Visual Communication
The journal's definition of the visual is broad and includes: Visual Communication is interdisciplinary bringing together articles from a range of subjects, including: Members of the Visual Communication Studies division of the ICA can subscribe to the journal with a 50% discount. Interested members should email SAGE Customer Services at subscriptions@sagepub.co.uk The worthiness and necessity of these [essays] sharply remind us how rare it is for a mainstream academic journal to do its duty for the future by reaching beyond the complacencies and hysteria of the present." Times Higher Education Supplement "Visual Communication offers a high-quality forum of publication for articles on the crucial visual dimension of language and communication. I am sure that for scholars and students in many disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, this new journal will be an indispensable resource for learning, teaching and research." Teun van Dijk Electronic Access: Visual Communication is available to browse online.
Visual Communication provides an international forum for the growing body of work in numerous interrelated disciplines.
Visual Communication frames the study of the visual as a fundamental aspect of communication in order to understand the place of the visual in a broader social and cultural context. The journal addresses the role of the visual in relation to other semiotic resources, to communication in general, and to questions of meaning. The journal invites contributions on the nature of contemporary, historical, and future semiotic landscapes - through theory, empirical analysis, practice, and/or critique.
Visual Communication will publish four kinds of papers:
(1) Research papers which advance theory, method, and empirical analysis in one or more of the following areas (5000-7000 words):
- The structures and histories of the semiotic resources and technologies of visual communication, and their relation to other modes of communication.
- The use of these resources and technologies in visual and multimodal genres, texts, communicative events, artefacts, and performances, including but not restricted to, education, media, health, science, organizations, and personal contexts.
(2) Reflective papers by practitioners of visual communication which document current and emerging practices and trends in all areas of visual communication, whether from a critical perspective or with a view to exploring the expansion of the resources of visual communication and their uses (maximum 4000 words)
(3) Visual essays in any of the above areas which make their argument predominantly through visual communication (maximally 12 pages).
(4) Presentations of critical reviews of freely-available tools for analyzing, creating, or manipulating data/examples of visual communication (maximum 4000 words).
All contributions should engage closely with examples of visual communication, and/or examples of the visual relation to other semiotic modes.
All contributions should be of interest to a broad multidisciplinary readership in the humanities, social sciences and design professions, and written in a style that is accessible to this readership.
| Louise Ravelli | University of New South Wales, Australia |
| Janina Wildfeuer | University of Groningen, the Netherlands |
| Alexandra Crosby | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Jana Pflaeging | University of Salzburg, Austria |
| Søren Vigild Poulsen | University of Southern Denmark, Denmark |
| Dušan Stamenkovic | Södertörn University Sweden |
| Michele Zappavigna | University of New South Wales, Australia |
| Dušan Stamenkovic | Södertörn University Sweden |
| Jeff Bezemer | University College London, UK |
| Jay David Bolter | Georgia Institute of Technology, USA |
| Victor Burgin | Goldsmiths, University of London, UK |
| Carey Jewitt | University College London, UK |
| Teal Triggs | Royal College of Art, UK |
| Theo Van Leeuwen | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Elisabetta Adami | University of Leeds, UK |
| Giorgia Aiello | University of Milan, Italy |
| Paola Antonelli | Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA |
| John A. Bateman | University of Bremen, Germany |
| Philip Bell | University of New South Wales, Australia |
| Anders Björkvall | Örebro University, Sweden |
| Andrew Blauvelt | Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA |
| Morten Boeriis | University of Southern Denmark, Denmark |
| Mary Bucholtz | University of California, Santa Barbara, USA |
| Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard | University of Birmingham , UK |
| Lilie Chouliaraki | London School of Economics and Political Science, UK |
| Malcolm Collier | San Francisco State University, USA |
| Kate Cowan | University College London, UK |
| Anne Cranny-Francis | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Sean Cubitt | University of Melbourne, Australia |
| Clive Dilnot | New School University, USA |
| Hanno Ehses | Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Nova Scotia, Canada |
| Elisabeth El Refaie | Cardiff University, UK |
| Charles Forceville | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Ellen Fricke | Technical University Chemnitz, Germany |
| David Graddol | The Open University, UK |
| Diane Gromala | Simon Fraser University, Canada |
| Christian Heath | King's College London, UK |
| Rick Iedema | King's College London, UK |
| Peter Jackson | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Adam Jaworski | University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong |
| Jo Anne Kleifgen | Columbia University, USA |
| Juliette Kristensen | Goldsmiths, University of London, UK |
| Gunhild Kvåle | University of Agder, Norway |
| Michelle M. Lazar | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Per Ledin | Södertörn University, Sweden |
| Wendy Lee Bowcher | Sun Yat-sen University, China |
| Jay Lemke | City University New York, USA |
| David Machin | Zhejiang University, China |
| John Maeda | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA |
| Saki Mafundikwa | Zimbabwe Institute of Digital Arts, Zimbabwe |
| Lynn Mario de Souza | University of Sao Paolo, Brazil |
| Jim Martin | University of Sydney, Australia |
| Radan Martinec | Ikona Research and Consulting, USA |
| Katherine McCoy | High Ground Tools and Methods for Design, Buena Vista Colorado, USA |
| Robert McMurtrie | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Ulrike Hanna Meinhof | University of Southampton, UK |
