The Journal of Geek Studies is a place for sharing knowledge and geekness. Here you can find original articles about science, technology, and the humanities that are related to general geek culture. The journal publishes original articles joining those topics, creating a discussion around an academic topic based on something geeky.

The Journal of Geek Studies is a non-peer-reviewed, open-access, and non-profit online magazine. It is published biannually (June and December), but articles are made available online as soon as they are ready.

Why Science? Science is humanity’s most powerful tool, but too few know about it. As Carl Sagan once said: “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.“

Why Humanities? Given the state of the world today, the many ways in which the humanities can approach problems are, perhaps, more important than ever.

Why Geek? Come on, is there really a need to explain how awesome geek culture is?

Aims & scopes

We accept any original contribution that combines an academic topic with something geeky – in any amount of one or the other, as long as both are present. Though most of our articles presently come from the life sciences, we welcome contributions from any field of science, the humanities, technology, or the arts. As long as there is genuine knowledge to be shared and heartfelt geekness to be explored, you’ll be fine. Naturally, good research for each topic is essential. So please obey the good practices of writing and do not forget to cite the sources of information used.

Just remember, our goal is the popularization of science and other fields of knowledge, so everything must be explained with a broader audience in mind. However, this does not mean “dumbing down” the content. We follow the late Stephen J. Gould in this, who said: “Anything, even the conceptually most complex material, can be written for general audiences without any dumbing down. Of course you have to explain things carefully. This goes back to Galileo, who wrote his great books as dialogues in Italian, not as treatises in Latin. And to Darwin, who wrote The Origin of Species for general readers. I think a lot of people pick up Darwin’s book and assume it must be a popular version of some technical monograph, but there is no technical monograph. That’s what he wrote.“

Our symbol

The journal’s symbol is an owlbear atop a massive tome. An owlbear is a fictional creature created by Gary Gygax for the first edition of the Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper RPG. It is present in all later editions and many non-D&D RPGs and video games, being a favorite monster among players.

It is usual for zoological journals to elect an animal as a symbol and/or its name, such as The Nautilus, Ibis, The Auk, etc. Thus, we elected the owlbear as our symbol to represent the geek side of the journal. Also, if its “components” are taken apart, both the owl and the bear are symbols of wisdom. Is the owlbear then twice as wise? Well, maybe not, but it sure is awesome.

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The Journal of Geek Studies, its logo and combination mark are copyrighted material, all rights reserved. The content of the journal and website (unless otherwise noted) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Each author is responsible for the scientific basis of their articles. The authors’ views do not necessarily represent those of the editors.