Psycoloquy Call for Papers

PSYCOLOQUY CALL FOR PAPERS PSYCOLOQUY is a refereed electronic journal (ISSN 1055-0143) sponsored on an experimental basis by the American Psychological Association and currently estimated to reach a readership of 50,000. PSYCOLOQUY publishes reports of new ideas and findings on which the author wishes to solicit rapid peer feedback, international and interdisciplinary ("Scholarly Skywriting"), in all areas of psychology and its related fields (biobehavioral science, cognitive science, neuroscience, social science, etc.). All contributions are refereed. Target article length should normally not exceed 500 lines [c. 4500 words]. Commentaries and responses should not exceed 200 lines [c. 1800 words]. All target articles, commentaries and responses must have (1) a short abstract (up to 100 words for target articles, shorter for commentaries and responses), (2) an indexable title, (3) the authors' full name(s), institutional address(es) and URL(s). In addition, for target articles only: (4) 6-8 indexable keywords, (5) a separate statement of the authors' rationale for soliciting commentary (e.g., why would commentary be useful and of interest to the field? what kind of commentary do you expect to elicit?) and (6) a list of potential commentators (with their email addresses). All paragraphs should be numbered in articles, commentaries and responses (see format of already published articles in the PSYCOLOQUY archive; line length should be < 80 characters, no hyphenation). It is strongly recommended that all figures be designed so as to be screen-readable ascii. If this is not possible, the provisional solution is the less desirable hybrid one of submitting them as .gif .jpeg .tiff or postscript files (or in some other universally available format) to be printed out locally by readers to supplement the screen-readable text of the article. PSYCOLOQUY also publishes multiple reviews of books in any of the above fields; these should normally be the same length as commentaries, but longer reviews will be considered as well. Book authors should submit a 500-line self-contained Precis of their book, in the format of a target article; if accepted, this will be published in PSYCOLOQUY together with a formal Call for Reviews (of the book, not the Precis). The author's publisher must agree in advance to furnish review copies to the reviewers selected. Authors of accepted manuscripts assign to PSYCOLOQUY the right to publish and distribute their text electronically and to archive and make it permanently retrievable electronically, but they retain the copyright, and after it has appeared in PSYCOLOQUY authors may republish their text in any way they wish -- electronic or print -- as long as they clearly acknowledge PSYCOLOQUY as its original locus of publication. However, except in very special cases, agreed upon in advance, contributions that have already been published or are being considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in PSYCOLOQUY, Please submit all material to psyc(a)pucc.princeton.edu http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/11/.libraries/.pujournals news:sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CRITERIA FOR ACCEPTANCE: To be eligible for publication, a PSYCOLOQUY target article should not only have sufficient conceptual rigor, empirical grounding, and clarity of style, but should also offer a clear rationale for soliciting Commentary. That rationale should be provided in the author's covering letter, together with a list of suggested commentators. A target article can be (i) the report and discussion of empirical research; (ii) an theoretical article that formally models or systematizes a body of research; or (iii) a novel interpretation, synthesis, or critique of existing experimental or theoretical work. Rrticles dealing with social or philosophical aspects of the behavioral and brain sciences are also eligible.. The service of Open Peer Commentary will be primarily devoted to original unpublished manuscripts. However, a recently published book whose contents meet the standards outlined above may also be eligible for Commentary. In such a Multiple Book Review, a comprehensive, 500-line precis by the author is published in advance of the commentaries and the author's response. In rare special cases, Commentary will also be extended to a position paper or an already published article dealing with particularly influential or controversial research. Submission of an article implies that it has not been published or is not being considered for publication elsewhere. Multiple book reviews and previously published articles appear by invitation only. The Associateship and professional readership of PSYCOLOQUY are encouraged to nominate current topics and authors for Commentary. In all the categories described, the decisive consideration for eligibility will be the desirability of Commentary for the submitted material. Controversially simpliciter is not a sufficient criterion for soliciting Commentary: a paper may be controversial simply because it is wrong or weak. Nor is the mere presence of interdisciplinary aspects sufficient: general cybernetic and "organismic" disquisitions are not appropriate for PSYCOLOQUY. Some appropriate rationales for seeking Open Peer Commentary would be that: (1) the material bears in a significant way on some current controversial issues in behavioral and brain sciences; (2) its findings substantively contradict some well-established aspects of current research and theory; (3) it criticizes the findings, practices, or principles of an accepted or influential line of work; (4) it unifies a substantial amount of disparate research; (5) it has important cross-disciplinary ramifications; (6) it introduces an innovative methodology or formalism for consideration by proponents of the established forms; (7) it meaningfully integrates a body of brain and behavioral data; (8) it places a hitherto dissociated area of research into an evolutionary or ecological perspective; etc. In order to assure communication with potential commentators (and readers) from other PSYCOLOQUY specialty areas, all technical terminology must be clearly defined or simplified, and specialized concepts must be fully described. NOTE TO COMMENTATORS: The purpose of the Open Peer Commentary service is to provide a concentrated constructive interaction between author and commentators on a topic judged to be of broad significance to the biobehavioral science community. Commentators should provide substantive criticism, interpretation, and elaboration as well as any pertinent complementary or supplementary material, such as illustrations; all original data will be refereed in order to assure the archival validity of PSYCOLOQUY commentaries. Commentaries and articles should be free of hyperbole and remarks ad hominem. STYLE AND FORMAT FOR ARTICLES AND COMMENTARIES TARGET ARTICLES: should not exceed 500 lines (~4500 words); commentaries should not exceed 200 lines (1800 words), including references. Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation should be consistent within each article and commentary and should follow the style recommended in the latest edition of A Manual of Style, The University of Chicago Press. It may be helpful to examine a recent issue of PSYCOLOQUY. All submissions must include an indexable title, followed by the authors' names in the form preferred for publication, full institutional addresses and electronic mail addresses, a 100-word abstract, and 6-12 keywords. Tables and diagrams should be made screen-readable wherever possible (if unavoidable, printable postscript files may contain the graphics separately). All paragraphs should be numbered, consecutively. No line should exceed 72 characters, and a blank line should separate paragraphs. REFERENCES: Bibliographic citations in the text must include the author's last name and the date of publication and may include page references. Complete bibliographic information for each citation should be included in the list of references. Examples of correct style are: Brown(1973); (Brown 1973); Brown 1973; 1978); (Brown 1973; Jones 1976); (Brown & Jones 1978); (Brown et al. 1978). References should be typed on a separate sheet in alphabetical order in the style of the following examples. Do not abbreviate journal titles. Kupfermann, I. & Weiss, K. (1978) The command neuron concept. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1:3-39. Dunn, J. (1976) How far do early differences in mother-child relations affect later developments? In: Growing point in ethology, ed. P. P. G. Bateson & R. A. Hinde, Cambridge University Press. Bateson, P. P. G. & Hinde, R. A., eds. (1978) Growing points in ethology, Cambridge University Press. EDITING: PSYCOLOQUY reserves the right to edit and proof all articles and commentaries accepted for publication. Authors of articles will be given the opportunity to review the copy-edited draft. Commentators will be asked to review copy-editing only when changes have been substantial. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Stevan Harnad psyc(a)pucc.princeton.edu Editor, Psycoloquy phone: +44 1703 594-583 fax: +44 1703 593-281 Department of Psychology http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/psyc University of Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/psyc.html Highfield, Southampton ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy news:sci.psychology.journals.psycoloquy gopher://gopher.princeton.edu/11/.libraries/.pujournals Sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA)