Author Guidelines

Aesthetic Investigations is an international, peer-reviewed journal publishing high-quality, original research. Please see the journal's About Page for information about its focus and peer-review policy.

Aesthetic Investigations accepts the following types of articles

  • Original Articles
  • Fresh Contributions
  • Arts & Artists Discussions
  • Reviews*

* Please note that reviews are typically commissioned by the editors. However, if you have a book, exhibition, or artwork that you’d like to review, please contact the editors. Do not send a book review or commentary without prior editorial approval.  

Aesthetic Investigations considers all manuscripts on the condition that:

  • The manuscript is your own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including your own previously published work.
  • The manuscript has been submitted only to Aesthetic Investigations; it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere.
  • The manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libelous, fraudulent, or illegal.

Submissions should be made online via our website. Please upload all of your files following the instructions given on the screen. Authors will need to register as a user to submit a manuscript. 

Submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:

Word count

  • Original articles: max. 7,500 words
  • Fresh contribtion: max. 3,500 words
  • Arts & Artists: max. 3,000 words
  • Review: max. 2,000 words

Please note that word counts include footnotes but do not include reference lists.

Abstracts

Please provide an abstract of 100-150 words. 

Keywords

Please provide 4 to 6 keywords which can be used for indexing purposes. 

Title Page

A separate title page must accompany a submission. Please make sure your title page contains the following information.

  • Title
  • The name(s) of the author(s)
  • The affiliation(s) of the author(s), i.e. institution, (department), city, (state), country
  • The e-mail address of the corresponding author
  • If available, the 16-digit ORCID of the author(s)
  • Acknowledgements

General style guidelines

  • Submissions must be written in clear, grammatical English. Aesthetic Investigations cannot provide any assistance with translating or language editing. Submissions in poor English will be rejected.
  • Quotation marks should be single quotes, except for quotes within quotes (which should be double).
  • Quotations longer than thirty words should be separated from the main text, indented, single-spaced and should have no quotation marks.
  • In-line quotations should include only punctuation that is included in the quoted source.
  • In general, use the serial comma (unless using it creates ambiguity).
  • Diacritics (accents) should be added to all names or words where appropriate.

Template and formatting

  • Submit the manuscript in Open Document (.odt), Markdown (.md), LaTex (.tex), Microsoft Word (.doc/.docx), or PDF format.
  • Use a normal, plain font (e.g., 10-point Times Roman).
  • Use italics for emphasis.
  • Use the automatic page numbering function to number the pages.
  • Do not use field functions.
  • Use tab stops or other commands for indents, not the space bar.
  • Use the table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables.
  • Do not use different colours for headings, block quotes, or any other part of the text.
  • Foreign-language quotations in both text and notes should be translated into English, unless the significance of the quotation will be lost. The original text may be included in a note if it is unpublished, difficult to access, or of special relevance to the article. Square brackets in quoted material indicate author's interpolation.

Headings

Please use no more than three levels of displayed headings.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations should be defined at first mention and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, please do not use endnotes. 

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section on the title page. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.

Illustrations

  • Illustrations and pictures must be sent in separately and not be placed inside the text. Clearly indicate within the text the appropriate place of the illustrations and pictures.
  • Illustrations and pictures must be high-resolution (at least 300 ppi [300 dpi] at printable size) JPEG or TIFF files to be usable.
  • It is the author's responsibility to obtain permissions and to pay all reproduction fees.
  • Please begin acquiring images and clearing rights as soon as your article has been accepted. Delays affect the print schedules, and images will be dropped if permissions are not secured on time.

Reference style

Please use Chicago Manual Style (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html).

In-text citations

(Nussbaum 2013, 55)

(Colombetti and Roberts 2015, 1244)

(Deonna et al. 2012, 60) 

Book Citations

Nussbaum, Martha C. 2013. Political Emotions. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Deonna, Julien A., Julien A. Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, and Fabrice Teroni. 2012. In Defense of Shame: The Faces of an Emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Journal article citations

Robinson, Jenefer. 1995. "Startle." The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 2 (1995): 53-74.

Colombetti, Giovanna, and Tom Roberts. 2015. "Extending the extended mind: the case for extended affectivity." Philosophical Studies 172, no. 5 : 1243-1263.

Double-blind peer review

This journal follows a double-blind reviewing procedure. This means the author will remain anonymous to the reviewers throughout peer review. It is the responsibility of the author to anonymize the manuscript and any associated materials.

  • Author names, affiliations and any other potentially identifying information should be removed from the manuscript text and any accompanying files (such as images or supplementary material).
  • A separate Title Page should be submitted, containing title, author names, affiliations, and the contact information of the corresponding author. Any acknowledgements, disclosures, or funding information should also be included on this page.
  • Authors should avoid citing their own work in a way that could reveal their identity.

Ethics guidelines

  • Authorship: please only submit work that you or your co-authors have written and that is not already published in substantially similar form elsewhere.
  • Plagiarism: when citing other people’s work, please make that clear with quotation marks, proper referencing to the work (author, year, page number). Also, if you are using previously published figures and tables, make sure that you have already obtained the right to do so from the original copyright holder.
  • Data fabrication/falsification: please make sure all data are accurate and are representative of your work. 
  • Competing interests: please notify editors of any competing interests, which might affect your interpretation of results. 

Before you submit, make sure you have:

  • Read the journal’s instructions for authors, and checked and followed any instructions regarding data sets, ethics approval, or statements.
  • Named all authors on the paper, and the online submission form.
  • Referenced all material in the text clearly and thoroughly.
  • Carefully checked data and included any supplemental data required by the journal.
  • Declared any relevant competing interests to the journal.
  • Obtained (written) permission to reuse any figures, tables, data sets, etc.
  • Only submitted the paper to one journal at a time.

Finally, notify all the co-authors once you have submitted the paper.