In the Editorial for the previous issue of Journal of Global Ethics, we selected to discuss COVID-19, a global issue affecting very nearly all of us in unprecedented ways. The disease continues as...

BackgroundTriggered by a series of controversies and diversifying expectations of editorial practices, several innovative peer review procedures and supporting technologies have been proposed. However, adoption of these new initiatives seems slow. This raises questions about the wider conditions for peer review change and about the considerations that inform decisions to innovate. We set out to study the structure of commercial publishers’ editorial process, to reveal how the benefits of peer review innovations are understood, and to describe the (...) considerations that inform the implementation of innovations.MethodsWe carried out field visits to the editorial office of two large academic publishers housing the editorial staff of several hundreds of journals, to study their editorial process, and interviewed editors not affiliated with large publishers. Field notes were transcribed and analysed using coding software.ResultsAt the publishers we analysed, the decision-making structure seems to show both clear patterns of hierarchy and layering of the different editorial practices. While information about new initiatives circulates widely, their implementation depends on assessment of stakeholder’s wishes, impact on reputation, efficiency and implementation costs, with final decisions left to managers at the top of the internal hierarchy. Main tensions arise between commercial and substantial arguments. The editorial process is closely connected to commercial practices of creating business value, and the very specific terms in which business value is understood, such as reputation considerations and the urge to increase efficiency. Journals independent of large commercial publishers tend to have less hierarchically structured processes, report more flexibility to implement innovations, and to a greater extent decouple commercial and editorial perspectives.ConclusionOur study demonstrates that peer review innovations are partly to be understood in light of commercial considerations related to reputation, efficiency and implementations costs. These arguments extend beyond previously studied topics in publishing economics, including publishers’ choice for business or publication models and reach into the very heart of the editorial and peer review process. (shrink)

Background: Editorial peer review is universally used but little studied. We examined the relationship between external reviewers' recommendations and the editorial outcome of manuscripts undergoing external peer-review at the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Methodology/Principal Findings: We examined reviewer recommendations and editors' decisions at JGIM between 2004 and 2008. For manuscripts undergoing peer review, we calculated chance-corrected agreement among reviewers on recommendations to reject versus accept or revise. Using mixed effects logistic regression models, we estimated intra-class correlation coefficients (...) at the reviewer and manuscript level. Finally, we examined the probability of rejection in relation to reviewer agreement and disagreement. The 2264 manuscripts sent for external review during the study period received 5881 reviews provided by 2916 reviewers; 28% of reviews recommended rejection. Chance corrected agreement on rejection among reviewers was 0.11. In mixed effects models adjusting for study year and manuscript type, the reviewer-level ICC was 0.23 and the manuscript-level ICC was 0.17. The editors' overall rejection rate was 48%: 88% when all reviewers for a manuscript agreed on rejection and 20% when all reviewers agreed that the manuscript should not be rejected. Conclusions/Significance: Reviewers at JGIM agreed on recommendations to reject vs. accept/revise at levels barely beyond chance, yet editors placed considerable weight on reviewers' recommendations. Efforts are needed to improve the reliability of the peer-review process while helping editors understand the limitations of reviewers' recommendations. © 2010 Kravitz et al. (shrink)

I hope you have had no trouble identifying this issue of our journal, even if the cover has been changed slightly. I would like to draw your attention to a more essential improvement in the journal's affairs: namely, that the Editorial Board has been enlarged by four new members. These are the following: Douglas Bridges , Ulrich Kohlenbach , H. Dugald Macpherson , and Pavel Pudlak . Please don't hesitate to contact a fellow editor, in particular the managing editor, (...) if you have suggestions for improving either the editorial procedures or the content and form of MLQ.The aims and scope of our journal are unchanged from the original ones developed by Günter Asser. His name is indissolubly connected with the former “Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik ”, now known as “Mathematical Logic Quarterly ”. He was one of the two founding editors and then the editor-in-chief of the journal until the 50th volume appeared about one year ago. Single-handedly, and almost incredibly, he showed that it is possible for one man to be the main editor of a successful highlevel scientific journal throughout half a century. He remains involved in and concerned with the editorial process of MLQ. For example, he carefully looks at every article to be published, faithfully checking almost every line of the final layout.On 26 February 2006, Professor Dr. Günter Asser celebrates his 80th birthday. I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the whole readership and of all fellow editors of ZML and MLQ throughout the last 51 years, to congratulate him cordially and to wish him good health and all the best for the future.The present issue starts with a paper directly related to G. Asser's spectrum conjecture. Then there are some papers specially dedicated to him, as well as further contributions, as always scrutinised and then recommended by expert referees. So this turns out to be an appropriate birthday issue. (shrink)

