Three Teachings Studies: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (TTS) is an international, peer-reviewed, open-access scholarly journal dedicated to the critical study of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism as intellectual, religious, ethical, and cultural traditions. The journal welcomes original scholarship investigating their historical formation, philosophical foundations, textual transmission, institutional development, ritual practices, artistic expressions, and social significance. By bringing together historically grounded inquiry, critical interpretation, and interdisciplinary scholarship, TTS seeks to advance understanding of the distinctive developments and complex relationships of the Three Teachings within East Asia and across their wider cultural and intellectual networks.

Aims and Scholarly Mission

TTS provides a scholarly forum for the investigation of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist thought and practice across different historical periods, geographical regions, languages, and social environments. The journal recognizes the Three Teachings as historically developing traditions whose identities, boundaries, intellectual systems, and institutional forms have been shaped by processes of interpretation, transmission, adaptation, and contestation.

The journal encourages research that treats these traditions as historically situated and internally diverse. Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have developed distinctive intellectual genealogies, religious institutions, textual authorities, and forms of practice. Their historical relationships have included dialogue, competition, selective appropriation, cooperation, differentiation, and transformation. These relationships should be investigated through appropriate evidence rather than explained through predetermined assumptions of harmony, opposition, or synthesis.

TTS welcomes both focused studies of individual traditions and comparative or interdisciplinary investigations involving multiple traditions. Authors are not required to address all three traditions within a single manuscript. Research concentrating on Confucianism, Daoism, or Buddhism independently is equally welcome when it makes a significant scholarly contribution within the journal's scope.

The journal aims to connect detailed engagement with primary sources, philosophical arguments, historical records, material evidence, and lived religious practices with broader questions concerning intellectual authority, cultural transmission, social organization, human experience, and historical change.

Scope of Research

TTS welcomes original and critically engaged scholarship across a broad range of subjects related to the Three Teachings. The journal's scope includes, but is not limited to, the following areas:

• Philosophy and Intellectual History: Research on metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, cosmology, political thought, theories of human nature, self-cultivation, philosophical argumentation, and the historical development of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist intellectual traditions.
• Classical Texts, Scriptures, and Philology: Critical studies of canonical and noncanonical texts, scriptural traditions, manuscript cultures, commentarial practices, textual variants, translation histories, critical editions, and the interpretation and transmission of written sources.
• Religious History and Institutions: Investigations of religious communities, temples, monasteries, scholarly academies, associations, institutional organization, religious leadership, educational systems, and the relationships between religious traditions and political authorities.
• Ritual, Religious Practice, and Cultivation: Studies of liturgical traditions, ceremonies, devotional activities, meditation, ethical cultivation, ritual performance, religious education, initiation, ordination, and embodied forms of religious and philosophical knowledge.
• Lineage, Authority, and Transmission: Research on intellectual genealogies, religious lineages, master-disciple relationships, doctrinal legitimacy, institutional succession, canonical authority, and the historical construction and transformation of traditions.
• Sound, Music, and Religious Aesthetics: Investigations of ritual music, liturgical chanting, sacred sound, vocal practices, musical transmission, auditory experience, religious aesthetics, and the relationship between sound, philosophical understanding, and ritual life.
• Art, Literature, and Material Culture: Studies of religious and philosophical literature, visual representation, painting, calligraphy, sculpture, architecture, inscriptions, ritual objects, sacred landscapes, and other material expressions associated with the Three Teachings.
• Society, Politics, and Everyday Life: Analyses of religious and philosophical traditions in relation to family life, social ethics, governance, education, local communities, gender, social organization, collective identities, and everyday cultural practices.
• Interreligious Relations and Cultural Exchange: Research on historical encounters, intellectual debates, religious cooperation, competition, doctrinal borrowing, adaptation, and processes of convergence or differentiation within and among the Three Teachings.
• Transregional Transmission and Contemporary Transformation: Studies of the circulation of religious ideas, texts, practices, institutions, and communities across geographical and linguistic boundaries, including modern reinterpretations, religious revival, migration, and diasporic developments.

The subjects listed above are intended to describe the breadth of the journal rather than impose restrictive disciplinary or thematic boundaries. Manuscripts addressing related topics may be considered when their scholarly contribution to the study of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, or their relevant intellectual and cultural contexts is clearly established.

Research Areas

To support sustained academic dialogue across its principal fields of inquiry, TTS maintains five thematic research areas. These areas provide intellectual orientations for scholarly contributions and encourage focused investigation of recurring questions in the study of the Three Teachings.

The research areas are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. Manuscripts may engage with more than one area, and contributions within the broader scope of the journal are not required to fit exclusively into any single thematic category.

Ritual, Transmission, and Practice

This research area examines how religious and philosophical teachings are enacted, preserved, and transformed through ritual performance, liturgical traditions, institutional practices, ceremonial authority, and embodied knowledge. It welcomes research on Confucian rites, Buddhist ritual systems, Daoist liturgies, local ceremonies, religious institutions, and the social and historical contexts of ritual transmission.

Sound, Music, and Voice

This research area investigates the sonic and musical dimensions of religious and philosophical life, including ritual music, chanting, recitation, musical texts, notation, vocal techniques, auditory environments, and the embodied experience of sound. It encourages historical, philosophical, ethnomusicological, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding how sound mediates religious expression, cultural memory, and the transmission of knowledge.

Daily Practice, Ethics, and Embodiment

This research area explores the relationships among ethical cultivation, religious practice, bodily experience, and everyday life. Particular attention is given to family and community practices, moral education, self-cultivation, domestic religiosity, social relationships, embodied knowledge, and the ways in which religious and philosophical understandings are interpreted and practiced beyond formal doctrinal settings.

