About the Journal

Memory, Mind & Media (MMM) is an agenda-setting interdisciplinary Gold Open Access journal that explores the impact of media and technology on human, social and cultural remembering and forgetting.

A great deal of established and emergent work in the broad field of memory tends to reflect and reinforce a division between interest in and study of the individual and cognition – roughly ‘memory in the head’ – and interest in and study of social and cultural domains – roughly ‘memory in the wild’. Yet media works not just within, but across these domains, extending and strengthening individual, group and societal memory.

This agenda-setting journal fosters high quality, interdisciplinary conversations combining cognitive, social and cultural approaches to the study of memory and forgetting in the digital era.

The pervasiveness, complexity and immediacy of digital media, communication networks and archives are transforming what memory is and what memory does, changing the relationship between memory in the head and memory in the wild.

This journal offers a new home for a wide variety of scholars working on these questions, within and across disciplines from: history, philosophy, media studies, cultural studies, law, literature, anthropology, political science, sociology, neuroscience, psychology, cognitive and computational science and elsewhere.

A central challenge for our fields is the lack of shared understanding of basic concepts and assumptions that our different disciplines routinely use and make about memory (and media). We aim to find and adopt common, transformative language, questions and approaches to memory. To this end, Memory, Mind & Media prioritises and champions jargon-free discussions and dialogue within disciplines but especially across disciplines. The journal also will invite innovative types of articles and contributions alongside traditional research papers to encourage broad engagement and debate.

Launched in 2022, the journal’s exciting inaugural manifesto collection consists of agenda-setting pieces from world-leading and emergent scholars that map the terrain, opportunities and challenges for the journal.

Read more about our agenda and plans for content here.

Areas of interest

The content of Memory, Mind & Media’s inaugural collection will assist interested authors in judging the fit of their work within the scope of the journal. However, as further guidance, our overriding ambition is to illuminate the role of technologies and media of the day in reshaping individual, social and cultural remembering and forgetting, and in remaking their interrelations.

The journal will not only capture the field/s of memory, mind and media as they grow and intersect but set their agenda, as suggested by the following (not exhaustive) potential areas of interest:

• Forgetting: blockage (of mind and culture), finitude, overload, glut, distraction, stigma, closure, remorse, digital decay, degradation, disconnection, erasure, bit-rot, obsolescence, censorship, legislation, rights (‘right to be forgotten and erasure’).
• AI, algorithms: weaponisation of archives, recommendation algorithms, future shaping, ownership and uses of personal data (creating an ‘unremembered’ self).
• Sensor revolution in objects, clothing and materials; implant revolution in people.
• Art: including aesthetic, critical, ethical, experimental and multimedia interventions in memory and history.
• Relationship of media/memory to the future – utopian and dystopian predictions; past-present-future trajectories.
• Mapping shifting paradigms of human, social and computational approaches to media and memory: overlaps, gaps, contestations, agendas, debates.
• Memory distortions, false memory, belief, trust, post-truth/post-trust media, fakes, deep fakes.
• Memory experts and expert discourses.
• Clinical disorders and public representations, sharing and knowledge.
• Reliance vs. dependency: active remembering, visibility and self/acknowledgment of agents/actors of memory.
• Generations of memory: practices and effects of media associated with particular stages of individual, group and society development (e.g. especially media and technologies seen as formative – ‘memory bump’ years etc.).
• Public mediations of memory: public intellectuals, sceptics, gurus; news, journalism.
• Extremism and extreme pasts, the radicalisation of memory, conspiracy theories.
• Autobiographical memory and digital practices, networks, archives.
• Nostalgia, melancholia, reminiscence.
• Media archaeology: the historical and material genealogy of the digital in previous media platforms and power/knowledge apparatuses.
• Ethics and morality.
• Privacy and secrecy: surveillance, personal data and identity, digital traces.
• Bifurcation of and relationship between media/memory cultures, as formalised, institutionalised, regimented (including online); yet also emergent, confrontational, and fragmented.
• War and conflict: memorialisation, witnessing, trauma, unforgetting, legitimation, ‘learning lessons’, memory booms. The theme of war is tightly intertwined with how the past (especially through media) is remembered, forgotten, commemorated, memorialised, exalted, denied, repressed, twisted and weaponised (and one which has shaped the canon of the wider study of memory).
• Archives: in digital and networked archives, the amateur and the professional, the illicit and the sanctioned, the personal and the official, and the past and the present, all seem to inhabit the same connected and chaotic space; platforms as archives, records, ownership, access and control: weaponisation, testimony, evidence, confession, justice, organisational memory, policy, official and amateur histories, law, forensics.
• Video gaming, short term and long term memory.
• Museums, exhibitions, curatorial strategies, digital publics.
• Media ecologies and infrastructures: shifting intersecting social, cultural and technological change to everyday (and often local/national) media environments.
• Imaginaries/formations of memory: mind, body, group, individual, social, cultural, publics, multitude.
• Images: actual and presumed influence of visual content across types and scales of remembering, icons, flashbulb memories, images as beyond human vision.
• Digital afterlife: management, digital assets, ownership, law.

