About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Outlines. Critical Practice Studies combines critique of science, professional practice, and socio-cultural issues in an attempt to intervene in public discourses and establish counter-discourses in various social fields.

Outlines. Critical Practice Studies seeks to publish research and scholarly works in the midst of their emergence, as work in progress. An orientation towards the unfinalized and the novel is an inseparable component of critical research. Thus, we aim to provide a publishing space for works at different stages that privilege inventiveness and audacity without a rigidly pre-established formal configuration. We explicitly welcome works by authors at different stages in their careers. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies should be viewed as sketches full of living promises. They point towards figures not yet clearly seen and come to life in the richness of concrete social practice, making a difference in the field, in contemporary movements, in and public opinion. It is by reaching out into social practice that theory may become self-critical—creative, innovative, imaginative.

Outlines. Critical Practice Studies wishes to engage forms of social research in which theory and practice presuppose and move each other in reflected processes of development. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies seeks new relations between theory and practice in which the one is merely modeled in the image of the other. This implies a recognition of the reflexive knowledgeability of or in practices. It also requires a reflection on the socio-historical context and impact of science and knowledge. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies gives room for open, critical debates between different positions on the role of research and the self-understanding of institutions of research and higher education in our contemporary social formations. Perhaps most importantly, it seeks to build dialogue among and bridge critical approaches, including feminist, anti-racist, indigenous, decolonizing, queer epistemologies, and their intersections – expanding the epistemological range of publications. We explicitly welcome papers that challenge the status quo in myriad ways, including by publishing diverse, minoritized and marginalized voices.

Outlines. Critical Practice Studies seeks to provide a forum for theoretically and empirically informed debates about the relationships between individual subjects, social structures, and historically developed cultural forms in and of practice. The journal is interdisciplinary with a background and focus at the intersections of social and human sciences and philosophy which are established around the idea of practice (in its various forms: Praxis, activity, praxology, process theory etc.). This makes sense because practice, as both material and discursive, both form and process, both subjective and objective, both collective and individual, relays in a distinct way otherwise quite diverse disciplines, traditions, and positions.

Finally, it must be stressed that the editorial program of Outlines. Critical Practice Studies will remain dynamic and changing just as the societal issues subject to reflection and discourse in the columns of the journal. Thus, the editorial program presented here will persistently be debated and will change accordingly.

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts will be sent to two anonymous scholars for review.

Publication Frequency

Some articles are published collectively, as a special issue. Others are published as soon as they are ready, adding them to the "current" issue's Table of Contents or starting a new issue.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Contributions

Contributions to Outlines may vary in form, and may

  • account for empirical studies and development projects
  • present and discuss theories and methodologies in the field of social studies
  • relate to or combine one or more scientific disciplines
  • create new theoretical understandings and conceptualizations
  • critically discuss foundations and approaches in the social sciences
  • present and reflect on practice research, action research, developmental research, applied research efforts, etc.

Charges and fees

Outlines. Critical Practice Studies does not take any charge for submission, review or publishing of articels. Due to this policy we do not have a waiver policy.

Copyright & Licensing 

From issue 1 (2022) onward, the journal uses the CC Attribution-NonCommercial- Share Alike 4.0 license. The authors retain the copyright to their articles. The articles published in the previous 36 issues (from Vol. 1, no. 1, 1999 to Vol. 22, no. 1, 2021), are published according to Danish Copyright legislation. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish these articles.  The journal retain the copyright of these articles. Authors can upload them in their institutional repositories as a part of a green open access policy.

Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractices Statement for Outlines - Critical Practice Studies
In accordance with Elsevier’s guidelines and policies on publishing ethics, the free access online publication, Outlines, follows the standards stated below in order to secure the quality of this peer-reviewed journal. Therefore, the standards are agreed upon and enacted by all parties involved in the publishing of Outlines: the editorial board, the authors, the journal editors as well as the reviewers.

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