Submissions

Submitting an Article Online

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Author Guidelines

Article types | Structure | Figures & Tables | References

Submissions should be made electronically through this website. Once submitted, the author can track the submission and communicate with the editors via the online journal management system. Please ensure that you consider the following guidelines when preparing your manuscript. Failure to do so may delay processing your submission.

Submissions to Media+Environment consist of the following components:

Cover letter (required) — written or pasted into the online form
Manuscript/Main submission item (required) — uploaded
Figures/photos/media — uploaded (but should also be embedded as low-resolution placeholders in the manuscript to help with readability during the review process)

Cover Letter (required)

Please write a brief cover letter that:

clearly specifies the thematic stream you are submitting to, or the call for submissions you are responding to. If your submission does not pertain to a thematic stream or call for submissions, please also state this. (This is only to help us assign your submission to the appropriate Editors.)
details any previous interactions with Media+Environment regarding your submission

Article types

Articles: Articles will undergo double-blind peer-review. Length should range between 5,000-7,500 words in length, although shorter and longer contributions may be considered. Articles may include elements such as images, tables, graphs, and illustrations, as well as multimedia elements (audio and video files, maps, datasets, etc.). Any multimedia content will be reviewed for substance, and checked to ensure that it can be technically supported and that permissions to publish have been granted.
Reviews: Reviews may be of single-authored monographs, edited collections, films, games, festivals, installations or exhibitions, and so on. Reviews will also undergo double-blind peer-review, and should be limited to 3,000 words.
Creative works: We welcome nontraditional academic scholarship in the form of short videos, games, comics, animations, and more. As with traditional scholarship, multimedia content will be reviewed by those with appropriate expertise, and also checked to ensure it can be technically supported.

Structure

Note: To ensure double-blind peer review, please do not list the authors on the title page of the submitted manuscript file. The names of all authors, affiliations, contact details, and the corresponding author details will be completed in an online form as part of the submission process, but this will not appear on the manuscript. Author names should include a forename and a surname. Forenames cannot include only initials. The affiliation should ideally include ‘Department, Institution, City, Country’. However only the Institution and Country are mandatory.

Manuscript Organization

All submissions should begin with the following sections:

Title
Abstract
Keywords

All submissions should end with the following sections:

Supplementary files (if applicable)
Acknowledgements (if applicable)
Transparency statement
Reference List Entries
Figure numbers and captions (if applicable)

We ask that manuscripts follow a hybrid style combining the Chicago Manual of Style Author-Date format with the use of brief footnotes for additional comments (to be located at the end of the article ). The footnotes themselves should follow the Author-Date style. Per this style, the Reference List Entries are included as the final section after the footnotes, if any. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html

Title
The full title must be 250 characters or fewer.

Abstract
The abstract should provide a clear description of the main objective(s) of the submission, explain how the study was done (as applicable), and summarize the article’s most important conclusions and their significance. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should not include sub-headings. Please do not include citations in your abstract and avoid the use of abbreviations, if possible.

Keywords
Please include 4-6 descriptors for the submission.

Note: the Abstract and Keywords will also be added to the online form when making the initial online submission.

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Supplementary Files (optional)
Any supplementary/additional files that should link to the main publication must be listed, with a corresponding number, title and option description. Ideally the supplementary files are also cited in the main text.

e.g. Supplementary file 1: Appendix. Animated map of wildfire.

Note: additional files will not be typeset/developed so they must be provided in their final form. They will be assigned a DOI and linked to from the publication.

Acknowledgements (optional)
Any acknowledgements must be headed and in a separate paragraph, placed after the main text but before the reference list.

Transparency Statement
In order to provide readers of articles with information about interests and relationships that might influence, or might be perceived to influence, the interpretation of articles published in Media+Environment (“competing interests”), all individuals involved with a submission (authors, editors, external reviewers) are required to declare all competing interests. Corresponding authors must provide a transparency statement on behalf of all authors. If no competing interests exist, this should be stated specifically.

Authors who are also editors at Media+Environment play no role during the review process of their specific paper, and this is ensured by the Coordinating Editor. However, authors who are also editors should still declare this as a competing interest (and corresponding authors should be aware of this on behalf of other authors who are also editors). An editor of a thematic “stream” who is also an Editor of the journal may author or co-author the introduction to the stream in consultation with the other journal Editors. Any submission by that Editor must go through the journal’s regular peer-review process.

Reference List Entries
Published works, works accepted for publication, and citable datasets, code, and materials, should appear in the bibliography as Reference List Entries (per Chicago Manual of Style online, Author-Date).
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html

Figure numbers and captions
Figures should be cited in ascending numeric order upon first appearance. At the time of submission, each figure and figure caption should be inserted between angle brackets immediately after the first paragraph in which it is cited in the article file. The actual figures should be uploaded as separate files to our manuscript submission system, however please place low-resolution placeholders in the main text as appropriate to help with the review process.

