About the Journal
Focus and Scope
The Arcos Design journal is a biannual digital publication of the Graduate Program in Design (PPDESDI) of the Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). It seeks to promote the dissemination of scientific studies and research in design at its intersection with other fields of knowledge and practice.
We publish full, original, and unpublished articles aligned with specific thematic calls for papers or themes related to the PPDESDI's research lines:
- Design, Culture, and Visuality
This research line encompasses studies that reflect on different manifestations and media of visuality and image technologies, as well as the relationships between design, history, and material culture. It bridges the visual arts and digital technologies, investigating moving image processes, graphic production, data visualization, artificial intelligence, and interface design. It also addresses investigations into the written form, the relationships between writing and image, and the role of writing in contemporary communication media. - Design, Politics, and Subjectivation
Based on an understanding of the political implications of design, this research line seeks to investigate the field's relationships with projectual thinking and the processes of knowledge production, subjectivation, and social transformation in contemporary societies. It promotes transversal dialogues with distinct fields such as education, cultural studies, sociology, and psychology. It fosters research grounded in critical theories, participatory methodologies, experimental approaches, intervention research, and exploratory historiographies. It seeks to examine the ways in which design manifests, through discourses and practices, the interrelationships between political resistance tactics and sociocultural mediations. - Design, Management, and Innovation
In this line, research is conducted with an emphasis on innovation and services, including investigations into knowledge management practices and decision-making processes. Studies in this line also engage with new organizational arrangements for production processes and service provision, as well as their relationships with new materials, in dialogue with related fields such as socio-environmental design and digital technologies. - Design, Territorialities, and the Anthropocene
This research line develops studies that investigate design practice in the Anthropocene, dwelling, and territorialities, in conjunction with fields such as anthropology, philosophy, architecture, urbanism, and art. Questioning the human exceptionalism characteristic of modern thought, it employs situated approaches—whether speculative, critical, collaborative, cartographic, or projectual—seeking ways to imagine, narrate, fabulate, fictionalize, and contest pathways for the future. By examining what characterizes the epoch of "Man"—the Anthropocene—it rethinks design within a cosmopolitical dimension, paying attention, alongside social struggles, to the colonial matrix of power.
The journal is dedicated to fostering dialogue between research, teaching, and community outreach as a way to encompass the diverse interests surrounding design activity. The journal serves as a democratic space for the development of researchers, providing an avenue for early-career scholars and promoting participation and dialogue across various spheres of higher education.
We accept papers in Portuguese, Spanish, and English. Submissions must comply with the "Submission Conditions", following the "Author Guidelines" and "Section Policies".
Publication Frequency
The journal is published biannually, with the first issue scheduled for publication in January and the second in July.
Articles related to the PPDESDI's themes are received on a rolling basis, while all others are subject to thematic calls for papers.
Peer Review Process
The journal adopts a Double-Blind Peer Review system, guaranteeing anonymity throughout the entire evaluation process.
To be published, the article undergoes the following stages:
Desk Review: evaluation by the editorial team based on suitability, relevance and academic quality.
Peer Review: articles are evaluated by two reviewers, who issue reviews based on criteria established by the journal.
Open Access Policy
The Arcos Design journal adopts an Open Access policy for scientific knowledge, based on the principle of democratizing science, understanding it as publicly and collectively constructed knowledge that must be fully and universally accessible.
Therefore, all article submissions, evaluations, and publications are free of charge (APC-free).
All journal content is freely, immediately, and fully available upon publication, with no embargo periods or registration/subscription requirements for reading and/or downloading.
Copyright
As of 2025, the copyright for articles published in the Arcos Design journal belongs to their respective authors, who grant the journal the Right of First Publication of their work under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 License. Works published prior to 2025 remain under the copyright of the journal.
Authors are fully authorized to enter into separate, non-exclusive contractual arrangements for the distribution of the published version of their work in this journal (e.g., posting it to an institutional repository, publishing it as a book chapter, or including it in a collection), provided that authorship and original publication in this journal are acknowledged.
We encourage authors to distribute and post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories, on social media, or on personal websites) after publication in the journal, aiming to increase the visibility, impact, and citation of the research.
Creative Commons License
Works published by the journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
Under this license, third parties are permitted to read, download, copy, and distribute the material, as well as create derivative works (e.g., adaptations or translations), provided that the authors are credited and the original publication in the Arcos Design journal is acknowledged. The use and distribution of derivative material for commercial purposes without the authors' permission is prohibited.
Digital Preservation and Archiving Policies
The archives of the Arcos Design journal are preserved using the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system, an open-source technology implemented on the UERJ Electronic Publications Portal. The journal's content is also mirrored in the Cariniana Network (IBICT), which ensures the maintenance and continuous access to national scientific content, and by the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP PN), the network responsible for archiving content managed in the Open Journal Systems (OJS).
e-ISSN: 1984-5596 | ISSN: 1516-0874 | Year established: 1998 (Print), 2009 (Online) | Subject Area: Industrial Design (6.12.00.00-0)| Qualis Classification : A2 (2021-2024 Evaluation Cycle)
Indexing
Indexes and Databases
Directories and Open Access Portals
Rankings and Evaluations
Journal History
The Arcos Design journal was established in 1998 and published three consecutive issues in its print version. With the creation of the Gratuate Program in Design at ESDI, the journal was relaunched in its online version in January 2009, maintaining its biannual publication schedule. In 2013, the Arcos journal joined the UERJ Electronic Publications Portal, and its first issues were completed and published on the SEER platform. In addition to full research articles and review papers, since 2013, we have also published thesis and dissertation abstracts, short communications, and interviews with professionals and researchers in the field.
