About the Journal

What is the Science Museum Group Journal?

The Science Museum Group Journal (ISSN: 2054-5770) is an open-access online publication presenting the global research community with peer-reviewed papers that are relevant to the Science Museum Group’s collection and practice and to the wider international science museum community.

The Journal provides an innovative voice in discussions worldwide about science and its history, material culture, communication, display and presentation in museums.

The Science Museum Group Journal is published biannually in spring and autumn. We reach a wide readership of academics, museum professionals, members of professional bodies, societies and institutions, and others interested in science museums. Our articles range across a broad variety of topics grounded in science museums, including curatorial practice, science communication, archival work and more. The nature of ejournal publishing supports our multimedia approach, and our articles feature innovative transdisciplinary work like film research and the incorporation of sound.

Who can contribute?

We warmly invite contributions from international scholars and practitioners interested in the work of science museums generally.

While the Journal content is driven by a passion for research into the Science Museum Group’s collection and practice, we are not just interested in our own work and authorship. Academic discourse needs multiple voices and stakeholders and the goal of the Journal is to be a space for museum scholars, practitioners and students to develop open but rigorously grounded conversations.

The publishers

The Science Museum Group (SMG) comprises five of the UK’s greatest national museums: the Science Museum (London), the National Science and Media Museum (Bradford), the Science and Industry Museum (Manchester), the National Railway Museum (York), and Locomotion (Shildon). The Group has Independent Research Organisation status with major UK Research Councils.

The Journal is published by the Department of Research and Public History, based at the Science Museum (London). For more information regarding research projects operating within SMG, please visit the Research and Public History Department home page.

Subscribe

You can subscribe free to the Science Museum Group Journal. On the Science Museum newsletter signup page, enter your details and select ‘SMG Journal’ under ‘Select your mailing list preferences’.

You will receive an e-newsletter with notification of when the next issue is available online (spring and autumn of each year) as well as occasional relevant information from the Journal and the Science Museum Group’s Research and Public History (R&PH) department. For more about the newsletter and to see our most recent one, explore this page.

Open access statement

The Science Museum Group Journal is an open-access publication, meaning that its content is freely available to anyone, anywhere. It is committed to providing, via its own website or via third-party distributors, immediate and unrestricted access to the final published version of its articles. These are made available using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence, which conforms to the most widely accepted definition of open access. This allows for the use, copying, reproduction and adaptation of articles, free of charge, so long as the appropriate citation information is used and on the understanding that third-party material included in the article, such as images or multimedia, may not always be licensable in the same way. Wherever it is reasonably practicable for us to do so, we will signpost any third-party material contained in our articles that may be subject to different licensing restrictions. Copyright in the content of and publishing rights to all articles is retained by their authors.

All images provided by the Science Museum Group/Science & Society Picture Library (SSPL) are provided under the CC BY NC licence for the benefit of the Journal and its readership. The entire SSPL catalogue can be found on the SSPL website.

Contact us

If you have any queries about the Science Museum Group Journal you can contact the editorial team – Kate Steiner (Editor) and Lyz Bush-Peel (Assistant Editor) – at [email protected].