About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Septentrio Creative is a diamond open-access publication channel led by scholars at UiT The Arctic University of Norway that supports and explores creativity in academia and sets new standards for open peer review and academic publishing. Septentrio Creative accepts submissions from all disciplines and subject areas with a particular interest in cross-disciplinary research. Septentrio Creative publishes creative materials such as exhibitions, installations, pieces of short fiction, poems, music, digital art, software, scores, blueprints, and/or other visionary outputs or complementary materials to research published elsewhere. Septentrio Creative will contain various results from research, development, methods, approaches, teaching, innovation, mobility, outreach, creative administration, interventions, and more at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. The journal will be wild. By this, we mean that it will evolve over time in dynamic interaction with its contributors and the material submitted.

Why choose Septentrio Creative?

  • Open access License: CC BY 4.0
  • Digital and fast publication
  • No publishing fees
  • Guest editing of journal issues is possible and encouraged – please get in touch with us with your ideas.

Review process

  • Author-chosen reviewers: Before submission, at least two peers, invited by the authors, review the contribution. 
  • Open credit: Reviewers' names, positions, and affiliations are published with the contribution. By being named, they vouch for the work.
  • Voluntary documentation: Publishing the review dialogue is welcome — but always the authors' choice.
  • Editorial check: The editors verify format according to the Guidelines and that review has taken place.

FAQ

Q1: Why do I choose my own reviewers? Isn't that the journal's job?

Creative and cross-disciplinary work is easily misjudged: what is groundbreaking in one field can look ordinary in another. You know best which context your work speaks to, so you invite reviewers who can assess it in that context. The journal's role is not to guard a gate, but to make the process possible and visible.

Q2: What makes someone a suitable reviewer?

Someone qualified to engage with your work on its own terms, through disciplinary expertise, artistic practice, or relevant experience. Reviewers may come from inside or outside academia. Beyond being qualified, they should be able to judge your work impartially and independently: not co-authors of the submitted work, not in a supervisory relationship with you, and free of any interest in the outcome that could colour their judgement.

Q3: Can I ask a friend or colleague?

Colleagues, yes. Most good reviewers are found in one's own networks. But remember: your reviewers will be publicly named as vouching for your work. Choose people whose engagement you trust to be honest, not just kind. A soft review helps no one; a rigorous one makes the work stronger and the endorsement meaningful.

Q4: What does it mean to be named as a reviewer?

Your name, position, and affiliation are published with the contribution. You are openly standing behind the work, saying: I have engaged with this seriously, and it holds. This visible accountability replaces the anonymity of conventional peer review.

Q5: As a reviewer, what am I actually assessing?

Engage with the work in light of the journal's quality criteria, and in the context the authors have positioned it. Your task is not to measure the work against your own field's conventions, but to ask: does it do what it claims, in the context it claims to do it?

Q6: Does the review happen before or after submission?

Before. The review is a formative dialogue: it shapes the work while it can still change. By the time you submit, the contribution carries its review with it.

Q7: Will the review be published?

Not unless you want it to be. The review conversation belongs to authors and reviewers. Publishing documentation of the process, reviewer statements, or your reasons for choosing your reviewers, is welcome, but always voluntary.

Q8: What do the editors do, then?

The editors check that the contribution fits the journal's format and scope, and that the review has taken place. They are hosts, not gatekeepers.

Q9: Is this real peer review?

Yes, and arguably a more demanding form of it. The review is done by qualified peers, and unlike anonymous review, the reviewers put their names and reputations behind their judgment, in public, permanently.