SAGE Publishing launches Music & Science journal with the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research

London, UK (June 08, 2017). SAGE Publishing today announced a partnership with the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE) to launch a new open access journal Music & Science, providing a platform for engaged debate and insight into music research from a wide range of scientific perspectives.

Scientific research is integral to gaining a greater understanding of how music is a cultural phenomenon and is yet grounded in our biology. Interdisciplinary in scope and focus, the journal will publish research from a wide cross-section of disciplines and perspectives that will illuminate—or that can be illuminated by—scientific approaches to understanding music, from cognition, neuroscience and psychoacoustics to computational approaches and studies in digital culture. The first papers are due to be published in September 2017.

Editor-in-Chief Ian Cross remarked:

“Our point of departure is the idea that science—or, more accurately, the sciences—can help us to make sense of music and its significance in our lives. This journal is a much needed space for scholars to communicate new insights in music and science research, helping to broaden our understanding of how music, culture and biology are linked. Together with SAGE Publishing and SEMPRE, I am excited to bring this new forum into the community, and look forward to debating and sharing new ideas with a broad and international audience base.”

Graham Welch, SEMPRE President, commented:

“Two years in the planning, the new online, open-access journal Music & Science has been developed in recognition of the ever-expanding fields of research related to music. Over the past five years, our analysis shows that there has been wide disciplinary development across the sciences and music and consequently we would like to celebrate and support these advances by bringing such research under one multi-science publication umbrella in order to nurture new knowledge, new audiences and greater cross- and interdisciplinary recognition. Such a journal is intended to expand our horizons whilst complementing SEMPRE's existing journals.”

Miranda Nunhofer, Executive Director, Humanities and Social Science Journals, SAGE Publishing, further commented:

“Music & Science is an exciting new open access venue for the publication of new insights across the expanding research field of music and science. We are delighted to be working with SEMPRE to facilitate the publication and dissemination of research in this innovative and interdisciplinary area of study. The journal is an exciting new addition to our expanding open access programme at SAGE, and to our portfolio of music journals.”

Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 1,000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. www.sagepublishing.com

Music & Science journal aims to be truly interdisciplinary: to give researchers from the many different scientific traditions that have been applied to music the opportunity to communicate with—and to learn from—each other, while encouraging dialogue with music scholars whose work is situated in artistic, performative or humanistic traditions.

The Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE) was founded in 1972, growing out of the Reading Conferences on Research in Music Education that were started in 1966 by Arnold Bentley. Originally known as the 'Society for Research in Psychology of Music and Music Education' ('SRPMME'), SEMPRE remains to this day the only society which embraces research in both music education and music psychology, providing an international forum to encourage the exchange of ideas and to disseminate research findings. http://www.SEMPRE.org.uk/