1. Editorial Policy
Popular Music is an international multi-disciplinary journal covering all aspects of the subject - from the formation of social group identities through popular music, to the workings of the global music industry, to how particular pieces of music are put together. The journal includes all kinds of popular music, whether rap or rai, jazz or rock, from any historical era and any geographical location. Popular Music carries articles by scholars from a variety of disciplines and theoretical perspectives. Each issue contains substantial, authoritative and influential articles, topical pieces, and reviews of a wide range of books. Some issues are thematic. The editors also welcome polemical pieces for the ‘Middle Eight’ section of the journal.
For information about submitting your materials, please see here.
Typescripts must be double spaced with margins of at least 1". Notes, bibliographies, appendixes and displayed quotations must also be double spaced. The editors can only consider contributions written in English. Authors should not submit multiple or further articles if a decision is pending on an article already submitted.
Articles should not normally exceed 10,000 words but shorter papers are welcome. A cover page should be submitted with the article, containing the author's name and postal address, telephone number, and where possible, fax number and electronic mail address.
An abstract between 100 and 150 words must be submitted which gives an informative and precise account of the paper. Please note that papers will not be accepted for publication without an abstract.
Tables, graphs, diagrams and music examples must be supplied as separate files. Tables should be submitted as editable source files (usually Word) and figures, graphs and diagrams should be supplied in our preferred file formats, at final publication size or greater and at the correct resolution for the image type. Photographs must be well contrasted black and white glossy prints, ideally measuring 8" x 6". Please see our Journals artwork guide for our preferred file formats. Table headings and captions should be typed double spaced and be supplied at the end of the manuscript text, in the form ‘Table 1. The musical categories’. All figures must be cited in the main text of the article and have relevant copyright permissions cleared.
Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the journal. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Supplementary material is welcomed. Audio and video examples should be submitted in a standard file format and should not normally exceed 10MB. AAC files are preferred for audio examples, and MP4 files for video examples. All files should be clearly labelled.
Permissions. Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their typescript. Music and video files are normally made available for download but may be streamed where the permission agreement stipulates this. For information about seeking permission to use copyrighted material, please see here.
Authors of articles published in the journal sign a license to publish with Cambridge University Press (with certain rights reserved) and will receive a author publishing agreement for signature on acceptance of the paper.
2. Text preparation
Headings. The article title and subheadings should be typed using initial capitals only for the first word and any proper names.
Notes should be kept to a minimum and numbered consecutively through the text with raised numbers outside punctuation. Type the notes on separate sheets at the end of the article.
Bibliographical references. References must be arranged alphabetically under the author(s) name(s) and then in chronological order if several papers by the same author are cited. Surname should precede author’s initials: in respect of co-authors, the initials should precede the surname. The full title of the paper must be given together with the first and last page numbers. Book titles should follow the new style noting that the publisher as well as place of publication is now required.
Hebdige, D. 1982. 'Towards a cartography of taste 1935-1962', in Popular Culture: Past and Present, ed. B. Waites, T. Bennett and G. Martin (London), pp.194-218
Fairley, J. (ed.) 1977A. Chilean Song 1960-76 (Oxford) 1977B. 'La nueva canción chilena 1966-76', M.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford
Green A. 1965. 'Hillbilly music: source and symbol', Journal of American Folklore, 78, pp. 204-28
Discography. Contributors are encouraged to provide a Discography when appropriate. Use the style:
Joan Baez, 'Song title', Recently. Gold Castle Records, 171 004-1. 1987
Song, album and film titles. Note that song titles should be in single quotation marks, with the main words capitalised unless a foreign language convention dictates otherwise. The main words of album (and film) titles are also capitalised and the title italicised (or underlined for italic).
Endmatter. The various possible elements at the end of an article should be ordered as follows: Appendix(es), Notes, Acknowledgements, Bibliography (not 'References'), Discography.
Quotations. Use single quotation marks except for quotations within quotations which should have double. Quotations of more than c. forty words should be indented and typed double spaced without quotation marks. Type the source on the last line at the right-hand margin.
Lists. Any lists should be numbered with arabic numerals in parentheses. Type the numbers flush with the left-hand margin and align any turnovers with the first line of text:
(1) Text...
text continues...
(2) Text...
Style. English (not American) spelling should be used. Use -ise (not -ize) -yse (not -yze).
Foreign words in the text should be in italics (or underlined for italic) and the translation given in quotation marks in parentheses: gravure ('engraving'). Lyrics, etc. in a foreign language which are set off from the text should not be underlined. A translation should be given below, in quotation marks in parentheses.
Abbreviations. Note the following: ad hoc, cf., et al., etc., ibid. (referring to an immediately preceding citation), i.e. do not use op. cit.
Numerals under 100 should normally be spelt out in the running text. But note e.g. 'Audiences ranged from 20 to 200'. Spans of numbers should be elided: 27-8, 156-7, but 110-12, 117-18.
Dates should be given in the following style: 22 October 1990; 1960-70, the sixties, 1960s.
3. Publishing ethics
Authors should check Popular Music's Publishing ethics policies while preparing their materials.
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
ORCID
We require all corresponding authors to identify themselves using ORCID when submitting a manuscript to this journal. ORCID provides a unique identifier for researchers and, through integration with key research workflows such as manuscript submission and grant applications, provides the following benefits:
- Discoverability: ORCID increases the discoverability of your publications, by enabling smarter publisher systems and by helping readers to reliably find work that you have authored.
- Convenience: As more organisations use ORCID, providing your iD or using it to register for services will automatically link activities to your ORCID record, and will enable you to share this information with other systems and platforms you use, saving you re-keying information multiple times.
- Keeping track: Your ORCID record is a neat place to store and (if you choose) share validated information about your research activities and affiliations.
See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
If you don’t already have an iD, you will need to create one if you decide to submit a manuscript to this journal. You can register for one directly from your user account on ScholarOne, or alternatively via https://ORCID.org/register.
If you already have an iD, please use this when submitting your manuscript, either by linking it to your ScholarOne account, or by supplying it during submission using the "Associate your existing ORCID iD" button.
ORCIDs can also be used if authors wish to communicate to readers up-to-date information about how they wish to be addressed or referred to (for example, they wish to include pronouns, additional titles, honorifics, name variations, etc.) alongside their published articles. We encourage authors to make use of the ORCID profile’s “Published Name” field for this purpose. This is entirely optional for authors who wish to communicate such information in connection with their article. Please note that this method is not currently recommended for author name changes: see Cambridge’s author name change policy if you want to change your name on an already published article. See our ORCID FAQs for more information.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary material. Supplementary material will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary material may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please see our general guidance on supplementary materials for further information.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.