CURIO: Adelaide Journal of Curatorial and Heritage Practice

CURIO provides a peer-reviewed open-access platform for publishing research in the humanities and related disciplines, with a particular emphasis on scholarship from Museum and Curatorial Studies, Art History, Heritage studies and related areas of research.

The Journal aims to support the work of emerging scholars and researchers, and particularly those undertaking post-graduate studies.  CURIO will focus on the range of museum and curatorship theory and practice issues, including collections, exhibitions, art and artefacts, curation, heritage, cultural ownership, repatriation, conservation, as well as related academic management issues in the sector such as marketing, communication, media and education.

Articles accepted for publication will be blind peer-reviewed to ensure high standards of scholarship. Book reviews, opinion pieces including visual artwork, exhibition reviews and reviews of events relevant to the sector will also be encouraged. Publication will be decided by the Editorial Board. This will be granted after assessing the manuscripts’ academic scholarship, and alliance to the Journal’s values of community-building, intellectual integrity and respect for shared learning.

Editors-in-chief

The Editors-in-chief will manage the submission and publication process, liaising directly with the author, reviewers and the Editorial Board.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board comprises of post-graduate students in the discipline of Museum and Curatorial Studies and faculty members from the School of Humanities, Museum and Curatorial Studies.

General editorial and publishing policies - Manuscripts for articles submitted to CURIO will undergo a rigorous blind peer review process. Manuscripts may be rejected if they do not meet the criteria of the Journal. If the manuscript passes the initial screening the editors-in-chief will allocate peer reviewers to assess their quality and academic merit. Manuscripts submitted for reviews (books, conferences etc.) will not be peer reviewed.

The approval process for publishing in CURIO for both articles and reviews can be found on the Editorial Process Flow Chart.

The approval process is expected to take six weeks from submission, but this may depend on external factors over which the Editorial Board has limited influence.

Authorship - Listed authors should include all people who have made a substantive contribution to the submitted manuscript. Authorship order must reflect the degree of contribution, with whoever made the most substantive contribution being listed as the first author, and so on.

Acknowledgements - Should be given to any contributors to a manuscript who do not meet the authorship criteria (e.g. independent editor, commentator on the draft). It is the responsibility of the prime author to ensure that all contributors are acknowledged.

Declaration of conflict of interest - Authors, reviewers, and Editors-in-chief of CURIO should declare any conflicts of interest that may influence decisions. Conflicts of interest could arise in either a professional and/or personal capacity. The following scenarios are examples only:

• Financial ties or relationships (e.g. employment, consultancy, shared ownership of stock or other property, paid expert testimony)
• Academic commitments (e.g. strong beliefs in a particular idea, method, theory etc.)
• Personal relationships (e.g. review or editor is a friend, family member, colleague, competitor)
• Political or religious beliefs (e.g. have a strong political or religious view that is affirmed or challenged by the submitted manuscript)
• Institution affiliations (e.g. being employed by or associated with an institution that may benefit or suffer from the publication of the submitted manuscript, such as a company that manufactures or sells a product being described in the manuscript)

Authors must declare any funding they have received as part of writing, researching, or contributing to the manuscript.

Editors-in-chief, members of the Editorial Board, and reviewers shall maintain the utmost rigour in identifying, declaring, and avoiding conflicts of interest. They shall not derive any financial gain from their participation in the Journal.

Declaration of any conflicts of interest may not result in manuscript rejection. Failure to declare any conflict of interest may, however.

Publication ethics - CURIO is committed to academic integrity and upholds the International Standards for Editors and Authors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Prospective authors should refer to the International Standards for Editors and Authors on the COPE website.

Plagiarism - CURIO is strictly against plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other forms of academic malpractice. By submitting a manuscript, the author attests that the manuscript is free from any plagiarised content, including artificial intelligence-generated content. Proper referencing must be included for all content.

CURIO reserves the right to apply duplication-checking software to all submitted manuscripts to screen for plagiarised content.

Strong action will be taken against proven cases of plagiarism, and responses may include but are not limited to publishing corrections, retracting the article, pursuing the matter with relevant organisations, or taking legal action.

Permissions - It is the responsibility of the author to obtain any necessary permissions from copyright holders when reproducing previously published works. This includes text, images etc.

