About this journal
Aims and scope
Mind, Culture, and Activity (MCA) is an international forum for the publication of peer-reviewed articles that examine the way that mind and culture are constituted in a wide variety of human activities. We seek to promote dialogue among different schools of thought theorizing relationships between the human mind and the sociocultural environments it inhabits. We place emphasis upon research that takes a critical stance towards questions of human praxis and development, including a reflexive stance towards the researchers' own practices. In particular, authors are advised to critically scrutinize their research practices and categories to avoid characterizing psychological and cultural diversity in terms of deficits. Studies that deal with cultural historical phenomena, such as emergent forms of mediation, relationality, ethical practice, power relations, politics of learning, or social justice, are encouraged. We especially encourage work that situates the studies of mind, culture, and activity in the Anthropocene epoch, attending to the challenges and issues that it brings forth.
We encourage interdisciplinary contributions—including, but not limited to, anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, education, linguistics, critical race theory, media studies, queer studies, disability studies, and performance studies. We particularly encourage reports of research which have engaged partnerships reflecting a diversity of cultures, nationalities, and perspectives, especially which engage those that have been traditionally marginalised in the field. We invite authors to read the articles published in MCA in order to get a better sense of the journal's scope, as well as encourage them to engage in dialogue with prior relevant scholarship published in the journal.
Empirical and theoretical research is welcomed. When empirical results are part of a submission, the journal typically publishes research that is primarily qualitative, but quantitative and mixed research methods are encouraged as well.
We consider several types of articles: substantial contributions that present theoretical research or syntheses of theoretical and empirical research devoted to a significant topic (up to 8,000 words); commentaries responding to articles published in MCA (up to 2,500 words); and works written in alternative, creative formats (up to 2,500 words). We also include book reviews (up to 2,000 words), book review essays (up to 4,000 words) and shorter book notes, as well as retrospective narratives of one's own work (up to 8,000 words). If you would like submit a book review, please contact the Book Review Editor first.
Please keep in mind when you are preparing a manuscript that our readership includes a broad range of scholarship from the social sciences and humanities. Please avoid jargon that is familiar only to researchers in one field. We use APA (6th ed.) as reference style. Refer to Instruction for Authors to prepare your manuscript for submission.
It is our practice to perform a thorough editorial screening of every incoming manuscript before it is sent to reviewers for anonymized review. This screening ensures that manuscripts are at a stage at which the review can be generative for both reviewers and authors. We are mindful of the time reviewers devote to the journal, and we want to send them papers with real potential to provide significant contributions, developed in such a way that the reviews can provide clear guidance to authors.
When we do not consider a paper ready for external review, we still aim to ensure that authors receive meaningful feedback, if the work is within the scope of the journal. In some cases, we desk reject a paper but invite the authors to resubmit based on this feedback. This practice is similar to some journals’ designation “reject and resubmit.” While our current digital system does not offer this option, and authors may still receive a message with the label "reject" in these cases, in our letter, we will communicate to authors our feedback and our invitation to consider reworking the paper and submitting it anew. In our experience, this is a better way to help authors to receive the reviews they need and to improve submissions that we can eventually publish.
This approach, based on editorial consensus, requires more time than traditional methods of desk reject which do not provide feedback. As a rule, our goal is to make a determination of whether to send the paper to reviewers within 4-6 weeks. Only papers clearly out of scope may receive a brief desk reject letter in a shorter time frame.
Publication office: Taylor & Francis, Inc., 530 Walnut Street, Suite 850, Philadelphia, PA 19106.
Journal metrics
Usage
- 110K annual downloads/views
Citation metrics
- 1.8 (2023) Impact Factor
- Q2 Impact Factor Best Quartile
- 2.4 (2023) 5 year IF
- 4.0 (2023) CiteScore (Scopus)
- Q1 CiteScore Best Quartile
- 1.380 (2023) SNIP
- 0.759 (2023) SJR
Speed/acceptance
- 0 days avg. from submission to first decision
- 23% acceptance rate
Understanding and using journal metrics
Journal metrics can be a useful tool for readers, as well as for authors who are deciding where to submit their next manuscript for publication. However, any one metric only tells a part of the story of a journal’s quality and impact. Each metric has its limitations which means that it should never be considered in isolation, and metrics should be used to support and not replace qualitative review.
We strongly recommend that you always use a number of metrics, alongside other qualitative factors such as a journal’s aims & scope, its readership, and a review of past content published in the journal. In addition, a single article should always be assessed on its own merits and never based on the metrics of the journal it was published in.