Article Form and Types

Memory, Mind & Media will give priority to submissions that are interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary, experimental and agenda-setting; work that pushes the boundaries of existing knowledge and methods about memory. We encourage authors to signal clearly how their submissions achieve these ambitions. We also will insist on jargon free, plain English pieces to ensure an accessible forum for cutting edge scholarship on the role of technologies and media in shaping and reshaping individual, social and cultural remembering and forgetting.

Specifically, as part of the submission and review process, authors will be asked to provide an easy-to-read text abstract summarising the purpose and insights of their paper for a broad audience (see ‘Jargon free text abstracts’ below).

Memory, Mind & Media article types and content formats will be broad ranging and flexible to encourage exploration of our subject matter and to ensure that a multitude of voices are heard rather than a single disciplinary perspective. Alongside traditional, short and long research articles, article types can include, for instance, discussion pieces from different disciplinary perspectives (e.g., on a high-profile case study); sets of comments on a precis of a recently published memory, mind and/or media book (rather than formal book reviews); an interview or conversation on a contested concept or method between representatives of different disciplines; or the presentation and analysis of images and artwork relevant to our themes.

Current article types and their characteristics are described below but will evolve over time. Authors may contact the Editors to discuss word counts for submissions if needed. Prospective authors may contact the Editors at any time to propose a submission type not yet listed:

