POROI now welcomes the submission of multimodal scholarship such as podcasts and video essays. Like text-based submissions, multimodal submissions must align with the scope of POROI publications and must advance some aspect of the relevant scholarly discourse. Authors are encouraged to reach out to the Multimedia Editor so that our team can best meet the needs of your scholarship.
Multimodal submissions will not undergo a double anonymous review process. Instead, by default, multimodal submissions will use an open peer review process in which both the authors and the reviewers know the others’ identities. In our field, open peer review is a common review practice for multimodal texts, which can be difficult to anonymize. But it’s not just a practical decision, open peer review also maintains the rigor of academic peer review while fostering a more generative—and less adversarial—scholarly dialogue about the proposed research.
As with textual submissions, authors may recommend that the POROI editors include or exclude certain reviewers from their peer review. And if authors prefer for their multimodal submission to undergo double anonymous peer review, they can contact the Multimedia Editor prior to submission to arrange a suitable process.
Authors should submit multimodal texts as either a compressed filetype (e.g. .mp3 or .mp4) or a hyperlink to an existing non-paywalled webpage with the multimodal content on it. If the multimodal text is accepted for publication, the Multimedia Editor will work with the authors to arrange a suitable way to host and display the multimodal text on the POROI website. Regardless of the display solution on the journal website, POROI will store a final copy of the original file for archival purposes.
The total length of multimodal submissions may vary, but in general they should not be longer than traditional journal articles in our field. As a rule of thumb, assume that one hour of speaking is about the length of an average journal article. Multimodal submissions may also be episodic (e.g. three 20-minute podcast episodes). If your submission is significantly longer or shorter than the recommended length, please contact the Multimedia Editor to discuss your options.
Multimodal submissions must be accessible. For example, audio submissions should have an accompanying transcript and video submissions should have closed captioning. We encourage authors to use enhanced captioning that recounts not just the spoken words but also the speakers’ tone and other sounds. For more information about captioning, see the work of Sean Zdenek.
We are happy to review already published multimodal content provided that the content a) is not behind a paywall, b) does not have any conflicting copyright arrangements, and c) has not already completed peer review in a different form (e.g. not an audio recording of an author reading an article they published in a different journal). Authors are responsible for communicating all existing copyright and intellectual property claims to representatives of POROI at the time of submission. Authors also should know that reviewers are likely to recommend modifications or additions to already published content (e.g. a new introduction or conclusion that frames the multimodal submission for POROI audiences).
Audio and video submissions must be of a suitable technical quality for publication in POROI (e.g. minimal peaking audio, unless the peaking audio is connected to the multimodal research).