Barcelona Research Art Creation

About Barcelona Research Art Creation

BRAC — Barcelona Research Art Creation: A Complete Journal Profile

BRAC. Barcelona Research Art Creation — in Spanish, Barcelona Investigación Arte Creación — is an open access electronic journal for research on contemporary art, created in 2013 in the academic context of the University of Barcelona and published by Hipatia Press (Editorial Hipatia). Its founding purpose, in its own statement of aims, is to build a space for critical reflection on the dialectic between theory and praxis in contemporary art: to systematise, disseminate and study the epistemological discourses that shape the field, bringing transdisciplinary perspectives to bear on them. It is an unusual journal in one respect that shapes everything else about it: alongside a conventional articles section, it publishes Visual Pages — original works of art presented as research contributions in their own right.

The journal carries a single ISSN, 2014-8992, recorded as its electronic ISSN. It publishes three times a year, in English, Spanish and Catalan, and it charges neither readers nor authors: its open access statement declares free, immediate access to its contents, with no publication or reading fees and no advertising, supported by the University of Barcelona and Hipatia Press. It is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), whose record for the title was checked directly for this profile. This profile is built from the journal's own pages at Hipatia Press, from its DOAJ record, and from the OpenAlex source record resolved through its ISSN; where those sources do not establish a fact, the profile says so rather than guessing.

Quick Facts

Mission: Theory and Praxis in Contemporary Art

The journal's statement of theme and objectives is written around a single tension: the relationship between the theory and the practice of contemporary art. Artistic creation is treated not simply as an object to be described from outside, but as a way of knowing — a form of research with its own methods and its own claims about the world — while theory is expected to answer to the realities of making. BRAC was established, its statement says, to foster a space for critical reflection on that dialectic, and its foundational aim is to systematise, disseminate and interrogate the epistemological discourses that shape the field, integrating transdisciplinary perspectives. In plainer terms, the journal asks how knowledge is produced in and around contemporary art: by artists in the studio, by curators and institutions, by historians and critics, and by researchers who are themselves practitioners.

That mission explains the journal's two-section structure, which its own pages describe carefully. The Articles section is a platform for debate between researchers and professionals in the theory and practice of contemporary art, carrying work on completed or ongoing scientific research. The Visual Pages are a collection of works given by their authors and managed by BRAC with the contribution of the University of Barcelona in their cataloguing, maintenance and management; the site describes them as original artistic works with a coherent discourse or narrative. The Visual Pages are therefore not illustrations to articles: they are a curated, catalogued body of artwork published as part of the journal's scholarly record, standing alongside the written research. Few journals in any field give practice-based work a permanent, catalogued home of this kind within the same publication as conventional articles, and for artist-researchers that is BRAC's most distinctive offer.

The readership the journal names follows from the same mission: the university community; the active members of the artistic community — artists, curators, art centre directors, cultural managers, theorists, historians and art critics; and, by extension, everyone interested in art. The journal's content, visible in its current volume (volume 14, 2026), matches that breadth: recent articles range across the possibilities of art for configuring the visible, the use of the colophon as an information source in print collections, strategies around audiences and anarchist aesthetics in a contemporary art collective, and remediation and cultural memory in Latin American contemporary art — work that moves between close looking, archival method, political aesthetics and media theory, often in the same issue.

Publication Model: Rhythm, Languages and Open Access

BRAC is an electronic journal published three times a year, on 3 February, 3 June and 3 October, punctually since 2013, as its site states. Since March 2022 it has also operated a continuous publication system: the contents of each issue appear across the year as they are ready (online first), until, on the scheduled dates, the issue is closed and its articles pass into the fixed volume. This change, the journal explains, considerably speeds up the time to publication, since authors no longer wait for a complete issue before their work appears. The journal's volume numbering runs from its 2013 founding; volume 14 corresponds to 2026, and its issues in that year follow the February, June and October pattern.