Article type	Description	Word count	Review process
Research articles	Standard research articles report on: (1) a significant body of original, unpublished theoretical, conceptual and/or methodological analysis and innovation; or (2) a significant sequence of original, unpublished experimental, field, ethnographic or other studies. Standard research articles can be written consistent with the general conventions of theoretical versus experimental articles in relevant home disciplines but mindful of jargon free readability for a cross-disciplinary audience. For instance, experimental articles should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Materials and Methods, (d) Results, (e) Discussion, (f) References and end matter. Other articles should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Subsections relevant for the subject, (d) Discussion or conclusion, (e) References and end matter. Long research articles must contain significantly greater theoretical, conceptual, methodological and/or empirical content than short research articles and not just be longer.	Up to 8,000 words excluding references	Double blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Short research articles	Short research articles report on: (1) original, unpublished theoretical, conceptual and/or methodological analysis and innovation; or (2) original, unpublished experimental, field, ethnographic or other studies. As above, short research articles can be written consistent with the general conventions of theoretical versus experimental articles in relevant home disciplines but mindful of jargon free readability for a cross-disciplinary audience.	Up to 4,000 words excluding references	Expedited, double blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Field reviews	Field reviews offer comprehensive overviews of developments, controversies, gaps in knowledge and potential directions of topics within or across disciplines. They are not simply summaries of the literature but offer fresh perspectives likely to advance our field/s in important ways. Field reviews should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Subsections relevant for the subject, (d) Discussion or conclusion, (e) References and end matter.	Up to 8,000 words excluding references	Double blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Case studies	Case studies report and discuss valuable, high-profile examples of memory, mind and media phenomena such as the implications of a particular public event. For case studies we prefer submissions from multiple sets of authors discussing the same case, book, issue or idea from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Case studies should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Case description, (d) Subsections relevant for the subject, (e) Discussion or conclusion, (f) References and end matter.	Up to 4,000 words excluding references (for each set of authors)	Expedited, double blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Commentaries	Commentaries offer and debate views on recently published memory, mind and/or media books or other scholarship. For commentaries we prefer submissions from multiple sets of authors discussing the same case, book, issue or idea from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Commentaries should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Subsections relevant for the subject, (d) Discussion or conclusion, (e) References and end matter.	Up to 4,000 words excluding references (for each set of authors)	Expedited, single blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Dialogues	Dialogues share less formal, more interactive contributions from notable memory, mind and media scholars and practitioners. Dialogues may include: (1) interviews of influential people from our fields (conducted by the Editors or others); or (2) transcripts of and commentary on conversations between notable scholars and practitioners from different disciplines sharing viewpoints or debating memory, mind and media concepts. Dialogues should follow the format: (a) Abstract, (b) Introduction, (c) Subsections relevant for the subject, (d) Discussion or conclusion, (e) References and end matter.	Up to 4,000 words excluding references	Expedited, single blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Editorials	Editorials are invited only from guest editors of Themed Collections (see below) to convey in a highly readable format the aims and significance of the collection of articles. They should be more than a mere table of contents, highlight the interdisciplinary, agenda-setting contributions of a collection, and must not include unpublished or original data. A modest number of references may be included.	Up to 2,000 words excluding references	Review by editorial team
Reflections	Reflections are creative pieces reflecting on an individual’s own interactions with memory, mind and media.	Up to 4,000 words excluding references	Expedited, single blind peer review including cross-disciplinary reviewer
Visual Essays	We are open to considering submissions of content that focus on images, artwork and media relevant to our themes or submissions that themselves use a visual rather than written format. As a starting point please approach the Editors-in-Chief with your ideas.	Depends on material	Depends on material

Themed Collections

Memory, Mind & Media will publish two types of themed collection: traditional Themed collections in the model of a special issue; and Focus collections that bring together a provocative original article with commentaries. The journal is open to proposals for collections from guest editors at any time. Before submitting a full proposal for a collection, please send a short outline of your idea and rough timescale to memorycambridge@gmail.com.

Should you be invited to submit a full proposal for a themed collection, your proposal should include:

• The title of the collection.
• The rationale.
• An overview of the collection.
• The titles, authors and ideally an abstract for all proposed pieces.
• Your expectations for word count (our guide is a maximum of 66,000 words for the full collection).
• When you expect all content to be ready to publish.
• A confirmation that you understand the Guest Editor will be expected to manage double blind peer review of each contribution (following the process outlined above and via the journal’s ScholarOne system) and to edit each contribution. And your understanding that the Editors-in-Chief reserve the right to choose not to publish all or some of the contributions if they are not satisfied they meet the journal’s quality standards.

All proposals should be mindful of the journal’s ambition to publish innovative types of articles and contributions.

Style

Authors are requested to put their content into journal style, closely following these general style conventions and the journal’s particular reference style.

Please note: authors may submit their paper initially in any suitably polished, fully referenced and clearly organised format; if the article is accepted for publication, bringing it into line with the journal’s style will remain the author responsibility and will need to be completed before the paper can enter production.

