Journals of Systematic Musicology (SysMus)
© Richard Parncutt 2009

Academic disciplines are primarily defined by their journals, because that is where most of the material generated by research in that discipline is documented. A discipline can be said to exist when the quaity and quantity of current research exceeds a given level.

In most disciplines, the primary source material is published primarily in journals, not books. The reason: a typical journal article is long enough to describe an original and interesting contribution to the discipline, but also short enough for volunteer peer reviewers to realistically evaluate that contribution. The value of books lies in their coverage of a broader range of material, but in disciplines with well-developed quality control mechanisms, books are only valued when they are based on articles that have already been published in peer-review journals.

Within a given discipline, journals can differ markedly in their status. The most important journals are those that (i) are widely read by highly regarded international representatives of the discipline and (ii) subject contributions to careful, anonymous quality control by international experts (peer review). These are the journals that define the discipline, because they are the source of the most important information that is passed to the next generation of researchers and to the general public.

The aim of this page is to define the discipline of systematic musicology (SysMus) on the basis of its most important journals. The page is structured in two different ways: (i) the most important journals are listed first, and (ii) the journals are divided into six main subdisciplines: music acoustics, music aesthetics/philosophy/sociology, music information sciences, music physiology, and music psychology. Each subdiscipline of SysMus has one or more clearly defined parent disciplines (e.g. physics, philosophy...) that act as sources of tried and tested information, theories and methods. 

The following list of journals in SysMus (sections 1 and 2) is followed by a list of journals in related disciplines (repertoire-oriented and practice-oriented disciplines). The latter are not normally considered part of SysMus (although they often play a role in SysMus) and are not sorted into peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed.

The last column of the table shows the availability of the listed journals in Graz, Austria. Abbreviations:  KFU: Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz; KUG: Kunstuniversität Graz; E: electronic version; P: print version; NA: not available in Graz (in 2008). Web surfers who you are interested in SysMus in Graz may also be interested in our interuniversity musicology program.

Music acoustics

JNMR focuses on scientific aspects of SysMus (acoustics, information sciences, physiology), and JIMS (see below) covers all of musicology (in the sense of all research about music). In between these two lies the field of SysMus, which includes both humanities and sciences, but excludes ethnomusicology and historical musicology. Recent growth in all areas of SysMus has created a need for an international peer-review journal of SysMus. Which systematic musicologist would like to found it?

2. International, academic, non- peer-review journals

Music acoustics

Other music education journals

Other practically oriented journals