Prior publication - Any manuscript that has been published prior in another publication or is currently under consideration for publication by another journal will not be accepted for publication in CURIO.

Contributor’s publishing agreement - Prior to publication authors must sign a publishing agreement granting CURIO the sole and exclusive rights to publish and license the manuscript in question for the duration of the copyright period.  The author retains copyright ownership of the manuscript.

Word limit - For academic articles is 4000 words. Word limit for reviews is up to 2000 words. Word limits exclude referencing, bibliographies/reference lists, graphs, tables, figures etc.

Formatting your manuscript - Formatting articles and reviews will be done by CURIO. All manuscripts should be submitted as a digital document, in either Word or Pages, with referencing included (i.e. not a .pdf file). Any images or graphics that are embedded within the document or appended to the document need to also be supplied separately as high-resolution (350dpi) images or graphic files (800dpi). Page numbers should be used, listed on the bottom right, from the first page (number 1).

Referencing Style - Harvard UofA with in-text referencing is required.  It is an author-date style that requires both in-text referencing AND a full reference list at the end of the manuscript. For more information on how to correctly use the Harvard UofA referencing style, see the online referencing guide.

Footnotes - Use of footnotes should be as sparing as possible. There should be no endnotes. Appropriate usage of footnotes should provide concise contextual information that would otherwise disrupt the text or explain something that would be known to few readers but is key to understanding the text.

Artwork, figures and other graphics - Authors must hold or obtain copyright permission for all artwork, figures, and images in their manuscript.

• File type: JPEG files are preferred for images without texts or graphs. EPS or PNG files are preferred for images with graphs or line art.
• Submission: Figures, charts, or tables created in Microsoft Word should be placed in their relevant position in the body of the text, rather than at the end of the manuscript. Figures, charts, tables, or images not created in Microsoft Word should be submitted separately, with placeholders in the manuscript (e.g. {Insert Figure 1. Here}).
• Resolution: Line drawings and graphs should have a minimum resolution of 800dpi. Photos or images should have a minimum resolution of 350dpi.
• Captions: All figures, charts, tables, and images must be appropriately titled and captioned, and the font and sizing shall not vary too much from the body text of the manuscript.

Acronyms - Any terms that use acronyms shall be stated in full at their first use, followed by the acronym in brackets. The acronym is then used for subsequent uses of the term.

Submitting your manuscript - 

• Submissions should be emailed to - susan.millbank@student.adelaide.edu.au
• Manuscripts should be submitted as electronic copies in Microsoft Word or Pages (i.e. not .pdf). They should clearly identify whether the manuscript is an academic article, or a review of a book, conference, event etc.
• Any illustrations/images used in the manuscript must be properly and fully titled and the source cited.
• Authors should submit two copies of their manuscript. The first copy should include a front page with the following information:
  • Full names and academic institutions of all authors.
  • Name of study program.
  • A title.
  • An abstract up to 100 words in length.
  • Six keywords for search engines.
  • Any statements if applicable, such as to declare funding or in kind support, or a conflict of interest.
  • For articles, an additional statement (if applicable) identifying any conflict of interest the author has or may have with a particular peer reviewer/s. If such a statement is made it should include the name of the potential reviewer and brief reason for a conflict of interest (e.g. family member, supervisor, academic colleague, etc.).
• For academic articles, the second copy will be a ‘clean’ copy for blind review, and should include no identifying details (name, institution etc.). 

Once accepted by the Editorial Board, a final round of copy editing will be undertaken. The Editor-in-chief will send the final copy to the author for proofreading. The author/s must provide final approval for their submission to be published.

The author/s should complete any required edits by the dates specified by the Editor-in-chief.

If there are any changes to the authorship of the manuscript at this final stage, all authors must provide written approval for publication.

Once the manuscript is published, the author/s will be notified and provided with the weblink to the issue featuring their work.

The Editorial Board may consider publishing special issues on particular topics, conferences or other events from time to time. Special issue manuscripts should follow the guidelines for regular issues, and align with the aims and scope of the Journal.

The same submission procedures apply, and the Special Issue manuscripts are submitted to the same blind peer review process. Like manuscripts for regular CURIO issues, they should similarly reflect our values of community building, intellectual integrity, and our passion for fostering space for shared learning.