| Lorenza Mondada | University of Basel, Switzerland |
| Marion G. Müller | University of Trier, Germany |
| Sigrid Norris | Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand |
| Kay O’Halloran | University of Liverpool, UK |
| Luc Pauwels | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Sarah Pink | RMIT University, Australia |
| Andrew Ross | University of Canberra, Australia |
| Zoe Sadokierski | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Ahn Sang-Soo | Hongik University, South Korea |
| Kim Sawchuk | Concordia University, Canada |
| Dona Schwartz | University of Calgary, Canada |
| Hartmut Stöckl | University of Salzburg, Austria |
| Crispin Thurlow | University of Bern, Switzerland |
| Len Unsworth | Australian Catholic University, Australia |
| Francisco Veloso | Federal University of Acre, Brazil |
| Eija Ventola | University of Helsinki, Finland |
| Jill Walker Rettberg | University of Bergen, Norway |
| Liz Wells | University of Plymouth, UK |
| Tore West | Stockholm University, Sweden |
| Judith Williamson | University for the Creative Arts, UK |
| Michael Worthington | California Institute of the Arts, USA |
| Xiaoqin Wu | Southwest University, China |
Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Visual Communication
PLEASE ALSO REFER TO THE FOLLOWING GUIDELINES WHEN APPROPRIATE
Visual Essay Guidelines
Review Guidelines
Special Issue Guidelines
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/vcj to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Visual Communication will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplementary material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Visual Communication frames the study of the visual as a fundamental aspect of communication in order to understand the place of the visual in a broader social and cultural context. The journal addresses the role of the visual in relation to other semiotic resources, to communication in general, and to questions of meaning. The journal invites contributions on the nature of contemporary, historical, and future semiotic landscapes - through theory, empirical analysis, practice, and/or critique.
Before submitting your manuscript to Visual Communication, please ensure you have read all details of our Aims & Scope.
The journal accepts four kinds of papers:
(1) Research papers which advance theory, method, and empirical analysis with a maximum of 5000 to 7000 words
(2) Reflective papers by practitioners of visual communication which document current and emerging practices and trends in all areas of visual communication, whether from a critical perspective or with a view to exploring the expansion of the resources of visual communication and their uses with a maximum of 4000 words
(3) Visual essays in any of the above areas which make their argument predominantly through visual communication with maximally 12 pages.
(4) Presentations of critical reviews of freely-available tools for analyzing, creating, or manipulating data/examples of visual communication with a maximum of 4000 words.
If you are submitting a Visual Essay, please read the Visual Essay guidelines here.
If you are submitting a review of a conference, book, film or exhibition please follow the guidelines here.
If you are interested in being a guest editor for a special issue, please follow the guidelines here.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Sage does not permit the use of author-suggested (recommended) reviewers at any stage of the submission process, be that through the web-based submission system or other communication.
Reviewers should be experts in their fields and should be able to provide an objective assessment of the manuscript. Our policy is that reviewers should not be assigned to a paper if:
• The reviewer is based at the same institution as any of the co-authors
• The reviewer is based at the funding body of the paper
• The author has recommended the reviewer
• The reviewer has provided a personal (e.g. Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail) email account and an institutional email account cannot be found after performing a basic Google search (name, department and institution).
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Writing assistance
Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services.
Visual Communication requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Visual Communication encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Visual Communication and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Visual Communication offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. The Sage Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway provides further information, but in general there is no need to follow a specific template. Please note that Visual Communication is currently not able to process other manuscript formats.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplementary files.
Visual Communication adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Visual Communication is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/vcj to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
All papers (apart from visual essays and reviews) must be submitted via the online system.
If you would like to discuss a proposal for a visual essay or submit an outline for a visual essay, please contact Louise Ravelli at the address below:
A/Prof. Louise Ravelli
School of the Arts and Media
University of New South Wales 2052 Australia
L.Ravelli@unsw.edu.au
http://sam.arts.unsw.edu.au
Visual Communication includes a section in which books and other significant contributions to the field are reviewed. This includes both essay length and shorter contributions. Books for review and manuscripts of reviews should be sent to Dušan Stamenković at the address below:
Dušan Stamenković
Södertörn University, Sweden
dusan.stamenkovic@sh.se
5.1 ORCID
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities ensuring that their work is recognised.
We encourage all authors to add their ORCIDs to their Sage Track accounts and include their ORCIDs as part of the submission process. If you don’t already have one you can create one here.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author and should be returned promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the chief editor of Visual Communication as follows:
A/Prof. Louise Ravelli
School of the Arts and Media
University of New South Wales 2052 Australia
L.Ravelli@unsw.edu.au