How to use your Voice
A Brief Guide to Readers and Future Authors
With this brief text we want to invite you to use the new possibilities given by this new publication in music therapy:
Why Electronic?
Voices is an electronic journal. To an increasingly large degree scholars and students are using Internet to access information about their field. Although we are concerned about the lack of balance between countries and continents regarding economy and the availability of this new technology, we clearly have the impression that students and professors even in the most impoverished countries use this technology already. By choosing electronic publication worldwide, free access is established, and new formats and styles of publication can be explored.
Our main goal is to establish an arena for dialogue, and we want this arena to be accessible for everybody worldwide. This is why Voices is offered free of charge to individuals, libraries and academic and commercial organizations. Our sponsors make this possible, and one of the reasons why the web is chosen as our medium of publication is that it would not be possible - either practically or financially - to distribute a paper magazine worldwide in high numbers. However, we are concerned about the possibility that in some countries access to the Internet is unevenly distributed. In these countries we encourage music therapy associations, training courses and others with access to the Internet, to print out Voices, photocopy it, and distribute it to readers in the region.
The electronic format allows for texts within several genres and styles and also for experimentation with use of new technology for documentation and communication of music therapy. We will explore the hypertext and hypermedia possibilities that the Internet as a medium offers to enhance communication and understanding of a field that is too complex and multidimensional to be treated appropriately in traditional linear texts.
Profile
The Voices profile is to present new ideas and developments within the practice, theory and research of music therapy. Although presentation, discussion and reference to research will be part of what we present, our main focus is not to establish merely another scientific journal of music therapy. We want to create a level playing field in which established scholars who regularly publish scientific articles and need an arena for discussion can come into discourse with new scholars and new practitioners as well as older traditional practitioners from developing countries. We hope that this will bring mutual benefits and will help to elaborate our music therapy discourse into a broadening arena. This electronic journal aims at being such an arena, by taking advantage of the new communicative possibilities given by the Internet as a medium. Journal articles will remain accessible to a wider audience, while they still will have in-depth qualities and be academic in nature.
Issues and Sections
Three issues a year will be published, while the website of the journal will also have continuous, weekly and monthly contributions (see below). While the inaugural issue is published in April 2001, the first issue of each volume will later be published in March. Publication dates for the three yearly issues will therefore be March 1, July 1 and November1.
The journal will be published in a specific website devoted to this publication. The site will have some general and consistent information, such as: general information about the journal, presentation of the editors, guidelines and vision statement. This information will be translated into several languages, together with a note on our language policy. The "living" parts of this website will then be the following four sections:
1) Three main journal issues a year, with articles, essays, interviews,
etc.
2) Country of the month: distinguished music therapists will give monthly
presentations of music therapy in a particular country
3) Columnist of the week: the editors will share brief reflections
on music therapy
4) Discussions: open and continuous publication of discussions and
comments.
We will briefly comment upon the four sections:
1) The Main Issues of the Journal (March 1, July 1, November 1):
The 3 issues will usually have a minimum of one text from each continent, and the issues will include sub-sections such as: Clinical Papers: Reflections about clinical practice, or descriptions of innovations in clinical practice. Field studies: Papers presenting music therapy or music healing rituals in cultural contexts. Essays: Theoretical and metatheoretical reflections. Interviews: Interviews of pioneers or other interesting music therapists (interviewed by one of the editors or by another qualified interviewer). International Archives: This section may include reprints of relevant texts published in other journals or books of music therapy (especially texts focusing upon the cultural/social context of music therapy). Discussions: The section will include edited versions of some of the continuous discussions going on in the website of the journal.
2) The Country of the Month
A new text presenting and discussing music therapy in a specific country is presented every month. The main focus of the texts will not be listing of names/pioneers and facts of the development in music therapy in that country, but rather a discussion of how cultural and social factors influence or do not influence the development of the discipline and profession in this country. The purpose of this section is to stimulate international knowledge and interest among music therapists. A "database" of texts will be built up over time, and after some years - when the "world tour" starts all over again - possibilities for comparison and the discovery of historical changes will be created.
3) The Columnist of the Week:
All editors will write short comments and reflections, in an ongoing series of "Columnist of the Week". In this way we hope to give the readers an opportunity to get to know the ideas and visions of the editors of the journal, and to give the editors an opportunity to dialogue and learn more about the situations in the other continents.
4) Ongoing Discussions:
At a frequency defined by the contributors open discussions and comments will be published. This will be done in two sub-sections: a) Qualified comments on previously published articles. This sub-section will be moderated. . b) Open discussions in our "Open Round-table". Participation will be open for everybody, including students, inexperienced music therapists, and curious visitors to the site. Any interested persons may join or start a discussion. Discussions will moderate the Discussion Editors, who may also add a brief comment, they feels that would help the discussion.
What Do I Do if I want to Submit Texts?
You are welcome to submit texts to Voices. Sections 1 and 4 above are open for submissions, while participants in section 2 and 3 above will be invited. Texts for section 1, the three yearly issues of Voices should be sent to the editor of your continent. Confer with our guidelines for advice and for practical information such as addresses and deadlines. Texts for section 4 should be sent directly to the Discussion Editor. All texts should be sent by e-mail.
