About the Journal

Focus and Scope

MMD – Museum, Materials and Discussions. Journal of Museum Studies is an open-access academic journal in English, French, and Italian, devoted to museology, museography, Cultural Heritage as well as research on audiences and fruition with an international outlook, addressing both the life of museum institutions and collections, and the latest challenges they face in their broad cultural and social dimension. 

MMD – Museum, Materials and Discussions. Journal of Museum Studies aims at promoting and enhancing the collaboration among researchers from the field of humanities, social sciences, architecture, and Digital Humanities through their complementary perspectives. It is addressed to scholars, students and professionals working in these specific disciplinary fields, but also readers interested in the current evolution of the debate on issues, methods and tools related to the material and immaterial aspects of museology in its relation to history and contemporaneity, and in connection with the progress of public welfare.

Section Policies

Dossier

Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

Each issue revolves around a given topic or methodological issue; each dossier has its own guest editor chosen by the Direction and the Scientific Board, which guarantees its scientific and thematic coherence from an international call.

Sections

Sections are organized by the Editorial Board in cooperation with the editors of individual issues and/or the editorship. Each section is developed from a case study/the contribution of a specialist in the field/an interview, etc., introduced by the editorial manager. They may include, for instance, individual or collective reports written by museum professionals on Italian and international cases, but also critical analyses related to visits to relevant exhibitions or archaeological and landscape sites.

Privileged themes in the sections:

Experience and Publics Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

Digital Technologies for Cultural Heritage Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

Architecture and Displays Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

Behind the scenes Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

Materials Submissions welcome / Peer Reviewed

This last section may comprise free peer-reviewed contributions dedicated to museums, collections and exhibitions and is intended to create space for works by young scholars.

Peer Review Process

All published articles are subjected to the double-blind peer-review process. Upon receiving an article, the Editorial team of the Journal evaluates its suitability for review. As part of the initial quality assessment, each article will undergo plagiarism detection through iThenticate. After this formal assessment, if deemed suitable, the submitted article is anonymously sent to two external reviewers selected on the basis of their expertise in the subject under consideration.

Publication Frequency

The journal publishes two issues per year.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights.

Publication Fees

The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Code of Conduct

Duties for the Editorial Team

Editorial team takes all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material published in MMD - Museum, Materials and Discussions. Journal of Museum Studies and has a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers. The decision of Editorial team as to accept or reject a paper for publication in the journal is based on subject relevance and originality and is guided by the review of suitably qualified reviewers. Editorial team will ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions. Editorial team strives to ensure that peer review at the journal is fair and unbiased. Editorial team evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. Editorial team’s decision may be constrained by such legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Editorial team communicates reviewers’ suggestions to the authors and provides editorial guidance and instructions regarding the use of editorial guidelines. Editorial team adopts a single blind peer-review protocol to ensure that material submitted to the Journal remains confidential while under review. Confidentiality of individual information obtained in the course of research or professional interactions is guaranteed. Editorial team strives to ensure that articles are published in open access and freely available for all the interested readers. Permanent identification with DOI guarantees the monitoring and preservation of articles over time.

Duties for the Guest Editors

Guest editors are expected to:

  • Select the articles to be published in the Dossier, in agreement with the Direction and Scientific Board of the journal;

  • Keep contact with the authors during all phases of editing and reviewing the essays;

  • Select reviewers for the peer review of the essays, in agreement with the Scientific Board of the journal;

  • Contact reviewers and submit the essays for peer review;

  • Check the compliance of the essays with the policy of the journal, following the changes made by the authors after the peer review;

  • Collect signed releases from the authors of the essays;

  • Delivery releases to the Direction and Scientific Board of the journal.

If deemed appropriate, guest editors may also enlist the assistance of trusted editorial collaborators, related to the specific theme of the journal issue, whose contribution will be indicated in the colophon of the journal issue in question.

Duties for Authors

Authors are responsible for the articles they submit: they must assure the originality of their works, being aware of the consequences of misconduct. Authors should always acknowledge their sources and provide relevant citation details for all publications that have influenced their work. Authors are asked to follow the Author’s Guidelines published by the Journal, therefore ensuring accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing. Once the reviewers' feedback is received, authors are required to revise or complete the manuscript based on the received instructions and within the deadlines indicated by Editorial team. After this step, the text is considered finalized, and the drafts will undergo a purely editorial review by Editorial team.

Duties for Reviewers

Reviewers are provided guidance on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence. Reviewers are required to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission. Reviewers are encouraged to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publications and plagiarism. They will alert Editorial team regarding intellectual property issues and plagiarism and work to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions. Reviewers should help identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors, and analyze the completeness, clarity, and originality of the revised manuscript.

Handling of errors and misconducts

The guest editor for individual issues and editors will promptly act in case of errors and misconducts, both proven and alleged. In case such as errors in articles or in the publication process, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, appropriate steps will be taken, following the recommendations, guidelines and checklists from COPE. These includes the publication of an erratum (errors from the publication process), corrigendum (errors from the author(s)) or, in the most severe cases, the retraction of the affected work.

Data Policy

When relevant, authors are encouraged to follow Open Science and FAIR principles by publishing the research data associated to their articles in trusted data repositories, according to the international best practices and data management guidelines.

Detailed information is reported in the AlmaDL Journals Data Policy.

Authors who are affiliated to the University of Bologna can publish their data in AMSActa, the institutional research data repository.

Archiving Policy

The University of Bologna has an archival arrangement with the National Central Libraries of Florence and Rome within the national project Magazzini Digitali.
http://www.depositolegale.it/editori-aderenti/

Publisher

Dipartimento delle Arti – DAR
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
via Barberia 4
40123 - Bologna (Italy)