About the Journal

Mandate

Inscriptions are carved into rocks, drawn on paper, embedded in the senses of spectators.

Inscriptions present themselves as invitations to make meaning.

Inscriptions are scribbled into a medium — when the script is made manifest, the medium changes.

In art, Inscriptions are what artists do to their unformed clay, blank canvas, unwritten scrolls. They appeal to our ability to make sense, they entice us to experience the aesthetic, they can transport us beyond ourselves to the domain of the sublime and transcendental. When Inscriptions are decoded, the scribe is no longer present: only the artwork as cipher remains.

Inscriptions appeal to our understanding of the craftsman as simply writing down words that are given to him. Bartleby the Scrivener famously would like not to make any further Inscriptions. His elegant negation comes at a heavy cost: in the end Bartleby is without work, domicile and — we should speculate — meaning. For what is the sense in which a scrivener can continue to be a scrivener when he no longer inscribes?

We are thrown into our acts of Inscriptions. When writing begins the script gains a life of its own, and when our Inscriptions are committed to a community, we experience a loss of meaning: it is as if our child has achieved a life of its own, making its own way in the world.

Inscriptions are wounds carved into our memory. They are part of our selves.

Scope

Inscriptions is an international, interdisciplinary double-blind peer-reviewed journal that publishes contemporary thinking on art, philosophy, and psycho-analysis. Its media are material, psychic, and imaginary, its authors are scholars and artists, and its form is open-source internet publishing. We welcome all kinds of approaches that seek to shed light on contemporary and abiding topics in the domains of art, philosophy, and psycho-analysis.

Section policies

Proposals

Authors are encouraged to submit proposals of up to 150 words that will receive an indicative recommendation from the issue editor/editor-in-chief. Following this preliminary feedback authors may then submit a full-length single-file manuscript for review. Full-length essays should be submitted on the same submission ID as the initial proposal. Instructions on how to do this are provided on the front page of our web platform.

Essays

Inscriptions publishes academic essays, commentaries, and book reviews. We are looking for academic and scholarly essays that are well structured, have a convincing argument and form, follow academic convention, and are appropriately sourced. Generally, academic essays should be 3,000 to 4,500 words. Inscriptions adheres to the Chicago Manual of Style (footnotes and bibliography) and our . Note that we will consider contributions that are not fully in conformity with these requirements, as long as we are convinced there is good reason to go beyond convention in each particular case. The author may be asked to provide further grounds for not adhering to academic convention during the review process.

Creative criticism: Under the rubric of Creative criticism we solicit submissions under a broad ambit; we seek writers who are reflecting explicitly on their methods, practices, positionings, etc., as academic writers and/or creative practitioners. We provide space for autoethnographic explorations; lyrical, personal essays; creative non-fiction approaches; imagined dialogues; experimental oddities in which form charts “thinking in/as writing” (and vice versa); collaborative conversations and “inter-views”; interdisciplinary detournements; and even multimodal, hyperlinked, digital innovations.

Commentaries and book reviews

We seek shorter commentaries and book reviews that have the quality we associate with our mandate and that address the theme of the issue. These texts should be up to 1,500 words, and written in clear, concise language.

Review policy

Peer-review

Inscriptions practices double-blind reviews for academic papers. The review process is coordinated by the issue editor/editor-in-chief, who selects reviewers not affiliated with the same institution as the author. That the review process is double-blind means that authors and reviewers do not know of each other. Double-blind submissions are subject to two external reviews. Additionally, reviewers may require a resubmission to be reviewed by themselves, or by a member of the editorial board/editor-in-chief.

Editorial review

Commentaries and reviews are subject to a simplified, open editorial review by the issue editor or whoever she or he assigns the task.

Default timing

Inscriptions aim to keep the following timeframes:

  • Indicative assessment of proposals: 2 weeks
  • Peer review of full manuscripts: 12 weeks

Publication ethics

Inscriptions follows established rules of conduct in matters of publication and authorship and aims to follow the COPE’s Code of Conduct. In the case of misconduct on the author’s part such as plagiarism, falsification of information, or double publication, the editorial board will call for explanation and then undertake appropriate steps or seek advice on particular issues from the academic community. This may eventually include notification of authorities at the author’s institution, the withdrawal of the article in question, and the exclusion of any further submissions of the same author from being processed by the journal.

