iMerc Latest News: Fwd: New Open Access Journal: Music & Science

"SAGE Publishing announces 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.  The journal's 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. Music exists in complex and diverse forms  across historical time and within and across different societies;  music is indisputably a cultural phenomenon but our musicality is  grounded in our biology; we need to draw on the sciences to address  music's biological materiality, but we must also be attuned to the  distinctive functional and discursive properties that are embodied in  different cultures' musics.  Hence the need for this journal, which is intended to provide a  peer-reviewed platform for researchers to communicate important new  insights in music research from the full spectrum of relevant  scientific and scholarly perspectives to the widest possible audience.  It aims to publish research across the field of music and science as  broadly conceived, encompassing studies in cognition, neuroscience and  psychoacoustics; development and education; philosophy and aesthetics;  ethnomusicology and music sociology; archaeology and ethology; music  theory, analysis and historical studies; performance science and  practice-based research; computational approaches and studies in  digital culture; acoustics, sound studies, and soundscape studies;  music therapy; and clinical implications and approaches, including  psychoneuroimmunology, health and well-being. Its goal is 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 domains. In short, it aims to publish  research from any discipline or perspective that can illuminate—or  that can be illuminated by—scientific approaches to understanding  music. "