Engineering ethics and science and technology studies have until now developed as separate enterprises. The authors argue that they can learn a lot from each other. STS insights can help make engineering ethics open the black box of technology and help discern ethical issues in engineering design. Engineering ethics, on the other hand, might help STS to overcome its normative sterility. The contributions in this special issue show in various ways how the gap between STS and engineering ethics might be (...) overcome. In this editorial introduction, the authors discuss the various contributions briefly and delve into the way the various authors conceptualize the engineering design process and the consequences of those conceptualizations for what ethical issues become visible. They also discuss the implications for the responsibility of engineers for technological development. (shrink)

This Editorial summarizes the papers in a Frontiers in Communication Research Topic that looks at science journalism’s mediating role between the production of scientific knowledge and its public uptake. The four papers in the Research Topic consider science communication and journalism from the perspective of philosophy of science and epistemology. Framing the Research Topic is a conceptual analysis of the multiple aims of science communication and an assessment of empirical evidence to date regarding whether these aims are being met. (...) The other papers consider the practices of science journalism, the public reception of science information, and how the process of science is presented in three major mass media outlets. (shrink)

The Journal of Scientific Exploration is devoted to the open-minded examination of scientific anomalies and other topics on the scientific frontier. Its articles and reviews, written by authorities in their respective fields, cover both data and theory in areas of science that are too often ignored or treated superficially by other scientific publications. This issue of the Journal is devoted to a single multifaceted topic: mediumship, and mental mediumship in particular. The authors of the lead paper describe several varieties of (...) mediumship, and propose that the psychosocial and cultural aspects of mediumship are as important as its psychophysiological features. They consider the differences between spiritism and spiritualism, the relevance of the trance state to mediumship, and the extent to which processes properly considered mediumistic infiltrate many everyday human activities. The next paper surveys some of the major nonparapsychological issues that have fascinated researchers into mediumship. These include the nature and prevalence of the mediumistic trance, the varieties of mediumistic mentation, the evolution of mediumship over time, the dramatic capabilities of the subconscious, and the relationship between mediumship and psychopathology. The third paper focuses on positive aspects of mediumship, and in particular its connection with various forms of artistic and practical creativity, as well as its potential for personal development or transformation. The fourth paper considers whether mediumship ever indicates that human personality survives bodily death, or whether even the best cases instead indicate psychic functioning among the living. The author surveys types of mediumship that have been especially relevant to this question, and advocates the revival of so-called proxy sittings with mediums. The final paper recounts a period in France's recent history during which a group of researchers lobbied to have parapsychology broadened into a multidisciplinary field embracing (in additional to strictly experimental and proof-oriented investigations) wide-ranging enquiries that could be applied to mediumship and other apparent instances of psychic functioning in real-life settings. This issue of the JSE is then filled out, as usual, with correspondence and substantive book reviews. (shrink)

Editorial - On the Road to Adulthood Although the picture of adolescence G. Stanley Hall drew over a hundred years ago is no longer accepted, most contemporary researchers agree that the period between childhood and adulthood poses a serious challenge to the developing individual. The developmental achievements typical of this age, such as radical changes in appearance and behaviour, severe criticism of existing reality brought about by the recent acquisition of formal thinking, first intimate relations and sexual experiences and (...) the various forms of social pressure connected with the new, age-related demands and expectations can often lead to emotional instability, disturbed parent-child relations and a propensity for risky behaviour. These are the phenomena that accompany the struggle of a young person in the process of self-discovery and self-determination. (shrink)