The journal publishes work in English, Spanish and Catalan, and its multilingualism is systematic rather than decorative: it always publishes the title, abstract and keywords of every article in all three languages, whatever the language of the article itself, and published articles pass through style correction, formatting and linguistic revision in the relevant language. Submissions are received on a permanent, year-round basis. For authors outside the Spanish- and Catalan-speaking world, the English route is fully open; for the journal's home community in Barcelona, the three-language model keeps local scholarship and international scholarship in the same conversation, which fits both its University of Barcelona origins and its stated international participation.

Its access model is stated with unusual clarity. BRAC describes itself as an open access journal giving free, immediate access to its contents in order to foster the free exchange of knowledge, with no charge of publication or reading fees and no advertising, with the support of the University of Barcelona and Editorial Hipatia. Its DOAJ record confirms the economics: the directory records that the journal has no article processing charge, and gives 2013 as its open access start year. On licensing, the journal's site states that, unless otherwise indicated, since June 2024 its contents are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND); images belonging to others that appear in a document are used as visual quotation for analysis, comment or critical judgement and are not subject to that licence. The DOAJ record lists both CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND for the title, which reflects the journal's licensing history; authors and reusers should follow the licence stated on the article they are using, and the journal's current site statement for work published since June 2024.

Peer Review and Editorial Standards

All articles and Visual Pages published in BRAC undergo a rigorous review process, the journal states, based on a prior analysis by the editors and blind review sent to two reviewers — described on its pages as a double anonymous evaluation, and recorded in its DOAJ entry as double anonymous peer review. That the Visual Pages pass through the same process as written articles matters: practice-based submissions are assessed as research contributions, not accepted as decoration. An author preparing a visual submission should therefore expect to articulate the work's discourse or narrative — the journal's own description of the section requires original artistic works with a coherent discourse — in a form reviewers can assess.

The journal's ethics statement commits it to high standards of conduct at every stage of publication, following the ethical standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including its Best Practice Guidelines for journal editors and its international standards for editors and authors. It guarantees the confidentiality of the evaluation process — the anonymity of reviewers and authors, the content evaluated, and the reviewers' reports — declares plagiarism strictly prohibited, with plagiarised or fraudulent texts to be withdrawn or refused, and commits its editors to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary. The journal also maintains a gender equality policy page, and its site is published in the journal's three working languages. The names of the current editors and board are published on the journal's own editorial team page, which the DOAJ record links; because editorial teams change, this profile does not reproduce a roster that could go stale, and authors should consult that page directly.

Indexing and Metrics

BRAC's clearest external credential is its DOAJ listing, checked directly for this profile. The DOAJ record gives the title as BRAC, the publisher as Hipatia Press of Spain, the electronic ISSN as 2014-8992, the subject as Arts in general in the Library of Congress classification, keywords of contemporary art, artistic creation, and art and science, languages of Spanish, English and Catalan, a double anonymous review process, and no article processing charge — each of these matching the journal's own statements, which is exactly the cross-check a directory listing is meant to provide. OpenAlex likewise flags the source as in DOAJ, with 2013 as its first year there.

OpenAlex figures, resolved through the ISSN to source S4210239045 and quoted as at checking, are: 303 works, all 303 of them recorded as open access works, 152 citations, an h-index of 5, an i10-index of 0, and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.12, with coverage from 2013 to 2025 and Hipatia Press as host organisation. Its topic profile is a faithful map of the journal's mission: Art, Politics and Modernism leads, followed by Art, Aesthetics and Perception; Visual Culture and Art Theory; Artistic and Creative Research; and Art, Technology and Culture. The Journals World record for the journal previously carried a lower h-index figure of 2 from its own database coverage; the difference between that figure and the OpenAlex h-index of 5 illustrates why any metric for a small arts journal should be quoted with its source and date, since coverage of practice-based and multilingual humanities publishing differs sharply between databases. Citation counts in this field are also structurally modest: contemporary art research is read, exhibited, taught and built upon in studios and galleries in ways citation indexes capture only partially, and a trilingual journal's influence in its home region will always be understated by global citation totals. Judged instead by its stated terms — a decade-plus of punctual tri-annual publication, a university-rooted editorial home, genuine no-fee open access, DOAJ listing, and a distinctive practice-based section — BRAC presents a coherent and verifiable record.

