Submit to the Journal of Interactive Narrative
The journal is Open Access Diamond, which means that there is no processing fee (the journal is supported by ARDIN) and articles are free to access via the journal’s website immediately upon publication. The journal is dedicated to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion. This means reducing inequalities and closing the gaps of inclusion in the global community. As an organization and journal, we aim to achieve gender balance, the inclusion of early career scholars in our editorial board, and a scope that is inclusive of voices outside of Europe and North America.
Kinds of Submissions
How the Submission Process Works
Review Process
1. Initial Screening
After an author submits an article to the journal, an Editor is appointed to screen the manuscript and decide whether to send it for full peer review. Editors will consider the following aspects:
1.1. Does it conform to the journal’s aims and scope, and has it followed the style guidelines and instructions for authors?
1.2. Does it make a significant creative or scientific contribution to the existing literature?
1.3. Is the manuscript good enough in terms of quality to be sent for peer review?
Quality is defined in two ways: scientific quality and interactive digital narrative implementation quality.
1.3.1 “Scientific Quality” involves properly acknowledging existing research, the precision and rigor of the research design, and the method’s consistency with the research questions.
1.3.2 The criteria for “Interactive Narrative Implementation Quality” include technical issues such as software delivered as part of the submission crashing, the submitted work having other technical issues (e.g., running very slowly, having many bugs), or the software plagiarizing earlier work.
1.4. At this stage, the editor can reject the manuscript after coordination with the managing editor and/or editor-in-chief.
2. Peer-Review Starts
After clearing the initial screening, the Editor is responsible for finding the initial set of reviewers, communicating with them, and processing their reviews to reach a decision (see point 8). Reviewers are sourced from JIN’s editorial board and a pool of external reviewers. The article is sent to two or more peer reviewers.
3. Duration
The Journal of Interactive Narrative aims to have all submissions complete their initial review within three months of receipt. Reviewers are initially given four weeks to complete their reviews.
4. Additional Reviewers
If a manuscript requires specialized expertise, additional domain experts will be included to ensure quality reviews, e.g., a medical expert for work applying interactive narratives in the area of health. This additional review does not substitute for one of the existing two peer reviewers.
5. Declaration of Conflict
Reviewers are required to declare possible conflicts before starting to review a work. Editors will review the declaration and can ask reviewers to recuse themselves. Failure to declare conflicts can result in reviewers being blacklisted and excluded from future collaboration with the journal.
6. Review Conduct
The following principles guide the review:
Double-Blind
JIN reviews are double-blind
Fair and Unbiased
JIN reviews are fair and unbiased. If editors detect signs of unfairness and/or bias, the review will be replaced upon consultation with the managing editor and/or editor-in-chief.
Adherence to COPE Guidelines
JIN reviews adhere to the principles of COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer-reviewers: https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
No AI for reviews
Reviewers must not use AI tools for reviews.
Sub Reviewers
If a reviewer wishes to use a colleague for a review, they must first email the editorial office for approval. The communication must include information about the colleague’s expertise and possible conflicts of interest.
7. Criteria for reviews
The following criteria provide guidelines for rating submissions:
Novelty: Is the research question addressed in the work original and well-defined? Do the results advance current knowledge?
Scope: Does the work fit the journal scope and the particular scope of a special issue?
Significance: Are the results interpreted appropriately? Are they significant? Are all conclusions justified and supported by the results? Are hypotheses carefully identified as such?
Quality: Is the article written appropriately? Are the data and analyses presented appropriately? Are the highest standards for presentation of the results used?
Scientific Soundness: Is the study correctly designed and technically sound? Are the analyses performed with the highest technical standards? Is the data robust enough to draw conclusions? Are the methods, tools, software, and reagents described with sufficient details to allow another researcher to reproduce the results? Is the raw data available and correct (where applicable)?
Interest to the Readers: Are the conclusions interesting for the journal’s readership? Will the paper attract a wide readership or be of interest only to a limited number of people? (Please see the Aims and Scope of the journal.)
Diversity: Does the work contribute to the representation of underrepresented groups?
Overall Merit: Is there an overall benefit to publishing this work? Does the work advance the current knowledge? Do the authors address an important long-standing question with smart experiments? Do the authors present a negative result of a valid scientific hypothesis?
English Level: Is the usage of the English language appropriate and understandable?
8. Decision
The primary purpose of peer review is to provide the Editor with the information needed to reach a fair, evidence-based decision that adheres to the journal’s editorial criteria. Based on the reviews, the Editor will make a decision. The following decision results are possible:
Accept without any changes (acceptance) means the journal will publish the article in its current form. However, most articles require revision before reaching this stage.
Accept with minor revisions (acceptance): the journal will publish the article once the author has made minor corrections as suggested by the reviewers and/or editors.
Accept after major revisions (conditional acceptance): the journal will publish the article if the authors make changes suggested by the reviewers and/or editors.
Revise and resubmit (conditional rejection): This paper cannot be accepted in its current form, but there is enough of an idea that it could be accepted once significant revisions are made. The journal will reconsider the article in another round of decision-making once the authors have made significant changes.
Reject (outright rejection): the journal will not publish or reconsider the article. To be eligible for submission to the journal again, the material must be completely rewritten.
9. Final Check
The managing editor and/or editor-in-chief will check reviews and editor decisions before sending them to authors.
10. Notification
The corresponding authors will be notified of the results via email by the managing editor and/or editor-in-chief.
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Open Access Diamond
In this model, there are no fees to process articles and contents can be accessed at no cost on the journal’s website. Diamond Open Access articles are licensed under Creative Commons Licenses (CC) (see the copyright notice below for details), which means they can be freely distributed and shared so that other people can build their work based on them.
Published in Collaboration with ETC Press
The Journal of Interactive is printed on-demand by ETC Press, an academic, open-source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Editorial Services provided by Brad King.
Copyright Notice
Journal of Interactive Narrative publications are covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Generic License. This means that you are free to share these works as long as you give appropriate credit, do not use them for commercial purposes, and do not create derivative works. Please note that images, videos, audio files, and interactive works featured in articles are owned by their respective copyright holders. They are not included under the Creative Commons license. Accessing or using these works does not grant you any rights to them, and you cannot assume any ownership or rights to commercially use or modify these works. The owners retain all rights to their content. For more details on the copyright rules applicable to authors contributing to the Journal of Interactive Narrative, you can access the full copyright agreement here.