Review Criteria

Manuscripts submitted to the Jahrbuch Musikpsychologie/Yearbook of Music Psychology (JBDGM) are initially screened by the Editor(s)-in-Chief (and sometimes an additional associate editor), to assess whether they match JBDGM’s profile and scope. The manuscript will also be checked by the editorial assistant(s) for formal aspects such as compliance with the submission guidelines. This includes ensuring that the manuscript is anonymized, that the manuscript template is used, and that the APA7 citation style is applied. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s profile can still be desk-rejected if they have serious formal deficits. However, they can be resubmitted. If the following criteria are not met, the manuscript will be desk-rejected:

I. Scope

The following criteria must be met:

• The manuscript must be a substantial empirical or theoretical contribution to the fields of music cognition, social psychology of music, music education, or musical acoustics.
• The manuscript must fulfill all formal requirements, including anonymization.

Furthermore, at least one of the following criteria must be met:

• The manuscript must contribute to JBDGM as a forum for innovation, questioning of dominant assumptions and theoretical perspectives, and critical debate.
• The manuscript must draw on other disciplinary perspectives (where relevant) to enrich theorizing in the psychology of music.
  
  

II. Theory

The following criteria must be met:

• The manuscript must consider the empirical, historical, psychological, and sociocultural context that shapes research questions and findings.
• The research must be well founded, as documented in a coherent, compelling, and critical review of theoretical and (where applicable) empirical literature that situates the research meaningfully in relevant contexts.
• The manuscript must explicitly state its theoretical position.
  
  

III. Methodology (for empirical manuscripts)

The following criteria must be met:

• The methods, sample(s), and analytical procedures must be appropriate in light of the research questions and thoroughly and transparently documented (see also our Open science criteria here). The research must be carried out carefully to ensure data quality and trustworthiness.
• The sample size must be appropriate and justified. This can be done through statistical power analysis for quantitative studies or guidelines for qualitative research.
• For quantitative papers reporting only a single study, the findings must come from a representative sample of the population or a population that is underrepresented in social or political psychological research.
• If quantitative studies were conducted with crowdsourcing (e.g., MTurk, Prolific, mo’web) or other convenience sampling methods that strongly limit the sample’s characteristics (e.g., student samples), the data quality issues must be addressed (e.g., attention and comprehension checks, bots, non-naivete of participants).

Furthermore, the following criteria must be met (ideally already in the first version submitted, but may be refined during revisions):

• The limitations of the sample must be discussed in detail, including ecological validity, generalizability, distribution of key variables for quantitative studies, and transferability for qualitative studies.

• The sample characteristics that are central to the research question must be included in the report. These should be included in order to contextualize and interpret the findings. This should include factors such as musical sophistication, nationality and/or immigration status, gender, social class, where the sample was recruited from, and how the sample was recruited.
  
  

IV. Presentation

The following criteria must be met (ideally already in the first version submitted, but may be refined during revisions):

• Is the manuscript written in a style that is accessible to a broad audience?
• Is the presentation clear and well-structured, and (where appropriate) is the use of tables and figures economical?

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After passing the first stage, manuscripts are assigned to two (sometimes more) reviewers. We aim to make a first decision within 6–8 weeks of submission, although we note that this is not always possible, and has become increasingly more difficult due to the increased workload of academics in the neoliberal university context.

 

Peer Review Process

Each submission to JBDGM is screened for relevance and timeliness before being sent out for peer review. Submissions deemed suitable for review will be sent to at least two peer reviewers from the Editorial Board. In addition, the Editor(s)-in-Chief may decide to send the manuscript to an appropriate external reviewer for further evaluation. This entire process always follows the principle of double-blind peer review. The Editor(s)-in-Chief will make a decision on the manuscript based on the reviews.

Authors may exclude a maximum of two reviewers whom they consider unsuitable. Editorials, Letters, Book Reviews, and Commentaries will be evaluated by the Editor(s)-in-Chief only and will be judged on their level of scholarship, reliability of the information provided, and interest to the scientific community. They express the opinion of the author(s) only. Peer reviews can be expected within 6–8 weeks of submission.