General style conventions

• First level headers are in bold, sentence case and left justified.
• Second level headers are in bold italic, sentence case and left justified.
• Do not number paragraphs or sections. Avoid very short (particularly one sentence) paragraphs.
• Use the British variants of English-language spelling, for example ‘ise’, not ‘ize’ (except in quoted material, which should follow the original in every respect).
• Keep quotes as original, including size, spelling etc. Quote marks should be single, with double for quotes within quotes. Material of three or more lines' length will be distinguished by indentation. Indented quotes should not have quotation marks. Interpolations should be indicated by the use of square brackets. To indicate omitted words, three full points . . . separated equally from one another and from any preceding or succeeding words or quotations marks are sufficient.
• Do not use bold text in the text at all. For emphasis, use italic.
• In the main text, the numbers one to ten should be written as words, but for higher numbers the numerals (e.g. 11, 23, 364) should be used.
• All acronyms must be expanded on first use, even EU, USA, UK or UN, for those which are commonplace in one country are not in others.
• Full stops should not be used after initials, law reports or in abbreviations, eg para, ss, Sch, ie, etc.
• Write per cent (not %) except in illustrative brackets.

References

Memory, Mind & Media follows CambridgeA reference style and uses endnotes rather than footnotes. In-text citation of sources should be included alongside a full end list of references, arranged alphabetically by author surname.

Citations

Please follow these general rules:

• Cite references in the text by author last name, followed by publication date, with no punctuation between the author name and the publication date.
• For works with three or more authors, cite the first author’s name followed by “et al.”
• Order references alphabetically within strings by author, and chronologically when citing works by the same author.
• Use semicolons to separate works by different authors and commas to separate works by the same author.
• Distinguish between works published by the same author in the same year by adding a lower case letter to the publication year (a, b, c, etc.) in the order in which the references appear in the text. For works published in the same year with the same lead author, but different groups of co-authors, list either the complete list of authors, or enough co-authors to identify the groups (but do not add letters, since these are not identically authored references).
• For works that have not yet been published, if a publication date is known or anticipated, use that date. Work that has been accepted and is in the process of publication can be cited as “in press” (ideally, editors should have checked that this is the case and the work has been accepted and will be published). Work that has not yet been accepted should be treated as unpublished material.

Examples

Single author:
(Cook 2013)

Two authors:
(Bicchieri and Xiao forthcoming)

Three or more authors:
(Bhatti et al 2018)

Reference list

Please follow these general rules:

• Arrange references alphabetically by author surname, with all the authors listed. List author names, in bold, in “last name first name” format, with the first names given in initials. However, see example of “published or broadcast interview” for an exception to this rule, in a case where the language does not use surnames.
• List two or more works by the same author or authors chronologically.
• To distinguish two or more works by the same author or authors in the same year, use a, b, c, etc. following the date, and list references in the order in which they are mentioned in the text.
• Do not use the three-em dash for repeated authors, as this throws off indexing engines.
• For titles of journal articles and book chapters, use sentence style capitalisation (minimum capitalisation). Do not enclose the titles in quotation marks.
• For book and journal titles, use headline style capitalisation (maximum capitalisation) and italics. Always list journal titles in full rather than in abbreviated form.
• Do not elide page numbers when giving page ranges (thus, it should be 213-229 rather than 213-29).
• For journal articles, doi information should be included where available. Both the URL format (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017....) and the abbreviated format (doi:10.1017…) are acceptable.

Examples

Book, multiple authors (no serial comma before last author’s name):
Brouwer C and Heibloem M (1986) Irrigation Water Management: Irrigation Water Needs.
Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
Kenny DA, Kashy DA and Cook WL (2006) Dyadic Data Analysis. New York: Guilford Press.

Edited book:
Agius E and Busuttil S (eds) (1998) Future Generations and International Law. London: Earthscan.

Book chapter:
Eckersley R (2011) Representing nature. In Alonso S, Keane J and Merkel W (eds), The Future of Representative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 236–257.
Journal article (it is not necessary to provide an issue number for journals that paginated by volume):
Chétima M (2019) You are where you build: Hierarchy, inequality, and equalitarianism in Mandara highland architecture. African Studies Review 62(3), 40-64. https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2018.45.

Newspaper article (if there is no author given, begin reference with the title):
Eisen MB and Tibshirani R (2020) How to identify flawed research before it becomes dangerous. New York Times, 20 July 2020.

A list of example references can be found in the detailed guide to CambridgeA.