Arts

About Arts

Arts: Journal Profile

Arts (ISSN 2076-0752) is a peer-reviewed, open access scholarly journal published monthly online by MDPI, devoted to new and significant research on all aspects of the visual and performing arts. Its own statement of mission is precise: to provide a venue for thoughtful and critical inquiry, employing innovative approaches, and to welcome scholarship that is theoretical, historical, interdisciplinary and global, exploring the visual arts from studio art to architecture and the performing arts. Because the title is a single common word, identification must always rest on the ISSN and publisher rather than on the name alone: Arts in this profile means exactly one journal — MDPI's Arts, ISSN 2076-0752, Basel, Switzerland — and no other periodical, magazine or series that shares the word. That discipline, stated once here, governs every fact below.

Arts has been published since 2012 and operates as a fully online, fully open access title. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, with copyright retained by the authors, and readers everywhere may read without charge. Authors whose papers are accepted after peer review pay an article processing charge, currently listed by MDPI as CHF 1,400 for this journal. The journal is indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) of Web of Science and in DOAJ, among other databases listed by the publisher, and MDPI reports an impact factor of 0.5 (2025) for the title on its journal homepage. MDPI also reports rapid handling for the journal: a first decision provided to authors in approximately 40.7 days after submission and acceptance to publication in approximately 11.9 days, given as median values for papers published in the journal in the first half of 2026. Figures of that kind are moving statistics, not promises; treat them as the publisher's reported medians at the time of writing and re-check the journal homepage before relying on them for a deadline.

Quick Facts

Publisher and Editorial Setting

MDPI — the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute — is a Basel-based publisher of open access journals across the sciences, social sciences and humanities, and Arts is its dedicated journal for the visual and performing arts. Understanding the publisher's model helps authors predict their experience of the journal. MDPI journals are online-only, publish continuously in monthly issues, use structured editorial offices that manage peer review logistics at scale, and fund the operation through article processing charges rather than subscriptions. MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), states that it enforces rigorous peer review together with strict ethical policies, and screens submissions with iThenticate to verify originality. Those are publisher-level commitments that apply to Arts; the journal-level facts — scope, sections, special issues, editorial board and the Editor-in-Chief — are maintained on the journal's own pages at mdpi.com/journal/arts, which are the authoritative source for anything that can change between volumes.

The Editor-in-Chief named in MDPI's journal material for Arts is Prof. Dr. Andrew M. Nedd. His message to authors, carried in the journal flyer, defines the editorial taste of the title as clearly as the formal scope does: Arts welcomes scholarly contributions that address fundamental issues in the arts, broadly conceived, from any meaningful perspective — theoretical, historical, interdisciplinary and global; submissions are expeditiously and rigorously reviewed; and, because Arts is an online journal, articles reach their audiences more quickly and reliably than print counterparts, combining the scholarly standards of traditional journals with the accessibility of digital publication. Authors should take the pairing in that message seriously: "expeditiously and rigorously" is the journal's self-description, and a manuscript that is not yet rigorous will not be rescued by the journal's speed.

Scope in Detail: The Seven Territories of Arts

The journal's published scope divides its territory into seven areas. Each is summarised below with the practical reading an author should give it.

Studio art

Practices such as painting, drawing, sculpting, ceramics, photography, printmaking and new media. Research here may be historical, critical or practice-based in orientation, but it must be scholarship: a portfolio alone is not an article, while a study that uses studio practice as evidence inside an argued account of making, medium or meaning fits the journal's intent.

Art theory and criticism

The history and theories of aesthetics and art criticism, including the intersection of art practices with society, culture and politics. This is the journal's natural home for theoretical work — essays that clarify concepts, re-read critical traditions, or argue a position about how art should be understood — provided the argument is developed with the evidence and references a scholarly readership expects.

Architecture

Theory, history and contemporary practices in the field of the building arts. Architectural work in Arts is read as part of the arts and humanities conversation, so papers framed purely as engineering or technical design studies belong elsewhere, while work on architectural meaning, history, representation and culture belongs here.

The art market and exhibitions

The sale and exhibition of works of art, and the institutions and venues that support those practices, including studies of curation, museum practices and the preservation of artistic patrimony. This territory makes Arts one of the relatively few general arts journals that explicitly welcomes museum studies, curatorial research and market analysis alongside studio and historical work.

The performing arts

Dance, music, theatre and other art forms that involve an interaction between performer and audience. Performance scholarship — history, theory, documentation and analysis of live forms — sits inside the journal's title claim to the performing arts, and interdisciplinary work connecting performance with visual culture is particularly aligned with the journal's stated approach.