For more details, please read the Author Services guide to understanding journal metrics.
Journal metrics in brief
Usage and acceptance rate data above are for the last full calendar year and are updated annually in February. Speed data is updated every six months, based on the prior six months. Citation metrics are updated annually mid-year. Please note that some journals do not display all of the following metrics (find out why).
- Usage: the total number of times articles in the journal were viewed by users of Taylor & Francis Online in the previous calendar year, rounded to the nearest thousand.
Citation Metrics
- Impact Factor*: the average number of citations received by articles published in the journal within a two-year window. Only journals in the Clarivate Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) have an Impact Factor.
- Impact Factor Best Quartile*: the journal’s highest subject category ranking in the Journal Citation Reports. Q1 = 25% of journals with the highest Impact Factors.
- 5 Year Impact Factor*: the average number of citations received by articles in the journal within a five-year window.
- CiteScore (Scopus)†: the average number of citations received by articles in the journal over a four-year period.
- CiteScore Best Quartile†: the journal’s highest CiteScore ranking in a Scopus subject category. Q1 = 25% of journals with the highest CiteScores.
- SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper): the number of citations per paper in the journal, divided by citation potential in the field.
- SJR (Scimago Journal Rank): Average number of (weighted) citations in one year, divided by the number of articles published in the journal in the previous three years.
Speed/acceptance
- From submission to first decision: the average (median) number of days for a manuscript submitted to the journal to receive a first decision. Based on manuscripts receiving a first decision in the last six months.
- From submission to first post-review decision: the average (median) number of days for a manuscript submitted to the journal to receive a first decision if it is sent out for peer review. Based on manuscripts receiving a post-review first decision in the last six months.
- From acceptance to online publication: the average (median) number of days from acceptance of a manuscript to online publication of the Version of Record. Based on articles published in the last six months.
- Acceptance rate: articles accepted for publication by the journal in the previous calendar year as percentage of all papers receiving a final decision.
For more details on the data above, please read the Author Services guide to understanding journal metrics.
*Copyright: Journal Citation Reports®, Clarivate Analytics
†Copyright: CiteScore™, Scopus
Editorial board
EDITORS
Karlyn Adams-Wiggins
Portland State University, USA
Aydin Bal
University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
Sophina Choudry
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Arturo Cortez
Universtiy of Colorado Boulder, USA
Beth Ferholt
Brooklyn College, City University of New York, USA
Alfredo Jornet Gil
University of Girona, Spain
Ivana Guarrasi
Minnesota state University, Mankato, USA
Monica Lemos
University of Helsinki, Finland
José Lizárraga
University of California Berkeley, USA
Mara Welsh Mahmood
University of California Berkeley, USA
Bonnie Nardi
University of California, Irvine, USA
Antti Rajala
University of Eastern Finland, Finland
Anna Stetsenko
Graduate Center, City University of New York
Julian Williams
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR
Michael Cole
University of California, San Diego, USA
EDITORIAL BOARD
Megan Anakin - The University of Sydney, Australia
Hans Christian Arnseth - University of Oslo, Norway
Michael Bakal - University of California Berkeley, USA
David Bakhurst - Queen's University, Canada
Arthur Bakker - Utrecht University, Netherlands
Megan Bang - University of Washington, USA
Louise Bøttcher - Aarhus University, Denmark
Laura Black - The University of Manchester, UK
Alain Breuleux - McGill University, Canada
Andy Castro - University of California Berkeley, USA
Sherice Clark - University of California San Diego, USA
Jacqueline Cofield - Columbia University, Teachers College, USA
Andrew Coppens - University of New Hampshire, USA
Mariëtte de Haan - Utrecht University, Netherlands
Patricia Dionne - Université de Sherbrooke, Canada
Jan Derry - University College London, United Kingdom
Yrjö Engeström - Helsingin Yliopisto, Finland
Ola Erstad - University of Oslo, Norway
Moises Esteban-Guitart - University of Giorna, Spain
Marilyn Fleer - Monash University, Australia
Natalia Gajdamaschko - Simon Fraser University, Canada
Vlad Glaveanu - Webster University, Geneva
Artin Göncü - University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Kris Gutiérrez - University of California, Los Angeles; University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Rogers Hall - Vanderbilt University, USA
Mariane Hedegaard - Københavns Universitet, Denmark
Jaakko Hilppö - University of Helsinki, Finland
Lois Holzman - East Side Institute, USA
Paula Hooper - Northwestern University, USA
Nick Hopwood - University of Technology Sydney, Australia and University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
Susan Jurow - University of Colorado Boulder, USA
Zaza Kabayadondo - Founder, EdTech Startup
Stan Karanasios, University of Queensland, Australia
Yong Ming Kow - City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Therese Laferriere - University Laval, Canada
Alex Levant - Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
Robert Lecusay - Stockholm University, Sweden
Fernanda Liberali - Pontifical University of São Paulo, Brazil
Ramón Martínez - Stanford University, USA
Patricia Martinez-Alvarez - Columbia University, Teachers College, USA
José W. Meléndez - University of Oregon, USA
Eliana Mercedes Bussi - University of Girona, Spain
Nathalie Muller Mirza - University of Geneva, Switzerland
Ageliki Nicolopoulou - Lehigh University, USA
Kevin O'Connor - University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Martin Packer - The University of the Andes, Colombia
William R. Penuel - University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
Anne-Nelly Perret- Clermont - Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
David Preiss - Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
Jrène Rahm - Université de Montréal, Canada
Anna Rainio - University of Helsinki, Finland
Edward Rivero - Columbia University, Teachers College, USA
Aireale Rodgers - University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Wolff-Michael Roth - University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Keith Sawyer - University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Anna Sfard - University of Haifa, Israel
Anna Shvarts - Moscow State University, Russia
Christo Sims - University of California, San Diego, USA
Anna Luiza Bustamante Smolka - Universidade Estadual de Dampinas, Brazil
Clay Spinuzzi - University of Texas, Austin, USA
Anna Stetsenko - Graduate Center, City University of New York
Na'ilah Suad Nasir - University of California, Berkeley, USA
Alison Taylor - University of British Columbia, Canada
Jennifer Vadeboncoeur - University of British Columbia
Irina Verenikina - University of Wollongong, Australia
Shirin Vossoughi - Northwestern University, USA
Ditte Winther-Lindqvist - Aarhus University, Denmark
Tania Zittoun - Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland
EMERITUS MEMBERS
Luisa Aires
Amelia Alvarez
Alfredo Artiles
King Beach
Andy Blunden
Harry Daniels
Ole Dreier
Alessandro Duranti
Anne Edwards
Charles Goodwin
Edwin Hutchins
Vera John-Steiner
Sandra Jovchelovitch
Alex Kozulin
Jean Lave
Carol Lee
Jay Lemke
Luis Moll
Guiseppe Montovani
Terezhina Nunes
Carol Padden
Anne Marie Palincsar
Fernando Luis Gonzales Ray
Barbara Rogoff
Georg Rückriem
Mabel Encinas Sanchez
Charles Tolman
Jaan Valsiner
Olga Vásquez
James Wertsch
Abstracting and indexing
Mind, Culture, and Activity is Abstracted/Indexed in:
- EBSCOhost
- Academic Search Alumni Edition
- Academic Search Complete
- Academic Search Elite
- Academic Search Premier
- Academic Search Ultimate
- Current Abstracts
- Poetry & Short Story Reference Center
- Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection
- SocINDEX
- SocINDEX with Full Text
- TOC Premier (Table of Contents)
- Elsevier BV
- Scopus
- E-psyche
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)
- Ovid
- PsycINFO
- ProQuest
- Health & Medical Collection
- Health Research Premium Collection
- Professional ProQuest Central
- ProQuest 5000 International
- ProQuest Central
- Psychology Database
- Social Science Database
- Social Science Premium Collection
- Taylor & Francis
- Educational Research Abstracts Online
- Research into Higher Education Abstracts (Online)
- Thomson Reuters
- Current Contents
- Social Sciences Citation Index
- Web of Science
Open access
Mind, Culture, and Activity is a hybrid open access journal that is part of our Open Select publishing program, giving you the option to publish open access. Publishing open access means that your article will be free to access online immediately on publication, increasing the visibility, readership, and impact of your research.
Why choose open access?
- Increase the discoverability and readership of your article
- Make an impact and reach new readers, not just those with easy access to a research library
- Freely share your work with anyone, anywhere
- Comply with funding mandates and meet the requirements of your institution, employer or funder
- Rigorous peer review for every open access article
Article Publishing Charges (APC)
If you choose to publish open access in this journal you may be asked to pay an Article Publishing Charge (APC). You may be able to publish your article at no cost to yourself or with a reduced APC if your institution or research funder has an open access agreement or membership with Taylor & Francis.
Use our APC finder to calculate your article publishing charge
4 issues per year
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