Submit an Article

Authors are invited to submit manuscripts addressing various aspects of quantitative and qualitative user experience research that have a significant value to a broad spectrum of UX practitioners and academics.

No Fee Publication

The Journal of User Experience does not charge any fees to authors for publishing their papers. All articles are available online and as downloadable PDFs free of charge.

Topics may Include:

The Journal of User experience publishes a broad range of research, including:

  • User experience research whose empirical findings will be of interest to the general readership of the journal (for more guidance, see Review Criteria)
  • Comparative studies between UX methods, approaches, and techniques
  • Newly defined and evaluated UX metrics
  • Data analysis approaches
  • Academic research that has strong practical and applicable implications to design and evaluation of products and/or services
  • Critical or thought/discussion papers challenging and questioning UX practices and proposing innovative ideas and approaches
  • Reporting the design and implementation of teaching or training approaches
  • Descriptions and discussions of new tools for supporting UX research
  • The empirical development and implementation of UX standards and guidelines

How to Submit a Paper

  1. Carefully review the Author Guidelines (.docx file.), adhering to all requirements.
  2. Prepare your manuscript using the JUX template (.docx file.)
  3. Send your manuscript in Word format via email: jus@uxpa.org.

Review Process

  1. The manuscript is received by the editor(s) in chief.
  2. Acknowledgement is sent to the corresponding author typically within one week of receipt.
  3. Editor(s) in chief review submission to determine if it meets the submission requirements.
  4. If the submission does not pass the pre-review, the editor will inform the corresponding author regarding next steps, which could be 
    1. the manuscript is not suitable for publication in the journal (e.g., fatal flaw in experimental design; too narrow a topic) or 
    2. the manuscript would be suitable for review upon making one or more required changes (e.g., adding the Tips section).
  5. Once the submission has passed the pre-review, the manuscript is assigned to three editorial board members for blind reviews.
  6. Review and acceptance/rejection decision is sent to the corresponding author within 6-8 weeks.
  7. The corresponding author will be given one of three decisions:
    1. Acceptance, pending revision; 
    2. Invitation to resubmit following significant changes, with no guarantee of acceptance following a second round of review;
    3. Rejected
  8. If the submission is accepted, the authors will be expected to submit the revised manuscript within one month.

Review Criteria

Reviewers will evaluate each manuscript according to the following criteria:

  • Are the objectives and/or hypotheses clear? 
  • Does it have a comprehensive, relevant literature review, including accurate citations?
  • Does it present a well-defined, valid research method? 
  • Is there a clear description of the measures and their validity? 
  • Does it present appropriate quantitative or qualitative data? 
  • Does it include the appropriate statistics or analysis? 
  • Do the findings have a generalization value to other studies, populations, or businesses? 
  • Is the paper written in a logical and organized way? 
  • Is there a clear discussion of the practical implications? 
  • Is there a clear discussion concerning the impact on the user or the product? 
  • Is there a clear discussion for future work? 
  • Is there a clear discussion of the take-aways for other practitioners?

Product Specific Research

*** Special note about publishing research focused on a specific product or service: Even though we are the Journal of User Experience (JUX), we rarely publish the results of research that focuses on a specific product or service because the results are so rarely generalizable and thus are rarely of interest beyond a very narrow readership. 

There has to be some other aspect of the study that makes it interesting to our broad readership. If you have conducted a well-designed standard usability study and are looking for a place to publish it, we recommend trying a conference or journal where the readers have an interest in the type of product or system that you evaluated (e.g., usability of library websites).

Use of Generative AI

The Journal of User Experience does not allow the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the preparation or writing of the manuscript. If you do use AI as part of your research process, you must clearly state how you used AI and which tools. 

Prior and Concurrent Publications

Sometimes we are asked if we accept submissions that were previously published, for example, short papers published in the proceedings of a professional conference. Most journals (JUX included) prohibit duplicate publication of data and writing because it complicates copyright and can improperly influence meta-analyses.

An exception to this are cases in which the submission acknowledges that the data were previously published but in the new submission the data are analyzed or presented in a different way that significantly advances theory or practice. Simply making a longer version of a shorter paper is not enough to justify republication.

If this applies to you, please let us know when you submit your work which parts were previously published, what is new, and why the new parts justify publication in the journal.

The Journal of User Experience does not permit submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. Discovery of concurrent submission is grounds for immediate rejection.