SAR Newsletter November 2025

Annual SAR Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition – Deadline 31.01.2026

The SAR Executive Board is thrilled to announce the opportunity to nominate candidates for the Annual SAR Prize for Excellent Research Catalogue Exposition 2025. The prize aims to foster and encourage innovative, experimental new formats of publication and to give visibility to the qualities of artistic research artefacts.

^{Winner of the RC Prize 2024, Kerstin Frödin and Åsa Unander-Schairin, Fragmente2, in the exhibition space Färgfabriken, Stockholm, 2021. Photo credit: Patrik Eriksson.}

Facts and Figures:

• Deadline for nomination submission: Jan 31, 2026.

• Publication period of exposition: Jan 1, 2025 – Dec 31, 2025.

• Prize Award: € 500.

• Anyone is invited to make a nomination.

 

Conditions:

• The exposition must have been published (not only shared) on the Research Catalogue platform, within the set publication period.

• Submissions must be in English only. Due to the linguistic diversity of the RC, we cannot guarantee adequate peer review capacity across all languages. We are investigating expanding the language options for future editions.

• The following must be communicated by identifying the metadata of the exposition: Author(s), Title, Research Catalogue URL (including date of publishing) and identified in this format: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/xxxxx/xxxxx

• Address for submissions: rc.prize@societyforartisticresearch.org.
  
  

Check out the full call details here:

https://societyforartisticresearch.org/article/rc-prize-2025-call-nominations

Learn more about the RC Prize and previous winners here:

https://societyforartisticresearch.org/annual-prize-excellent-research-catalogue-exposition

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JAR Issue 36 is Online

Can artistic practices help look at our differences as a place of encounter instead of a line dividing us?

The mounting crises have triggered new ways of thinking about artistic research and our own endeavour to engage material articulations at the site of publication. The degree of conflict that many experience daily has become so pronounced that it requires recognition, across the board, also in regard to the submissions that we receive. Of late, we have seen it move from the margins to the centre in a wide spectrum of conflict presentations that include activism, pragmatism, ideology and suffering, as well as ignorance and defiance….

Read the full editorial by Editor-in-Chief Michael Schwab and the 6 peer-reviewed contributions here: https://jar-online.net/en/issues/36

JAR publishes 3 issues each year and accepts submissions in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and English.

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Recap of the RC Journals Publishing Policies Webinar – ArteActa, HUB and VIS

ArteActa – A Journal for Performative Arts and Artistic Research.

In the first part of this recent RC webinar, former Editor-in-chief Veronika Klusáková offered an overview of ArteActa’s evolution and its current publishing practices. Founded in 2018 as a print journal with supplementary online content, ArteActa shifted in 2022 to a fully online and open-access format. This transition enabled the journal to support multimodal submissions and focus more explicitly on peer-reviewed artistic research, an area still underrepresented in the Czech context.

The journal’s editorial structure includes a small internal team supported by external editors, proofreaders, and technical staff. In her presentation, current Editor-in-chief Markéta Magidová highlighted the journal’s commitment to double-blind peer review, the use of paid reviewers, author-retained copyright, and that, increasingly, the journal welcomes submissions created directly as expositions in the Research Catalogue (RC), integrating them both on its RC journal page and its website.

ArteActa seeks original artistic research with strong methodology, contextual grounding, and innovative critical thinking, including interdisciplinary and team-based projects. Its publishing rhythm consists of one thematic issue and one open issue each year.

 

HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society.

Filipa Cruz, Editor-in-chief of HUB, offered an engaging look into how the journal operates behind the scenes. The HUB’s editorial team and its growing international network of reviewers was introduced, highlighting the collaborative environment that supports each issue. Filipa outlined the journal’s mission to foster cross-disciplinary artistic research, emphasising practitioner-led approaches, methodological clarity, and the creative possibilities of the Research Catalogue, HUB’s exclusive publishing platform.

HUB publishes two issues annually (one open and one thematic), often developed with guest editors. Filipa explained the journal’s double-blind peer-review process, the criteria used by reviewers, and the importance of maintaining rigorous yet supportive feedback for authors. He also shared insights into the journal’s evolving editorial policies, including plans to expand multilingual contributions and strengthen partnerships with scholars and institutions worldwide.

The session concluded with a discussion on HUB’s outreach efforts, which currently include newsletters, public launches, and targeted communication through its research center.

Interested researchers and potential guest editors are encouraged to follow HUB’s calls and explore opportunities for future collaboration!

 

VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research

Heidi Möller, Editorial Project Manager at Stockholm University of the Arts, delivered the webinar’s final presentation, offering an introduction to VIS, which is jointly run with the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme. She introduced VIS’s editorial framework and its collaborative Nordic context, explaining how the journal supports artistic researchers through guided use of the Research Catalogue where VIS handles submissions, publications, and archiving.

Heidi described VIS’s mission to foreground artistic research across disciplines, highlighting the journal’s emphasis on reflection, process, and method. Since launching in 2018 with its pilot Issue Zero, VIS has published two themed issues annually, reaching a total of 15. She also discussed evolving language practices, noting VIS’s encouragement of contributions in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, alongside international and bilingual expositions. A new language policy will soon be implemented.

The session also outlined VIS’s publication model, Creative Commons licensing, and its broader communication strategy, which includes the VIS website, social media, newsletters, internal channels, and occasional full-page ads in Konstnären.

Researchers interested in artistic research, particularly those working in or in dialogue with the Nordic region, are warmly encouraged to follow VIS’s calls and explore future opportunities to contribute.

See all journals published via the RC here: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/portal/journals

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Portal Partners’ Thematic Seminar: Towards an RC Closed Vocabulary, Monday 08.12 – 13:00-15:00 CET

At the June Portal Partner Meeting in Prague, we informed about a new initiative together with the librarians from some of our portal partners to jointly create an RC Closed Vocabulary based on the most frequently used free key words already in circulation among the RC users.

This will be generated with the use of AI and curated by our group, and the implementation of this closed vocabulary into published expositions will be in the hands of our portal partners’ librarians.

For this reason, we strongly encourage all our partners to bring in your librarians for this meeting. In the seminar we will report on the status for this project and propose to create a rotating steering group for the further developments.

Thematic Seminars are for Portal Partners only. Registration link will be shared directly with Portal Partner administrators.