About the Journal

The expected date of the next issue is May 2025.
The deadline for submissions is 1st April 2025.
Vol. 6, No. 1

Frequency
Semi-annual (October-Novemer/Fall Edition and April-May/Spring Edition)

Thematic Synopsis / Aims & Scope
DISCERN is a scientific and cross-disciplinary open access journal (ISSN digital: 2184-6995) with blind peer review, which publishes articles in the broad and multi-faceted area of design for social change and social innovation. Through original conceptual, theoretical, and empirical research articles, it promotes and shares interdisciplinary and diverse knowledge related to the research and practice of design for social change, sustainable innovation, and entrepreneurship in an open, global and multidisciplinary perspective.

The authors and readers of this journal are educators, academics, researchers, practititoners, postgraduate students, and scholars from the fields of social design, innovation, entrepreneurship, and social sciences, as well as practitioners in the broad area of social design at national and/or international levels, interested in the global debate on the current environmental, social, economic and cultural societal challenges.

DISCERN is published in March/April (Spring Edition) and September/October (Autumn Edition) of each year. It accepts papers only written in English and there is no fee to publish them.

The editorial team encourages contributions from a wide cross-sectoral audience  and it invites a variety of submissions including:

  • Original research articles (conceptual, theoretical and empirical)
  • Discussion articles and dialogues
  • Research case studies
  • Work in progress
  • Shorter reports
  • Review articles
  • Book reviews

Keywords
Design, Social design, Social change, Social innovation, Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Education, Social enterprises, Social awareness, Social responsibility

Review process
All submissions are editorially and double-blind peer-reviewed. The editorial team undertakes an initial and a final review. Submissions are forwarded to two reviewers, members of the Advisory Board of the journal or registered reviewers with the journal, for blind review. The editorial team seeks to allocate reviewers who have as much as possible knowledge of the theme/topic of the submission.

The publication of articles may be:
a) approved without revisions
b) approved with revisions
c) not accepted

Ethics policy
DISCERN has adopted The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (Revised Edition, 2017). The ethics policy is also available as a pdf at Conduct_for-Research_Integrity.pdf. The journal routinely screens article submissions for plagiarism. In addition, the editorial team has adopted the COPE guidelines in dealing with allegations of research misconduct.

Copyright notice / Open access policy
Upon submission, all authors agree that their articles will be made freely available to read immediately upon publication, with an open copyright license. In addition, all authors or their institutions retain the copyright of their work.

Publisher / Archiving
Art + Design: elearning lab - design for social change, Cyprus University of Technology  - www.elearningartdesign.org
All issues of the journal are archived on a server run by the Art + Design: elearning lab.