Submitting to The Journal of the Association of Concert Bands

Please read guidelines before using the appropriate "submit" buttons at the bottom of this page.

General information

The Journal of The Association of Concert Bands (ACB Journal) is the official publication of the Association of Concert Bands. It exists to support the Association’s purpose of encouraging and fostering adult concert, community, municipal and civic bands and promoting the performance of high quality traditional and contemporary literature for band. ACB’s goal is to encourage and welcome all submissions to the ACB Journal. These guidelines are geared to assist potential authors through the mechanics best suited for submission; however, they should, by no means, be construed to discourage any writer from submitting an article or news in any format. Please feel free to contact the Editor with any questions you may have.

Publication Dates & Deadlines

The ACB Journal is published 3 times per year: February, June and October. The deadlines for submission are December 1, April 15 and August 15 respectively. To assist issue planning, authors who intend to submit articles are asked, if possible, to contact the Editor at least 2 months prior to publication. However, all articles received will be considered.

Focus and Scope

The ACB Journal seeks to communicate association news, news of members and member band activities, publish reviews and information about new band literature and related subjects, and to educate and inform members of the official business of ACB. Articles providing unique ideas or perspectives as well as news of interest to readers are invited from all ACB members in good standing. Submission automatically grants ACB the right to publish the article or news item in the ACB Journal and on the ACB website. The Editor may occasionally accept articles written by nonmembers who have a particular expertise that may benefit our readers.

Submissions

The author should indicate on all submissions whether this is an original submission or submission of a reprint that has been previously published with full citation of the name, issue and date of the prior publication. If the article has been previously published, please include the appropriate copyright notice when submitting articles and include a statement that permission has been obtained to use the article in cases where the author is not the copyright owner. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the statements and sources in their articles.

Transmission

It is preferred that all submissions be transmitted electronically, either as an attachment to an email addressed to [email protected] with the subject line: “ACB Journal Article Submission,” or submitted on the ACB website through this page - see submission buttons below. (https://www.acbands.org/journalsubmissions )

Length

Generally, articles should not exceed 1,500 words. Authors wishing to submit articles significantly exceeding 1,000 words are asked to contact the Editor in order to determine space availability. A member news story could be 200-500 words. An article one page in length would be about 700 words with one or two small photos.  See below for more specific guidelines.

Format

Submissions are to be single-spaced in Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Plain Text (.txt) using a 12-point font. Text should include no page or line breaks, no special spacing and no special formatting.  You should submit a headline with your article as well as breaks with paragraph subheadings for lengthy articles. Headlines and subheadings may be editorially inserted into articles which do not contain them.

Graphics

Artwork, photographs or musical examples supporting the article are welcomed and encouraged. TIFF and EPS formats are acceptable forms for digital images that will appear in print, as are JPEG files if they are saved at maximum quality with minimum compression. Resolution of no less than 300 dpi @ 100% is required. Graphics taken from websites will not have required resolution and are not acceptable for print – they will become fuzzy when enlarged. Questions regarding technical matters as they relate to graphics submissions should be directed to the Editor.

Any graphics utilized in the article must also be submitted as an additional attachment to the article’s electronic transmission. Alternately, clean, camera-ready art may be submitted by mailing to the Editor – indicate clearly if photos or other materials must be returned to you after the article is published.

The author should supply information for a credit line if required. It is the author’s responsibility to obtain formal permission to reproduce illustrative material in copyright. It is requested that captions be provided with the photos and graphics.

Biographics Information

In addition to your article, please include a short biography consisting of approximately 100 words which will be placed at the end of your article. A head and shoulders photograph is also requested, if available.

Referencing Sources

The style of the ACB Journal is journalistic, not academic. References, such as the name of a person directly quoted or the source of a piece of information not widely recognized should be incorporated into the text rather than supplied as footnotes. References are not needed when ideas are paraphrased rather than quoted. However, citations may be included if necessary or, if lengthy, referenced to a link on acbands.org.

