Psycoloquy Call for Papers

[Stevan Harnad]

                 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 at 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

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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.

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Prof. Stevan Harnad         psyc at 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)