Submission Guideline
Submission Guidelines & Journal Information
Submission Checklist
Before submitting your manuscript to Everyday Life: International Journal of Public Culture, Art and Design, please ensure that the following materials are included in your submission package.
1. Title Page
Please prepare a separate title page document containing:
- Full title of the submission
- Author name(s)
- Institutional affiliation(s)
- ORCID ID(s) (optional)
- Contact email address
- Article category (Research Article / Practice Review Article / Interview / Field Notes)
- Word count
- 5-7 keywords
- A short author biography (50-100 words)
The title page will not be sent to reviewers.
2. Cover Letter
Please include a short cover letter, maximum 300 words, explaining:
- The main contribution or significance of the submission
- Why the work is relevant to the themes and scope of Everyday Life
- How the submission responds to the current issue theme
- Confirmation that the submission is original and not currently under consideration elsewhere
The editorial team uses the cover letter to better understand the context, relevance, and positioning of the submission.
3. Anonymous Manuscript
Please submit an anonymised Microsoft Word (.docx) manuscript for peer review.
Please use the built-in Title and Heading styles in Microsoft Word to format the manuscript structure. Do not create headings by simply enlarging or bolding body text. For details, please refer to the manuscript template.
The anonymous manuscript should:
- Exclude author names and affiliations
- Remove acknowledgements or identifying references
- Avoid self-identifying language where possible
If citing your own previously published work, please anonymise references appropriately during the review process.
For example: Author, 2024 rather than including identifiable author details.
Metadata and tracked changes should also be removed before submission.
4. Images and Media
For visual essays, artistic projects, or image-based submissions, please provide:
- High-resolution image files
- Image captions in a separate Microsoft Word document
- Copyright and permission information where necessary
Please do not place images directly in the manuscript. Instead, insert a placeholder in the text where each image should appear, such as [figure 1 near here], [figure 2 near here], and so on.
Please name all image files consistently as figure-1, figure-2, figure-3, and so on.
Each image file should not exceed 5 MB.
Authors are responsible for securing permissions for copyrighted material.
5. File Format
Please submit:
- Microsoft Word (.docx) files for texts
- JPEG / PNG files for visual materials where applicable
Submission Method
Please send all submission materials to:
Email subject line format:
Submission - [Author Name] - [Short Title]
Example:
Submission - Jane Smith - Public Screens and Everyday Attention
Editorial Structure
Each issue of Everyday Life typically includes:
- Peer-reviewed research articles
- Editorial-reviewed review articles
- Interviews and conversations
- field notes
The journal aims to maintain a balance between rigorous academic research and broader forms of cultural and critical engagement.
What We Are Looking For
The journal welcomes submissions that are intellectually ambitious, critically engaged, visually aware, and interdisciplinary in approach. We are particularly interested in contributions that explore the relationships between design, public culture, space, media, infrastructure, and everyday experience.
We encourage submissions that:
- Cross disciplinary boundaries
- Experiment with form or method
- Engage critically with contemporary social and spatial conditions
- Connect theoretical reflection with empirical or situated inquiry
- Explore underrepresented aspects of public culture and ordinary life
- Develop dialogue between academic research and artistic or curatorial practice
Submissions may be theoretical, historical, empirical, speculative, visual, practice-based, or experimental.
Thematic Calls
Everyday Life publishes two issues per year. Each issue is organised around a specific thematic call, which will be updated every six months. The current thematic call is Everyday Life Research Across Disciplines. This issue has now closed.
All submissions should carefully consider their relevance to the current issue theme. Authors are expected to explain, either in the abstract or cover letter, how their submission responds to the current call and how it contributes to the journal’s broader interest in everyday life, public culture, art, design, space, and social practice.
Submissions that do not clearly engage with the current theme may be declined at the initial editorial screening stage or, where appropriate, considered for a future issue.
Conversations and Interviews and Field Notes are rolling sections. They do not follow the timeline or theme of each specific call, and submissions to these sections are accepted on a rolling basis. Accepted contributions will be published as part of the nearest available issue.
Categories of Submission
Research Articles
As peer-reviewed scholarly articles, research articles should offer a clear academic contribution to the current issue theme. Submissions may be theoretical, historical, methodological, empirical, interdisciplinary, or practice-informed, but they should demonstrate a sustained engagement with relevant literature, research questions, methods, evidence, and argumentation.
Length: No more than 5,500 words, excluding citations and footnotes.
Submissions should include:
- Title
- Abstract (150-250 words)
- 5-7 keywords
- Main text
- References
- Short author biography
Practice Review Articles
Practice Review Articles are designed for artists, designers, architects, curators, filmmakers, photographers, cultural workers, and practice-based researchers who wish to critically reflect on their own work, exhibitions, projects, visual research, spatial interventions, or creative practice through the lens of everyday life.
Rather than functioning as simple project descriptions or portfolio presentations, Practice Review Articles should explain how a work, project, exhibition, or practice engages with everyday life as a field of research, experience, representation, method, or critique.
Contributors are encouraged to reflect on how everyday life perspectives inform their creative process, spatial thinking, visual method, curatorial approach, public engagement, or critical interpretation.
We welcome submissions including, but not limited to:
- Exhibition and book reviews
- Photography projects
- Visual documentation
- Spatial and urban observations
- Curatorial reflections
- Artistic or practice-based research
- Experimental visual essays
- Archival or documentary material
- Film and moving image projects
Submissions should include:
- Title
- Abstract (150-250 words)
- 5-7 keywords
- Main text
- References
- Short author biography
Practice Review Articles should move beyond description and engage critically with broader cultural, political, spatial, social, aesthetic, or theoretical questions.
Length: Typically 1,500-2,500 words. Maximum 3,000 words, excluding citations and footnotes.
Where appropriate, submissions should include at least 3 images with captions and copyright information.
Conversations and Interviews
Dialogues with artists, designers, architects, curators, researchers, and cultural practitioners.
Length: Flexible. Please contact the editorial office before submitting under this category.
Field Notes
Field Notes are short observational or reflective texts engaging with everyday environments, public culture, spatial practices, material conditions, or situated experiences.
This category is intended for concise, field-based writing that documents, describes, or critically reflects on specific places, events, objects, practices, atmospheres, or encounters.
Submissions may draw on observation, informal fieldwork, walking, spatial documentation, public events, everyday routines, or situated experience.
Field Notes should remain grounded in concrete observation while also offering critical reflection. They should not function as personal diaries or informal notes alone, but should connect specific observations to broader questions concerning everyday life, public culture, space, design, art, or social practice.
Length: 1,000-2,000 words. Please contact the editorial office before submitting under this category.
Formatting Guidelines
Please submit manuscripts in Microsoft Word format (.doc or .docx).
All submissions should follow the journal’s manuscript template. Authors are required to download and use the template file before submission.
All articles should use Harvard referencing. Authors are encouraged to follow the Cite Them Right Harvard style for both in-text citations and reference lists.
Please ensure that references are complete, accurate, and consistent throughout the manuscript.
Submissions that do not follow the required format may be returned to the author for correction before editorial review.
Peer Review Process
All academic research articles undergo double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers.
Possible editorial decisions include:
- Accept
- Minor revisions
- Major revisions
- Reject
Visual essays, reviews, interviews, and artistic contributions may undergo editorial review rather than formal peer review depending on the nature of the submission.
Open Access Statement
Everyday Life operates under a Diamond Open Access model.
- No submission fees
- No article processing charges (APCs)
- Free access for all readers worldwide
We believe that critical cultural and academic knowledge should remain publicly accessible.