Lineage, Authority, and Transmission

This research area examines the formation, representation, and contestation of intellectual and religious genealogies, the construction of legitimate authority, and the mechanisms through which traditions are transmitted across generations. It includes research on Confucian intellectual lineages and master-disciple relationships, Buddhist succession and transmission narratives, Daoist ritual and institutional lineages, and broader questions of orthodoxy, institutional authority, textual legitimacy, and historical reinterpretation.

Interactions in Context

This research area focuses on the historical, regional, political, and sociocultural circumstances of encounters among Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. It investigates intellectual negotiation, institutional relations, shared religious environments, regional religious landscapes, textual and material exchange, and transregional cultural circulation. Research should situate claims about influence, cooperation, competition, or synthesis within identifiable historical and social contexts.

Geographical and Cultural Scope

TTS places particular emphasis on East Asia and historically interconnected cultural regions, including China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The journal welcomes research addressing the movement of ideas, individuals, texts, artistic forms, and religious practices across these regions, while recognizing the distinctive historical and cultural conditions of each setting.

Research extending beyond East Asia is also welcome where a substantial intellectual, historical, religious, or cultural relationship to the Three Teachings can be demonstrated. Relevant subjects may include transregional Buddhist networks, the international circulation of Confucian and Daoist thought, overseas religious communities, diasporic practice, translation, intellectual reception, and contemporary cross-cultural reinterpretations.

Geographical comparisons should be grounded in clearly identified historical relationships, sources, or analytical questions. The journal does not assume that the circulation of a tradition necessarily produces uniform beliefs, institutions, or cultural practices across different societies.

Disciplinary and Methodological Approaches

TTS welcomes interdisciplinary and discipline-specific research drawing on religious studies, philosophy, history, intellectual history, philology, literature, anthropology, sociology, ethnomusicology, art history, historical geography, archaeology, and other relevant scholarly fields.

Appropriate research methods may include historical source criticism, philosophical analysis, close textual reading, manuscript and archival investigation, comparative interpretation, ethnography, interviews, participant observation, material culture analysis, spatial research, and other analytical approaches suited to the research question.

The journal does not privilege a single theoretical school or methodological orientation. Contributions should, however, articulate a clear scholarly problem, identify relevant evidence, explain their analytical approach where appropriate, and demonstrate how their findings or interpretations contribute to existing academic knowledge.

Studies involving living communities, interviews, field recordings, or other human-participant research must observe applicable research ethics requirements. Manuscripts using restricted archival materials, culturally sensitive sources, or third-party copyrighted content should address relevant access, confidentiality, and permission requirements.

Languages and Scholarly Exchange

TTS accepts scholarly submissions in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. The journal recognizes multilingual scholarship as essential to the critical study of East Asian intellectual and religious traditions and encourages the responsible use of original-language materials.

Manuscripts written in languages other than English must include an English title and abstract. Authors may retain Chinese characters, Japanese writing systems, Korean Hangul, Vietnamese historical scripts, and other relevant original-language expressions where necessary for textual accuracy and scholarly analysis.

Romanization and translation should be used consistently and where appropriate to the argument and intended readership. All scholarly submissions must follow the journal's mandatory Chicago Manual of Style, Notes and Bibliography citation requirements.

Types of Scholarly Contributions

TTS publishes scholarly contributions in several categories, reflecting the diversity of research practices and forms of academic communication within the humanities and related disciplines.

• Articles: Original research presenting substantive scholarly arguments, interpretations, and findings.
• Review Articles: Critical assessments and syntheses of scholarly literature, significant debates, and research developments.
• Book Reviews: Critical examinations of publications relevant to the journal's academic fields.
• Translation and Annotation: Scholarly translations accompanied by appropriate textual, linguistic, historical, or philosophical commentary.
• Forum Contributions: Focused scholarly discussions, critical responses, and contributions to ongoing academic debates.
• Documents and Textual Notes: Critical presentations and analyses of manuscripts, historical documents, inscriptions, and other source materials.
• Lectures: Invited or editorially curated scholarly lectures developed into publication-ready academic contributions.

Requirements concerning manuscript length, abstracts, keywords, submission files, and article categories are specified in the journal's Submission Guidelines.

Editorial Standards and Scope Assessment

Manuscripts are assessed according to their relevance to the journal, originality, scholarly contribution, clarity of argument, methodological appropriateness, reliability of evidence, and engagement with relevant academic literature.

Research articles undergo double-blind peer review in accordance with the journal's established editorial policies. Other types of scholarly contributions may undergo editorial assessment or external specialist review as appropriate to their content and publication category.

The journal welcomes critical engagement with religious beliefs, philosophical claims, historical interpretations, and established academic positions. Authors may employ different analytical, philosophical, or interpretive perspectives, provided that their contributions demonstrate scholarly reasoning, appropriate evidence, and respect for academic integrity.

Manuscripts consisting primarily of devotional advocacy, unsupported polemics, descriptive summaries without an identifiable scholarly contribution, or discussions lacking a meaningful connection to the journal's academic scope may be considered unsuitable for publication. These criteria concern the scholarly character of the submission rather than the personal religious or philosophical position of its author.

TTS maintains author-retained copyright and immediate open-access publication under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Editorial decisions are independent of applicable publication charges and authors' financial circumstances.

Submission and Editorial Contact

Authors wishing to submit a manuscript should consult the journal's submission requirements and use the official online submission system. The editorial office welcomes inquiries concerning the suitability of proposed contributions and clarification of the journal's academic scope.

Submission Guidelines: View Submission Requirements

Author Registration: Create an Author Account

Editorial Inquiries: [email protected]