Editorial Principles

Open access

MusAu is committed to the declaration of the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) which defines open access as follows:

By „open access“ to peer-reviewed research literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.reference

All content of MusAu is licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 International License. MusAu articles and book reviews are accessible in HTML and downloadable PDF formats.

Ethical standards

We intend to ensure the highest ethical and professional standards. MusAu therefore adheres to the guidelines published by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). In particular, the following practices are not accepted:

  • Misrepresentation, i.e., fabrication or falsification of data.
  • Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism (text recycling) of the author's own work in whole or in part. Duplication of data that has previously been published in another language than English is not necessarily considered redundant, but should be clearly indicated.
  • Misappropriation of other peoples' work.
  • Copyright infringement.

 Upon manuscript submission, all authors confirm...

  • that the article or its contents have not been submitted simultaneously to another journal,
  • that the article has not been accepted for publication or published before,
  • that the article's publication under a CC-BY license has been approved by all co-authors and all copyright owners that may be concerned by the publication.

Peer review policy

MusAu adheres to a double-blind reviewing policy. The identities (and affiliations) of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other. Each stand-alone article is reviewed by at least two referees and as rapidly as possible, usually within 6–8 weeks from online submission. Reviewers are asked to adhere to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. For a detailed description of the peer review process, regarding both stand-alone articles and special issues, go to the page Peer Review Procedure.

Article types

MusAu features (peer-reviewed) research articles and media reviews. Furthermore, MusAu welcomes the organization of topical special issues. In order to stimulate scholarly discourses, MusAu also welcomes discussion papers aimed at opening a debate.

Handling of media types

MusAu makes use of manifold technological possibilities. Authors have the opportunity to attach further material to their articles. They are welcome to provide not only pictures, audio, or video files, but also verifiable primary material and scientific data. Since the internet in the 21st century hardly has any constraints regarding either the type or the amount of data, we do not want to set any limits. Rather, we want to create scope for potential innovations in scholarly publishing. For instance, authors are welcome to attach a downloadable database file, a composer’s catalogue of works, or even the full score of a newly discovered composition, possibly accompanied by a legal MP3 recording and facsimiles of the original manuscript. Attachments to an article are provided in common formats, such as PDF, JPG, GIF, MP3, MUS, SIB, or MusicXML.