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File Types
You may submit your manuscript files in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx), Open Office, or RTF format. Only RTF and .doc/.docx files can be used during the production process. Word files must not be protected.

File Submission & Upload Order

Write or paste your cover letter into the web form on the first page of the submission process, including all the required elements.
Upload your article/main submission item file first.
Figures and supplemental material should be numbered in the order they are first mentioned in the text, and uploaded in the same order. For example, Figure 1 should be uploaded as the first figure file, Figure 2 the second, etc.; Video S1 should be uploaded as the first Supplemental Material file, Video S2 the second, etc.
All figures, main and supplemental, should be uploaded in the desired display orientation.
Multimedia files (.avi or .swf files) must be uploaded as supplementary material and not main figures.

Figures & Tables

Figures
Figures, including graphs, diagrams, photographs, must be professionally and clearly presented. If a figure is not easy to understand or does not appear to be of a suitable quality, the editor may ask to re-render or omit it.

All figures must be cited within the main text, in consecutive order using Arabic numerals (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.).

The source of the image should be included, along with any relevant copyright information and a statement of authorisation (if needed). For example:

Figure 1: Firemen try to free workers buried under piles of concrete and metal girders. Photo: Claude-Michel Masson. Reproduced with permission of the photographer.

If your figure file includes text then please present the font as Ariel, Helvetica, or Verdana. This will mean that it matches the typeset text.

NOTE: All figures must be uploaded separately as supplementary files during the submission process, if possible in colour and at a resolution of at least 300dpi. Each file should not be more than 20MB. Standard formats accepted are: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS. For line drawings, please provide the original vector file (e.g. .ai, or .eps).

Tables
Any tables must be created using a word processor's table function, not tabbed text.

Tables should be included in the manuscript. The final layout will place the tables as close to their first citation as possible.

All tables must be cited within the main text, and numbered with Arabic numerals in consecutive order (e.g. Table 1, Table 2, etc.).

Each table must have an accompanying descriptive title. This should clearly and concisely summarise the content and/or use of the table. A short additional table legend is optional to offer a further description of the table. The table title and legend should be placed underneath the table.

Tables should not include:

Rotated text
Colour to denote meaning (it will not display the same on all devices)
Images
Vertical or diagonal lines
Multiple parts (e.g. ‘Table 1a’ and ‘Table 1b’). These should either be merged into one table, or separated into ‘Table 1’ and ‘Table 2’.

NOTE: If there are more columns than can fit on a single page, then the table will be placed horizontally on the page. If it still can't fit horizontally on a page, the table will be broken into two.

References

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, in part or in whole, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
All third-party-owned materials used have been identified with appropriate credit lines, and permission has been obtained from the copyright holder for all formats of the journal. Authors acknowledge their responsibility to gain all permissions prior to submission.
All authors qualify as authors, as per the authorship guidelines, and have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines. Every effort has been made to ensure that the submission is ready for peer review according to the journal's review policy (following the instructions to ensure blind peer review).
Tables are all cited in the main text and are included within the text document.
Figures are all cited in the main text, included within the text document and are also uploaded as supplementary files. Figures/images have a resolution of at least 150dpi (300dpi or above preferred). The files are in one of the following formats: JPG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, EPS (to maximise quality, the original source file is preferred).
All individuals or groups of individuals identifiable in any type of submission have signed informed consent forms, or had had their legal guardian do so, giving permission to publish the submitted content under a CC-BY licence.
Research has been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, with the name of the committee and reference number of approval included within the submitted file. Otherwise, a statement that ethics approval was not required has been added to the file.
The corresponding author is submitting an ORCID identifier, if they have one, in their author data and co-authors have been recommended to also provide an ORCID, as per the journal policy.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. For more information, see the full Privacy Policy here.

Publication Fees

There are no publication fees or Article Processing Charges (APCs) for publishing in Media+Environment.

Media+Environment is published by UC Press but founded in partnership with the Carsey-Wolf Center and the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the University of Vermont, and Monash University.

As an Open Access offering, the journal will be open to all, not hidden behind a subscriber paywall. As a humanities journal, we have chosen not to implement Author Publication Fees otherwise known as Article Processing Charges (APCs) often used in fields where there are more opportunities for grant support.

The Carsey-Wolf Center is our main sponsor along with support from UC Santa Barbara’s Division of Humanities and Fine Arts, the University of Vermont, and Monash University. We will continue to seek additional funding and to build an international consortium of university and institutional partners supportive of the journal’s goals.

We invite further institutional and organizational sponsors, who share a common interest to maximize the dissemination of ecomedia scholarship via open access. Please reach out to Associate Director Emily Zinn (ezinn[at]carseywolf.ucsb.edu) if you or your institution or organization are considering becoming a supporter and partner of the journal. Media+Environment is a nonprofit journal intended as a public, scholarly good—your support, whatever its size, will always make a tremendous difference.

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