Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

Culture Machine is a series of experiments in culture and theory.

The aim of Culture Machine is to seek out and promote the most provocative of new work, and analyses of that work, in culture and theory from a diverse range of international authors. Culture Machine is particularly concerned to promote research engaged in the constitution of new areas of inquiry and the opening of new frontiers of cultural and theoretical activity. It is also committed to the generation of possibilities for new scholarship and research. Other than these founding aims (which are themselves, along with the very concepts of 'founding' and of 'aims', possible themes to be analysed), Culture Machine has no specific agenda, no project or programme - cultural, theoretical, political, social or ethical - it intends to see worked out in its various manifestations. Culture Machine is instead endeavouring to be to cultural studies and cultural theory what 'fundamental research' is to the natural sciences: open ended, non-goal orientated, exploratory and experimental in approach.

Culture Machine's experiments in culture and theory are currently taking the form of:

an open access journal: Culture Machine
an open access archive: CSeARCH (which stands for Cultural Studies e-Archive), available at: scm-rime.tees.ac.uk/CSeARCH
a Culture Machine book series, published by Berg (Oxford and New York)

Acting as additions or supplements to the Culture Machine journal are:

Culture Machine Reviews
Culture Machine InterZone

The Culture Machine Open Access Journal
One way in which Culture Machine is endeavouring to promote original and challenging work is by publishing an international, electronic, open access journal. Publishing online of course provides Culture Machine with an opportunity to explore the effects, consequences, limits and possibilities posed for research into cultural and theoretical questions by contemporary technology - computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web, cell phones, laptops, e-mails, phones, text and picture messages, blogs, podcasts, MP3 files, free software, open source, p2p file-sharing, wikis, 'social networking' and so on. But if one motivation behind the creation of the Culture Machine journal is the familiar intellectual idea of hosting a forum for the production, development, communication and testing of new ideas, another is the desire to provide contributors with a space in which to publish research that is open-ended and experimental: research, in other words, that encourages speculation and intellectual risk taking, and which does not simply succumb to the pressure to produce 'results'. Which is not to say the activities of Culture Machine can be simply opposed to 'end-orientated' research. Nor that these activities will themselves have no 'useful' or practical outcomes. The extent to which this is desirable, or even possible, is again something to be investigated.

Culture Machine Reviews
Another way Culture Machine is endevouring to promote original and challenging work is by publishing a section of reviews on a rolling, all year round basis (rather than annually, as in the case of the journal).

Culture Machine InterZone
The InterZone section is a slightly later addition to the Culture Machine journal. Again, in contrast to the journal, the InterZone publishes research in culture and theory all year round. It is also unthemed, thus enabling Culture Machine to promote and support a far greater diversity of work than would be possible on the basis of either the journal or reviews section alone. Other than that, all the main features of the Culture Machine journal and Culture Machine Reviews remain: the InterZone is open to both established figures and newer writers; it welcomes contributions that take advantage of and explore the uses and limitations of new technology; and accepts commissioned and unsolicited material from academics, post-graduates and non-academics.

CSeARCH Open Access Archive
Culture Machine welcomes contributions to its open access archive for research and publications in cultural studies and related fields: literary, critical and cultural theory, new media, visual culture, communication and media studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, science and technology studies, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory and so on.

The Cultural Studies e-Archive (CSeARCH) is not-for-profit and free to download from and upload to.

You can find CSeARCH at:
scm-rime.tees.ac.uk/CSeARCH

Here you can browse the archive and read and download its contents.

To upload work into the archive go to the 'Submit' page. Fill in the brief details and you will then be sent a login name and password via e-mail together with a direct link. Click on the link and you will be there - no need to login at that point the first time. (The password merely ensures that no one but you can edit your entries.)

Anything that is already in digital form, be it Word, pdf, and so on, can be uploaded into the CSeARCH archive quite easily and very quickly (in minutes, in fact). So early and/or hard to come by texts, including out-of-print books, book chapters, journal editions or articles that can be scanned or otherwise digitized can all be made available this way. However, the idea of the archive is not just to preserve documents from the past, but also to make recent and even current work widely available open access: both that which has already been published and that which is awaiting publication.

Culture Machine Book Series
The Culture Machine book series is published by Berg (Oxford and New York). It brings together writers from relevant arts, social sciences and humanities disciplines: cultural, media and communication studies; sociology; new media; literary, critical and cultural theory; art history; anthropology; continental philosophy; and political science.

The International Editorial Advisory Board for the series includes Lawrence Grossberg, Donna Haraway, Peggy Kamuf, Brian Massumi, Paul Rabinow and Avital Ronell.

Recently published titles include:

Paul Virilio, City of Panic (2005)
Clare Birchall, Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Celebrity Gossip (2006)
Charlie Gere, Art, Time & Technology: A History of the Disappearing Body (2006)

Forthcoming titles in the series include:

Jeremy Gilbert, Anti-Capitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and the Global Justice Movement (2008)

Section Policies

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Editorial

Peer Review Process

Culture Machine welcomes texts written in English from anywhere in the world. Culture Machine also welcomes contributions that take advantage of and explore the uses and limitations of new technology.

Culture Machine accepts commissioned and unsolicited material from academics, post-graduates and non-academics.

All contributions to the Culture Machine journal, Reviews section, and InterZone will be refereed anonymously.

Culture Machine will publish one edition of the journal each year.

Anyone with material they wish to submit for publication in the Culture Machine journal, Reviews section or InterZone is invited to contact the editors Gary Hall and Dave Boothroyd. (We reply to all serious mail.)

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. LOCKSS system has permission to collect, preserve, and serve this open access Archival Unit. More...