Authorship

Authorship credit should be based on substantial contributions, drafting and/or revising the manuscript for important intellectual content, and final approval of the version to be published. Inscriptions is vigilant to avoid ghostwriters and guest authors. “Ghostwriting” refers to a case when a person who made substantial contributions to a publication is not credited as an author or, in the case of purely technical support insufficient for authorship, the person is not acknowledged in a publication. “Guest authorship” is the opposite situation, when a person appears in the publication as an author despite insignificant contribution or even absence from the writing.

Notice of substantial contribution

For articles with more than one author a notice on authors’ contribution is required. The notice should tersely state what each author has contributed to the article.

Competing interests

A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his or her actions. Such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties. These range from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence academic judgment. Competing interests may exist regardless of whether an individual is aware of it. Financial relationships, such as employment, consultancies, honoraria, and paid expert opinions are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the ones most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and scholarship itself. However, conflicts may occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and political and intellectual passion. In the case of conflicting interests exists, it is obligatory to declare it for each author (in the Comments for the Editor field, Step 1 of the submission process) and reviewer (review Step 1).

Critiques and corrections

Inscriptions welcomes post-publication debate. In our Commentary section, we accept texts, including critiques, that discuss our previously published articles. To request corrections, revisions, or retractions please contact our Editor directly by e-mail. Commentaries and critiques should be reasonable and supported by relevant documentation, and not contain libelous or defamatory content. Inscriptions will consider such texts within the timeline of our publication cycle. After considering the critique the editors may request that the original authors of the critiqued article write a reply. The critique and response to it may be subject to peer review. In cases where a critique requests an amendment to or retraction of a published article this will be subject to an editorial decision grounded in the critique, the documentation at hand, and the response from the original author or authors.

Retractions

Inscriptions may decide to retract a publication when it centrally relies on an error, fabrication, or falsification, it constitutes plagiarism, it has in parts or in full been published elsewhere without proper attribution, disclosure to the editor, or without permission to republish, it contains unauthorised material, such as sources that are not properly attributed, copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (such as libel or privacy), the essay has been prepared in an unethical way, it becomes apparent that the peer-review process was manipulated or compromised, or when the author or authors have failed to disclose a major conflict of interest that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers. Retractions will be published without delay, linked clearly to the article in question, and include a notice of who it is that is conducting the retraction, as well as the reasons for the retraction.

Governance

Inscriptions is governed by an Editorial Board, whose members are appointed by the publisher in consultation with an extended Advisory Panel, which serves to provide the journal with scholastic direction, advice on strategic decisions, and so to connect the publisher, Tankebanen forlag, and the journals’ Editorial Board with the wider scholarly community. The Advisory Panel consists of 10-20 experts in fields relevant to the journal and/or the publisher. The Editor-in-Chief invites scholars to sit on the panel.

More information about the publisher and the governance of the journal can be obtained by writing an e-mail to the publisher.

Open Access policy

Access to content in this journal remains open on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Work published by Inscriptions is Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License unless otherwise indicated.

Indexing

Inscriptions and articles therein are indexed in DOAJ, the Directory of Open Access Journals, ERIH Plus, the academic journal index for the Humanities and Social Sciences Society in Europe, the Publication Forum (Julkaisufoorumi) of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, and WorldCat.

Publication frequency

Inscriptions is published twice a year, in January (themed issue) and July (open issue).

Archiving

Inscriptions is archived by Archive.org, as well as by the National Library (Nasjonalbiblioteket) in Norway. Their electronic record of Inscriptions can be retrieved through Oria.no.

Print copies of each issue are also stored in the National Library repository.

Author self-archiving

Authors are permitted to post the publisher’s version of their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its initial publication in this journal.

Verify the policy on Sherpa Romeo.

Article processing charges

Inscriptions introduced Article processing charges (APCs) from our Volume 6 (2023) to maintain our current activities, to introduce new, important services of value to our authors, readers, and the wider community, including Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and to ensure the long-term sustainability of our journal. Authors are charged €120 / €80 (students and the unwaged) payable to Tankebanen forlag. Authors can pay with a credit or debit card. or with a variety of other payment services, on our payment page. Our full APC policy is available in this document.

Inscriptions exists in printed, soft-bound form. To support Inscriptions purchase single back-copies from our distributor. For more information see our order page.

Version control

The online version of Inscriptions is considered to be the publication of record.

Publisher

It is the editor-in-chief who acts as publisher and is legally responsible for all editorial content. In the last instance, all publishing decisions lie with the editor-in-chief. Inscriptions is published by Tankebanen forlag. Our postal address is

Tankebanen forlag dr Torgeir Fjeld
Kong Haakons plass 32
N-1532 Moss, Norway

We can also be reached by email: post@tankebanen.no.