Diversity and Equality

Ethical, ethnic and prejudicial statements and implications should be carefully scrutinized before submission. The same care to not display discrimination or prejudice must be used in writings as that used in preparing spoken remarks for the public

Other

All articles will be edited for spelling, grammar, punctuation and style. In addition, the Editor reserves the right to edit and to condense submissions, without prior notification to the author, to better satisfy the space requirements, readability and interests of the readers of the ACB Journal. All articles submitted will be given equal consideration. The right to reject an article deemed inappropriate or irrelevant remains with the Editor or any editorial subcommittee created for that purpose will be notified. Generally, appropriate articles submitted by publication deadlines will be published in the next available issue; however, depending upon available space, publication may be delayed. Should this occur, the author will be notified. If you intend to submit a time-sensitive article, please convey this to the Editor prior to submission. In order to exhibit fair practice to all potential bands and contributors, the ACB Journal reserves the right to control the frequency of articles published from any one source when an oversupply of publishable materials exists. Flexibility discretion in the implementation of this policy lies with the Editor and will be based upon the availability of materials for any given issue. assume you got an answer, but these are things people would put into a word doc that make it a pain to copy and paste. People doing layout basically. Electronic submission of articles to [email protected] or on the website at acbands.org/articles implies author agreement with the policies outlined in these Guidelines.

Types of Articles

Articles and submissions take on many forms. The ACB Journal has regular and repeating features, as well as articles contributed by members. We welcome submissions by ACB members, including members of member bands and employees of corporate members. Not all submissions may be included for publication; discretion is up to the Editor.

Program Exchange: 

Share and showcase your program and selections performed at a concert or set of concerts. The purpose is to share the music being performed as well as the packaging of a concert. Submit the program as a .pdf or word file (.docx). Please include a short biographical introduction of the band and concert. See submission link at the bottom of this page.

Band History Articles: 

Members may contribute articles about the history of their bands. Often these are submitted when a band reaches a milestone anniversary. These articles focus on the history and activities of the band as well as what they are doing today. These are often 1500 words in length, and may contain photos or graphs.

"How we do that" Articles:

Members may contribute articles on how their bands do things differently. Often these topics include fundraising, grant writing, festival creation, incorporating young people in the band, new ways to publicize, travel, recruitment, and sharing something you've done that perhaps no one else has thought of yet. These are less the story of the band and more the story of the event or activity. These are often 1500 words in length, and may contain photos.

Member News:

This section is for brief articles of news from members and member bands.  Perhaps your band received a local grant or some other award, commissioned a new piece, or your conductor received an award from the state educators association. Perhaps you just want to share a little about a milestone anniversary concert or a conductor retiring after many years.  Maybe you and another member band put on a joint concert for the first time and wanted to let the ACB membership know, but without a lot of details. Anything your band has been doing that you would like to share with the rest of the ACB membership, but not in a full length article may be submitted for this section. These are often no more than 500 words (and sometimes less than 250 words) and may contain photographs. 

Educational/Research Articles: 

Members may contribute articles that are more along the lines of scholarly research as topics pertain to community bands, history of bands, composers, music, repertoire, etc. These are often 1500-2000 words in length, and may contain photos or graphics. Proper citations should be included. 

Conductors Corner:

 This is a regular feature of The Journal where conductors share tips in article form for other conductors, ranging from how to run rehearsals, repertoire selection, modifying instrumentation, working a piece, audience building, knowing your audience, and other items from the point of view of the conductor. This column is handled a little differently than the rest of The Journal in that contributions are often requested by the coordinator of the column,  however unsolicited submissions are welcome for consideration for this column. These are often 1500 words in length, and may contain photos or diagrams. If you are interested in being a contributor please email the editor at [email protected].

Interviews: 

Interviews are often personally requested, however we welcome the submission of appropriate interviews you may do with guest conductors, composers, or others if the topic is of interest to the broader concert band community.

Experiences:

 Experience articles are where members share a musical experience that happened to them. Perhaps the band took a trip, but the article is from the perspective of one member. Perhaps a member had the opportunity to play at a particular event or under a world renowned composer/conductor and wanted to share a brief essay of the experience. These are often no more than 1000 words and may contain photographs. 

Submitting:

Submissions are provided through a webform (see below) or email to [email protected] as noted above. You will need to either log-in with an existing ACB website account (member or past registrant of one of our events) or you will be asked to create a website account.