Cinema studies

Historical and theoretical analysis of film, television and other forms of moving images. Screen studies authors should note the framing: the journal welcomes cinema as an art form inside a general arts title, which suits comparative and interdisciplinary screen scholarship especially well.

Craft, design and material culture

New perspectives on how humans interact with physical objects, exploring aesthetics, history, cultural values and technological innovations. This widest of the seven territories connects Arts to design history and material culture studies, and it is often the right home for object-centred research that narrower art history venues handle awkwardly.

Across all seven territories, the journal's aims repeat three adjectives that should govern topic selection: new, significant and critical. A competent summary of familiar material, a purely descriptive catalogue without an argument, or a local case study that never states its wider significance will struggle — not because the topic is unwelcome, but because the contribution is undersold. State the significance in the abstract, in the introduction and again in the conclusion; editors and reviewers of a broad-scope journal decide fit largely from those signals.

Article Types, Special Issues and How Publishing Works Here

Arts publishes research articles and other scholarly contributions of broad interest, including reviews and contributions organised through Special Issues — themed collections proposed and led by guest editors on topics inside the journal's scope, a standard and prominent feature of the MDPI model. Special Issues suit authors whose work belongs to a defined current conversation and who value a themed context and a coordinated timetable; regular submission suits work that stands alone. Either way, the route is the journal's online submission system, reached from the journal homepage, and the contractual facts are the same: peer review first, a decision, and — on acceptance — the article processing charge of CHF 1,400, invoiced by MDPI directly. MDPI states that only official invoices issued by MDPI (@mdpi.com) are valid, that it does not authorise any third party to collect APCs, and that it is the sole service provider for the charge. Treat any payment request arriving from another domain or through an intermediary as fraudulent until the editorial office confirms otherwise; impersonation invoicing is a documented hazard of open access publishing generally, and MDPI's warning exists because the hazard is real.

Discounts and waivers follow MDPI's standard arrangements: authors from institutions participating in MDPI's Institutional Open Access Program receive discounts, and reviewers who provide timely, thorough reports receive vouchers toward a future APC in any MDPI journal. Authors should establish, before submission rather than after acceptance, three things: whether their institution participates in the programme, whether their funder permits grant funds to pay the charge, and which currency and tax treatment will apply, since MDPI accepts payment in Swiss francs, euros, US dollars, pounds sterling, yen and Canadian dollars and local VAT or sales tax may be added where applicable.

Peer Review, Ethics and What "Rigorous" Means in Practice

MDPI describes its peer review for this journal as expeditious and rigorous, reports the median times quoted in the introduction, and backs the process with COPE membership, iThenticate originality screening and a stated zero-tolerance approach to plagiarism, data falsification and inappropriate authorship credit, handled by editors trained for such cases. For authors, the operational meaning is straightforward. Submit only work that is original, unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere. Disclose prior dissemination honestly. Provide complete and accurate references — in a references-heavy humanities field, citation accuracy is itself a quality signal reviewers notice. Respond to reviewer reports point by point, distinguishing changes made from reasoned disagreements. And keep authorship truthful: everyone listed must have contributed substantively, and no contributor who qualifies should be omitted. Ethical shortcuts in a screened, COPE-member workflow are both wrong and, practically, likely to be caught.

Visibility, Indexing and Metrics — Read Carefully

The publisher reports indexing in ESCI (Web of Science) and DOAJ among other databases, and an impact factor of 0.5 for 2025. Two clarifications help authors use those facts without being misled by them. First, ESCI is the Emerging Sources Citation Index: inclusion means the journal is in the Web of Science Core Collection environment and its articles are discoverable there, and under current Clarivate practice ESCI journals receive Journal Impact Factors, which is how a 2025 figure of 0.5 arises. Second, an impact factor of 0.5 must be read inside humanities norms. Citation densities in the arts and humanities are far lower than in the laboratory sciences, citation windows are longer, and books matter more than any journal metric captures. A figure that would be negligible in biomedicine can be unremarkable-to-typical in parts of the humanities. Authors should therefore not select or reject Arts on the number alone. The stronger questions are whether the journal's readership matches the paper's intended audience, whether indexing satisfies the specific requirements of the author's institution or funder (verified against the live Web of Science master list, not a summary site), and whether open access with CC BY licensing meets the applicable mandate. On all three, check the current official pages close to the decision date, because indexing and metrics are the facts most likely to have moved since any profile was written.

