subsequent revised version will not need to be resent for peer-review.
REVISE: The article cannot yet be accepted, until the required revisions have been made. The subsequent revised version of the article will be sent back to the original set of peer-reviewers for further feedback before an editorial decision can be made.
REJECT: The article is rejected and there will be no further consideration of the article.
For full submission guidelines, see our For Authors page.
Publication Ethics & Editorial Policies
Media Theory follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as proposed by organisations such as The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and it is expected of authors, reviewers and editors that they follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour contained therein.
Authorship and contributorship
Collaborators should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. The submitting author would normally be the main point of contact with the journal throughout the production process, but does not necessarily have to be the first author listed in the published article.
All members of the group named as authors should have contributed substantially to the drafting and revising of the article, give approval for the final version to be published, and be accountable with regards to any questions on the accuracy or integrity of any and all parts of the article.
Submission of an article for consideration in Media Theory implies that the work described has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and does not duplicate material already published. Prepublication or redundant/overlapping publication would preclude your article from consideration for publication with Media Theory.
Media Theory is committed to be an inclusive publication, and the editors encourage submissions from women, minorities and scholars from the global south. All editorial decisions are made on merit alone regardless of the origins of the manuscript and the nationality, political beliefs or religion of the author.
Media Theory is a libre open access journal and a member of the Radical Open Access Collective. All content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the journal or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access, as well as DOAJ’s definition of libre (and not just gratis) open access.
Copyright of all articles published in the journal rests with the authors of each particular article. The authors grant the journal a non-exclusive licence to publish the articles. Authors are free to disseminate, re-use and re-publish their articles however they wish; we merely request that authors acknowledge prior publication in Media Theory (and include the appropriate reference and url).
All articles up vol.7, no.1 (2023) are published with a CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) open access licence, which allows third parties to download authors’ articles and share them with others as long as they credit the authors, but which prevents third parties from changing articles in any way or from using them commercially.
All articles from vo.7, no.2 (2023) are published CC-BY. Third parties are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
- The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
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.
The journal is a member of DOAJ and currently in the process of applying for membership of COPE.
All articles in Media Theory are published with DOI numbers and are currently archived individually in HAL (the national archive in France) and Scholars Portal (a Trustworthy Digital Repository in Canada). All journal content will also soon be dark archived through LOCKSS to ensure the long-term digital preservation of content.
Data sharing and reproducibility
We encourage authors to make all data that is generated by their research, and that is drawn upon in their article, available at the earliest opportunity, wherever legally and ethically possible. This is not, however, obligatory.
Editorial appraisal of ethical issues covers the handling confidential data and whether participants in a study gave informed consent, as well as whether the overall design and conduct of each piece of work is morally justifiable. Editors may in some circumstances ask authors for more detailed information or ask other editorial colleagues to evaluate the ethical aspects of an article.
In the interests of transparency, these should be raised immediately with the editor when submitting the article, and be declared in the published article. Conflicts of interest do not necessarily mean that the article cannot be published.
Complaints should be directly emailed to the editors-in-chief and will be dealt with confidentially.
Complaints are coordinated by the editors of the journal, with the opportunity for escalation (to the whole of the editorial board, and if necessary the whole of the advisory board) if they cannot be resolved.
- All complaints will be reviewed initially by the editors-in-chief and the other editors.
- In the case that this initial response is felt to be insufficient, the complaint can be escalated to the wider editorial and advisory boards. The response of the boards, communicated by the editors-in-chief, will be final.
- If a complainant remains dissatisfied after what the editors-in-chief considers a definitive reply, the complainant can complain to Committee on Publication Ethics. COPE publishes a code of practice for editors of scientific, technical, and medical journals. It will facilitate the resolution of disputes with member editors, journals and publishers but only once a journal’s own complaints procedures have been exhausted. (Although the journal is not yet a member of COPE, we would still follow their advice and guidelines.)
Complaint timeframes
- All complaints will be formally acknowledged within three working days.
- If possible, a full response will be made within two weeks. If this is not possible, an interim response will be given within two weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.
- Where we consider a complaint to be vexatious or the result of a coordinated campaign, we reserve the right to reply outside of the suggested time frames, and on some occasions we may not respond to all complainants individually.
- Insults, threats and harassment, whether directly or indirectly on social media, for example, will not be tolerated.
Appeals
If you believe that your article has been rejected unfairly, please submit an appeal to the editor. Appeals must be submitted within 30 days of the rejection decision.
Appeals should address specific points of the reviewers’ and/or editors’ comments, and decisions will only be reversed if the editors are convinced that the decision was a serious mistake, or if the reviewers made errors of fact or showed evidence of bias. Appeals against editorial fit or the journal not being the right journal for the article are unlikely to be considered. If it is thought that the appeal is warranted, the article, reviewers’ comments, and author’s response will be reviewed internally by the main editorial team. The editors will decide whether to invite a resubmission, send it to another external reviewer, or uphold the original decision. In all cases, the editor’s decision is final.
Allegations of research misconduct
Allegations of misconduct will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis while following guidance produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) – see also the above section on Complaints and appeals.
Misconduct includes but is not limited to:
- Plagiarism
- Falsification or fabrication of data
- Redundant or duplicate publication
- Simultaneous submission
- Improprieties of authorship
- Misappropriation of the ideas of others
- A lack of declaration of conflicts of interest
Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the editor-in-chief.
Corrections are made at the journal’s discretion. We have a duty to maintain the integrity of the scientific record, so minor corrections that do not affect the scientific understanding or argument of the paper (for example formatting or typographical errors or preference of wording) are unlikely to be accepted if submitted post-publication in order to prevent discrepancies in future citations of the article.
If the article has already been published and the correction is of a more substantial nature, a correction notice can be added to the issue. The online version of the article will link to the correction notice, and vice versa.
Retractions are considered only in cases of evidence of plagiarism, unreliable data or findings, duplicate publication, unethical research or other types of academic misconduct. Retraction notices explain why the article was retracted.
Public comments are encouraged on our blog. All comments are moderated prior to posting.
Private correspondence can also be sent to the editors-in-chief.
The journal does not currently permit post-publication peer-review, although as a journal interested in radical open access publishing developments, this is something we may experiment with in the future.
The journal does not accept advertising of any kind.
Media Theory charges no fees to either authors or readers. The journal is, however, self-funded and dependent upon the voluntary work of the editorial board and external peer-reviewers. We therefore request that authors of accepted articles be considerate and provide clean, corrected and final versions of their articles in the journal’s house style; articles will be copyedited and proofed before publication, but all efforts to minimise our workload would be greatly appreciated.
Media Theory is published twice a year, with one issue in the summer and one in the winter. Normally, one of these issues is a guest-edited special issue on a particular theme, while the other is a collection of unrelated and unsolicited articles, and may also include special sections of solicited essays on a particular topic.