Publishing with BRAC

For authors, the practical position is attractive and simple. There is no fee to publish and no fee to read; submissions are open permanently; work may be written in English, Spanish or Catalan; and accepted work appears online first under the continuous publication system, then in the fixed issue closing on 3 February, 3 June or 3 October. Two kinds of submission are welcomed: research articles, on completed or ongoing research, addressed to the debate between researchers and professionals in the theory and practice of contemporary art; and Visual Pages, original artistic works with a coherent discourse or narrative, which the University of Barcelona helps to catalogue and maintain. Both go through editorial assessment and double anonymous review by two reviewers, and both are published with title, abstract and keywords in all three of the journal's languages — the journal arranges that multilingual presentation, and articles receive style and linguistic revision before publication, per the journal's stated process. Copyright and reuse follow the licence noted above, and authors should read the journal's current open access and review pages at Hipatia Press before submitting, since those pages carry the operative detail.

The best-fit submissions are those that take the theory–practice relationship seriously: practice-based research that reflects on its own making; theoretical work grounded in real artistic practice; studies of contemporary art's institutions, audiences and politics; and work on art's intersections with science, technology and other fields — the journal's own keywords name art and science among its interests. Work that is purely a chronicle of exhibitions, or purely technical art history with no engagement with contemporary practice, fits the stated aims less well. Artist-researchers in particular should note the rarity of the Visual Pages offer: a peer-reviewed, catalogued, permanently published home for artworks as research, inside a journal that also publishes the written debate about them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is BRAC? BRAC. Barcelona Research Art Creation is an open access electronic journal created in 2013 at the University of Barcelona and published by Hipatia Press, for critical reflection on the relationship between theory and practice in contemporary art.

What is its ISSN? ISSN 2014-8992, its electronic ISSN, as recorded on the journal's site, in its DOAJ record and in OpenAlex.

Does BRAC charge authors or readers? No. Its open access statement declares free, immediate access with no publication or reading fees, and its DOAJ record confirms that it has no article processing charge.

How often does BRAC publish, and in which languages? Three times a year (3 February, 3 June, 3 October), with continuous online-first publication since 2022; it publishes in English, Spanish and Catalan, with titles, abstracts and keywords in all three.

What are the Visual Pages? A section of original artistic works with a coherent discourse or narrative, given by their authors, reviewed like the articles, and catalogued with the contribution of the University of Barcelona.

Is BRAC peer reviewed and indexed? Yes — double anonymous review by two reviewers after editorial assessment, per the journal and its DOAJ record; it is listed in DOAJ, and OpenAlex records 303 works and an h-index of 5 as at checking.

Under what licence does BRAC publish? Since June 2024, CC BY-NC-ND unless otherwise indicated, per the journal's site; its DOAJ record also lists CC BY, reflecting its licensing history — follow the licence on the article itself.

Sources and Verification

This profile is based on: the journal's own pages at Hipatia Press (focus and scope, readership, frequency and continuous publication, languages, peer review process, open access statement, licence, publication ethics, sponsors, current volume), for the journal's own statements; the Directory of Open Access Journals record for ISSN 2014-8992, retrieved through the DOAJ search API for this profile, for the listing, publisher, subject, keywords, languages, review process, licence entries and absence of an article processing charge; and the OpenAlex source record S4210239045, resolved through the ISSN endpoint, for the works, citation, h-index, openness and topic figures quoted as at checking. Facts that none of these sources established are described in this profile as not published, not publicly disclosed, or could not be verified.