Who Arts Suits — and the Work It Does Not Suit

Arts suits scholars of visual and performing arts who have a self-contained, argued, well-referenced study; art historians, theorists and critics; architecture and design historians working in a humanities frame; museum, curatorial and art-market researchers; performance and screen scholars with interdisciplinary material; and any author in these fields who needs legitimate open access, CC BY licensing, monthly online publication and a reported first-decision time measured in weeks rather than seasons. Its breadth is a genuine asset for work that crosses territories — a paper on, say, exhibition design, performance documentation and material culture at once has a coherent home here that a narrow single-field journal cannot offer.

Arts does not suit work whose authors require a specific higher citation ranking they have not verified for this title, work that is not yet scholarship (artist statements without research framing, unreferenced opinion, descriptive reports without argument), or work outside the visual and performing arts as the scope defines them. Nor does it suit an author who cannot arrange the APC on acceptance; the charge is a real contractual feature of the model, and discovering it after acceptance helps nobody. Finally, breadth cuts both ways: a highly technical paper addressed to a small specialist conversation may be better served by the specialist journal its intended readers actually open. Fit, as always, is a judgement about audience before it is a judgement about prestige.

Preparing a Strong Submission to Arts

Most rejections at broad-scope open access journals are decided by fit and framing before method is ever reached, so preparation deserves the same care as the research itself. Choose the territory your paper belongs to and write the abstract so an editor can assign it in one reading: name the art form or object, the period or context, the material studied and the claim advanced. In the introduction, state what is new in one unmistakable paragraph and position the paper against the strongest recent scholarship rather than against a textbook summary. Use images deliberately: in an arts journal, figures are evidence, so secure reproduction permissions early, caption every image with credit and source, and never assume that open access publication of your article extends to third-party images it reproduces — it does not, and clearing rights remains the author's responsibility. Keep the reference list complete and verifiable, follow the journal's current instructions for authors on structure and style rather than the habits of a previous journal, and write the conclusion so it returns to the significance promised in the abstract. If you are considering a Special Issue, check the topic's deadline and guest editors on the journal site and confirm your paper matches the call's actual wording, not merely its title. Handled that way, the journal's reported speed becomes an advantage you can use, instead of a reason to submit work one draft too early.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ISSN of Arts?
ISSN 2076-0752. Always pair the title with this ISSN, because "Arts" is a generic title shared by unrelated publications.

Who publishes Arts?
MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland. The journal record on this site names the publisher as Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, which is the same publisher.

Is Arts peer-reviewed and open access?
Yes. It is a peer-reviewed journal; all articles are published in full open access under the CC BY licence, with copyright retained by the authors.

How much does it cost to publish in Arts?
An article processing charge of CHF 1,400 applies to papers accepted after peer review, per MDPI's APC page for the journal. Pay only against an official MDPI invoice.

What subjects does Arts cover?
Studio art; art theory and criticism; architecture; the art market and exhibitions, including curation and museums; the performing arts; cinema studies; and craft, design and material culture.

Where is Arts indexed?
The publisher reports indexing in ESCI (Web of Science) and DOAJ, among other databases. Verify current status on the official listings.

What is the impact factor of Arts?
MDPI reports 0.5 (2025) on the journal homepage. Read the figure in humanities context and re-check for the current year.

How fast is publication in Arts?
MDPI reports a first decision in approximately 40.7 days and acceptance to publication in approximately 11.9 days, as medians for papers published in the first half of 2026. Individual manuscripts vary.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of Arts?
Prof. Dr. Andrew M. Nedd, per MDPI's journal material. Confirm the current masthead on the journal site.

How do I submit to Arts?
Through the submission system linked from the journal homepage at mdpi.com/journal/arts; the editorial office contact given by the publisher is arts@mdpi.com.

Sources and Verification Note

This profile is based on the journal record held on this site (title, publisher named as Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, ISSN 20760752 and the journal homepage link), MDPI's official Arts pages (aims and scope with the seven scope territories; the journal homepage description: monthly online publication, ESCI indexing, impact factor 0.5 for 2025, reported median first decision of 40.7 days and acceptance-to-publication of 11.9 days for papers published in the first half of 2026; the APC page: CHF 1,400, official-invoice warning and accepted currencies; the About page: COPE membership, iThenticate screening, CC BY licensing with author copyright, and the Basel editorial address) and MDPI's Arts journal flyer (Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Andrew M. Nedd and his message to authors). The 2012 start is as reported in secondary journal listings and the journal's volume history. No fact in this profile is drawn from an unofficial imitation site; where the publisher's own pages are the source, the text says so.