This special issue of JET deals with questions relating to our radically enhanced future selves or our possible “mind children” – conscious beings that we might bring about through the development of advanced computers and robots. Our mind children might exceed human levels of cognition, and avoid many human limitations and vulnerabilities. In a call for papers earlier this year, the editors asked how far we ought to go with processes that might ultimately convert humans to some sort of post-biological (...) form or replace us with post-biological beings. Are these coherent ideas at all? If so, is it likely, or plausible, that we’ll one day be able to do such things? Even if we can, is that desirable? More generally, how far can all these processes go, and how far should we pursue them? To offer a more personal and pointed question, would you “upload” your personality into some kind of advanced computer or robot if the technology became available? Would you do so even if the process required the destruction of your original organic brain? We are not the first to ask such questions. A large body of relevant literature has built up in recent decades, some of it discussing these and similar questions purely as philosophical thought experiments , but some of it at the level of practical recommendations for a posthuman future. Despite the intensity and quality of the ongoing debate and the eminence of many of the contributors, much work remains to be done to sort it all out and advance the discussion. We have gathered a range of viewpoints, and I predict that some of these pieces will soon be regarded as classics. They may not be the last word – how could they be when they do not all agree with each other? – but they advance our understanding of what is at stake. (shrink)

Indigenous understandings of consciousness represent an important inspiration for scientific discussions about the nature of consciousness. Despite the fact that Indigenous concepts are not outputs of a research driven by rigorous, scientific methods, they are of high significance, because they have been formed by hundreds of years of specific routes of cultural evolution. The evolution of Indigenous cultures proceeded in their native habitat. The meanings that emerged in this process represent adaptive solutions that were optimal in the given environmental (...) and social milieu. We argue that it would not be appropriate to handle these meanings as something that science considers to be wrong, or outdated relics of the human past. In contrast, Indigenous concepts and their meanings may be considered to be an important heritage of native human populations, but moreover, they are also an interesting material for analyses and inspiration for recent scientific debates. Furthermore, it is also necessary to mention another reason why the exploration of Indigenous concepts has been so topical recently. Thus far, much psychological theoretical development has been published in English as a result of research conducted in Western countries. The dominance of English and the superiority of research conducted by researchers from Western countries may be considered as a kind of barrier toward other ways of knowing. We argue that the traditional cultural knowledge coming from Indigenous societies may offer an interesting source of new thought for science. The weakening of the strong dependence of science on well-established academic circles dominated by Western theoretical perspectives may be beneficial for stimulating its further development (Sidik, 2022). Therefore, this special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies aims to open the doors for other ways of knowing, For the knowing that emerged in native Indigenous cultures. We argue that the rich cultural heritage of these societies may stimulate the emergence of new analytical perspectives for scientific theorising about the nature of consciousness. For all these reasons, the Indigenous concepts of consciousness captured our interest, and we decided to start investigating them. In 2020 and 2021, we retrieved and analysed pieces of information from past ethnographical field evidence gathered in various Indigenous cultures. After removal of data about the cultures showing a high acceptance of influences from external religious traditions (e.g. Christianity, Islam or Buddhism), a comparative analysis of data from 55 Indigenous groups was conducted and published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies (Trnka and Lorencova, 2022). This primary project revealed many interesting results, but more importantly, it also showed many unexplored avenues that called for further exploration. This special symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies is a continuation and new development of research on the Indigenous understanding of consciousness. Past ethnographical evidence involved some valuable pieces of knowledge about Indigenous concepts of consciousness, but the relevant information was often fragmentary or even totally missing in some cases. Moreover, many authors of past ethnographic records applied a strong etic approach that clouded the understanding of native Indigenous thoughts. Therefore, the main goal of the recent symposium was to broaden the overall information basis for the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness or closely related phenomena. In other words, the symposium aimed to bring more detailed knowledge of Indigenous concepts of consciousness, mind and body and their relations in various groups of Indigenous people. In 2022, we contacted potential contributors and were pleased by their positive reactions, which reflected the topicality of this research focus. The authors were asked to draft their papers with a special focus on (a) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the concept of consciousness, (b) a cultural Indigenous understanding of the mind-body differentiation (or consciousness-body differentiation) and (c) cultural metaphors and cultural beliefs related to consciousness, mind and body. Many of contributors were native members of Indigenous cultures that made the descriptions of Indigenous concepts more accurate and reliable. This enabled many truly emic, in-depth insights into the Indigenous concepts of consciousness and related phenomena to be gained. As a result, this issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies introduces eight papers, each focused on a different geographical region/Indigenous groups: Nahua and Maya (Mexico), Guna (Panama), Mapuche (Chile), Maori (New Zealand), Telingit (Altai), Mongolian groups, Igbo (Nigeria) and Asabano (New Guinea). These papers are followed by one more general paper discussing magical consciousness on the case of an Aboriginal wise man (Australia). The symposium closes with our concluding editorial essay, which generalises the findings and introduces three theoretical models of understandings of consciousness inspired by the analysis of Indigenous concepts of consciousness. Aside from the importance for basic research, the exploration of Indigenous concepts of consciousness is also very important for informing practitioners from many applied spheres. Many current methods for treating addictions, traumatic life events, professional burnout and other mental health problems use features of Indigenous healing practices. A proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body and consciousness are quite important for Western psychotherapists to adapt the Indigenous practices to particular Western cultural milieus. Furthermore, a proper understanding of meanings related to mind, body, and consciousness is also important for treating ethnic, linguistic and culturally diverse populations (APA, 1990). For therapists, psychologists and physicians, understanding the meanings of these concepts may promote their own better care of their clients from various Indigenous ethnic groups. Last but not least, Indigenous concepts, meanings and languages are closely related to the continuation of the heritage of Indigenous people (United Nations, 2016). The world’s Indigenous languages have recently been under threat of disappearing; many Indigenous languages are endangered globally, and the rate of loss is high (United Nations, 2016). Importantly, recent research has also shown that the retention of Indigenous languages may be protective for the psychological and physical health of their speakers. All these areas represent fields for potential use of the findings presented in this symposium of the Journal of Consciousness Studies. As a concluding note, the editors of this symposium hope that this collection of papers will inspire academic scholars while also providing important information for practitioners from various spheres. (shrink)

