JSMG is accepting submissions. See below for full instructions.

Read the latest issues here!

The Journal of Sound and Music in Games (JSMG) is a peer-reviewed journal that presents high-quality research concerning all areas of music and/or sound in games. It serves a diverse community of readers and authors, encompassing industry practitioners alongside scholars from disciplinary perspectives including anthropology, computer science, media/game studies, philosophy, psychology and sociology, as well as musicology. JSMG is the only journal exclusively dedicated to this subject and provides a meeting point for professionals and academics from any tradition to advance knowledge of music and sound in this important medium.

Though JSMG primarily focuses on video games, the journal welcomes studies of music and/or sound in any form of game (for example, sports, historical games predating video games, and so on). JSMG publishes original research articles, supplemented by a range of other content including review articles surveying important subjects, reviews of pertinent books and games, communications with responses, and interviews. The journal will also occasionally present topically themed special issues and conference proceedings.

As the journal of the Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games, JSMG acts as a lively forum for the presentation and dissemination of knowledge, uniting theory and practice in this domain of musical-sonic activity.

Submissions

To submit to JSMG, please refer to the instructions for contributors (below) in preparing your manuscript first. All submissions must then be processed by the editorial office (see instructions here): https://online.ucpress.edu/jsmg/pages/submit. If you have any questions you can contact the editorial office at jsmg@sssmg.org.

Instructions for Contributors

Please review our submission guidelines here.

Reviewer Guidelines

For transparency, the template our reviewers are asked to complete is available here.

Statement on Publishing Ethics

As journal editors in music studies, we seek to foster constructive and civil dialogue that advances our field and that is beneficial for authors, reviewers, and readers. While scholars will invariably have intellectual disagreements, we believe that journals must hold a high standard for productive, respectful exchange. We will strive to ensure that reviewers for our journals:

• Disclose any conflict of interest before accepting the commission.
  
  
• Maintain the highest standards of scholarly integrity and collegiality by refraining from ad hominem comments or attacks, whether expressed directly or obliquely.
  
  
• Represent the reviewed material accurately and fairly, including in cases in which the reviewer reveals errors in the work under review or disagrees with its argumentation.
  
  
• Refrain from language that could be construed as unprofessional, including remarks of a prejudiced, sarcastic, or gendered nature.
  
  
• Engage constructively with the work under review. We rely on the assistance of experts to offer balanced and learned opinions on recent scholarship, while maintaining the highest level of civility in any criticisms. Reviews should seek to advance the field—not to pursue a personal agenda.
  
  

Acceptance of any review, from anonymous peer reviews to published reviews of books and other work, is contingent on approval by the editor(s) of our journals. The editorial team reserves the right to return reviews that do not follow these guidelines to the reviewer for revision or to reject the review outright.

Subscriptions

Institutional and individual subscriptions are available from the University of California Press.

SSSMG Members are entitled to a significant discount for annual individual subscriptions. Please log in and follow the details here.