Submissions
Submitting to Contemporary Aesthetics
Contemporary Aesthetics encourages the submission of articles that bear directly on contemporary aesthetic theory and concerns, as well as current reassessments of traditional issues. Articles that are primarily historical or that focus on particular art works or individual artists are not appropriate to the mission of this journal. The discussion should be accessible and of interest to a wide audience from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds. It should also promote conversations across fields and practices. We welcome the use of visual images and auditory and video clips to illustrate the text. The length of articles is normally no greater than 5,000 words but should not exceed 7,000 words, including an abstract and notes.
CA also welcomes shorter (300-800 words), less formal, and more targeted submissions to be included in the section of Short Notes. Short Notes may offer a point of view on current interest in aesthetics and philosophy of art, a comment on a recently published book in aesthetics, a response to a recent article published in CA, or introduce a contemporary discussion in aesthetics that has not been available in English. With the exception of discussions of books or articles, Short Notes will not ordinarily require citations, nor do they require an abstract or key words.
Please review the following topics in preparing your article for submission. If you have any questions or if you need assistance, please feel free to contact CA.
Submission Requirements
Submission Guidelines
Formatting the Article
Rights and Permission
Acceptable File Types
Submitting an Article
Disclaimer
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Submission Requirements
In sending work to Contemporary Aesthetics for possible publication, the submitter attests that the work is an original work of the author, that no part was generated by artificial intelligence (AI), that it has not previously been published in English, and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Papers should be well-written by following the best practice of academic writing, and we encourage grace as well as clarity. It is important that papers be copy-edited carefully before submission. Drafts are not acceptable. We particularly encourage non-Anglophone authors to ask an Anglophone editor who is familiar with academic writing to copy-edit the article in order to ensure that the reviewers can focus on the content and discussion.
Except for invited papers, all articles will be double-blind-refereed. Hence, articles for regular submission should be prepared for blind review by deleting any author identification in the text, notes, or header.
In order to ensure diversity of subject matter, approaches, and voices, papers by authors who have not published in Contemporary Aesthetics for at least a year prior to submission are normally given precedence.
Once a paper has been accepted for publication, it undergoes a careful editorial process that ensures its conformity to house style (capitalization, punctuation, endnote formatting, etc.) and the best practice of good English usage in academic writing. Changes are usually minor and kept to a minimum, and proofs are sent to the author for approval before publication. Contemporary Aesthetics reserves the right to make final decisions in all cases that do not affect the content. Articles accepted for publication are copyrighted by Contemporary Aesthetics under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
In submitting work to Contemporary Aesthetics, authors agree to the policies of this journal, including acceptance of the final editorial decision regarding the article, free access and use of the material published in it with, of course, proper acknowledgment of authorship and source. If you have any questions about whether your article is appropriate for CA, send an inquiry to the editor at editor@contempaesthetics.org.
Submission Guidelines
Our submission guidelines have been carefully prepared to facilitate the editorial process of publishing articles online. Strict adherence to formatting guidelines (described below) has three purposes. First, consistent and uniform formatting allows the editor and reviewers to concentrate on the content of articles submitted. Second, it allows for reliable translation of authors’ formatting to the web page. The third consideration is both aesthetic and practical: multiple stylistic formats are ugly and distracting on a web page and interfere with reading. Therefore, please observe the following formatting instructions carefully. Submissions which do not adhere to these instructions will be returned to the author.
Formatting the Article
The article should be prepared according to the following guidelines:
(1) The length of articles is normally no greater than 5,000 words but should not exceed 7,000 words, including an abstract and notes. An article exceeding the length limit will be returned to the author.
(2) At the beginning of the article, the title, abstract and a list of key words should immediately precede the text. Do not include the author’s name or any other identifying information. Any identifying reference in the endnotes should be left blank.
(3) Please use section headings in bold type and number them. Because CA uses no page numbers, numbered sections will permit accurate references in citing the article.
(4) All citations should be in endnotes and not in the text. Number endnotes sequentially with Arabic numbers. Use the endnote function in your word processing program so that the notes appear at the end of the article.
(5) For citations and references, Contemporary Aesthetics follows the endnote citation style in the latest version of Chicago Manual of Style at https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
(6) Font should be 11-point Arial, whether in normal, bold, or italic, including endnotes. Please do not insert line breaks in the text or special spacing for formatting.
(7) The paragraph break should be indicated by an extra line space rather than an indentation at the beginning of a paragraph.
(8) Only the left hand margin should be justified.
Citations from CA
Citations of articles published in Contemporary Aesthetics should include author, title, volume number, year, and section number (since this online publication does not use the pagination of print formats). If you wish to be more specific, you can add the paragraph (¶) of the section.
Rights and Permission
It is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission for the use of any copyrighted material, including images, sound, and video files. The author is also responsible for any associated cost. It is preferable to place images directly in the text but, when permission is unobtainable, it is acceptable to include a link to the image directly in the text.
Acceptable File Types
Please submit texts in MS Word (.doc) or Rich Text Format (.RTF). If submitting from a Macintosh computer, please include the three-letter file extension in the file name of your article. PDF files are not acceptable.
Images should be in .jpg or .png format.
Naming files: File names should not contain spaces. They may contain letters, numbers, hyphens (-) and underscores (_). No other punctuation is allowed. Files must have the three-letter file extension identifying the file type (i.e. .rtf, .doc), whether submitted from a Windows or Macintosh computer.
Examples of unacceptable file names:
Aesthetics/Form.doc (uses slash)
Article #2.rtf (uses # sign)
Article.Aesthetics.docx (uses period or point)
Aesthetics and Art (has no file extension)
AppleWorks, Lotus, or other word processor documents must be saved in one of the above formats.
Submitting an Article
An e-mail message with the article as an attachment to Contemporary Aesthetics should be sent to editor@contempaesthetics.org. Use “Submission” as the subject in the email address block. The message should include (1) the author’s name, (2) the title of the article, (3) an abstract of no more than 150 words (or the statement: “Submission to Short Notes”), and (4) relevant information about the author, including institutional affiliation, mailing and e-mail addresses.
Upon receiving and e-mail with attached paper, an acknowledgement will be sent indicating that the paper has been received. There is no charge for submitting an article for review or publication.
Disclaimer
Statements of fact and opinion in the articles in Contemporary Aesthetics are those of the respective authors and contributors and not of the editor, editorial board, or sponsor of Contemporary Aesthetics. No representation, express or implied, is made of the accuracy of the material in this journal and CA cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The reader should make his or her own evaluation of the accuracy and appropriateness of those materials.