Review Process

Divergence Press maintains a peer review process that aims to be fair, open, and transparent, balancing quality control and rigour with an effort to make the review process as easy and streamlined as possible for the benefit of both authors and reviewers. The review process is designed to be sufficiently flexible to respond to the wide variety of approaches, practices, and formats supported by the journal’s online platform, including special attention to first-person accounts of artistic practice.

All submitted articles will be initially assessed for suitability for publication by a member of the CeReNeM Directorate with appropriate subject area expertise. Selected submissions will then be sent on for further review by an external reviewer from the Editorial Board, or, where necessary, other individuals with suitable expertise. As the content published by Divergence Press often focuses on individual creative practice, anonymisation of authors during the review process is often neither possible nor desirable; both authors and reviewers will accordingly be informed of each others’ identity. The purpose of the external review process will be to support and develop submitted work to achieve its optimum form prior to publication. In most cases, we aim to complete the review process within 4–6 weeks.

During the submission and review process, attention should be paid to the broad readership targeted by Divergence Press—our audience includes not only academics and specialist practitioners but also interested listeners and the broader contemporary music community.

Please refer to the COPE ethical guidelines for peer-review. Reviewers should clearly reference the section of the manuscript to which they are referring in their response. While identifying any deficiencies, clear suggestions to improve the quality of the manuscript should be provided.