In August 2011 Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review and the driving force behind the World Economics Association (WEA), asked the three of us to take on editorial roles in the newly established philosophy, methodology and history of thought journal of the association. The project was, to say the least, rather daunting. We had a document outlining the scope and editorial policies of the would-be journal written by Grazia Ietto-Gillies. Grazia had also developed the (...) proposed Open Peer Discussion Forum (OPD), based on her research into similar peer review systems used within the natural sciences. However, we had never met each other nor worked together and we lacked administrative and technical support. In addition, scheduling editorial meetings between Rome, Mexico City and Oxford proved rather challenging! Nevertheless, a combination of belief in the cause of the WEA and foolhardiness led us all to accept. The first issue of the journal is the fruit of our collective labours as well as those of our authors. In addition, both Jake McMurchie (the association's IT expert) and Jane Spurr (our production and layout expert) have been instrumental in the process of transforming a vibrant open peer discussion into six conventional journal articles. (shrink)

Perceptual neuroscience has identified mechanisms of perceptual grouping which account for the ways in which visual sensitivity to ordered structure and regularities expresses itself, in behavior and in the brain. The need to actively construct order, notably representations of objects in depth, is mandated as soon as visual signals reach the retina, given the occlusion of retinal signals by retinal veins and other retinal elements or blur. Multiple stages of neural processing transform fragmented signals into visual key representations of 3D (...) scenes that can be used to control effective behaviors. Since our survival depends on our ability to pick up order in the physical world, and since we conceive the physical world as an ordered one, our perception must somehow be sensitive to order. The articles from this collection illustrate how texture dissimilarity, boundary completion, surface filling-in, and figure-ground segregation generate perceptual order. (shrink)

This article investigates the origin of editorial images, with a focus on the mental processes that enable cartoonists and illustrators across cultures to come up with novel ideas. It provides the most compelling evidence to date that recycling, where artists regularly recycle pictorial and compositional ideas they have developed earlier, is the origin of ideas. Recycling theory is thus compatible with a variety of ongoing research programs. Among these are Turner’s work on blending (2014), Musolff’s research on scenarios (2016), (...) Langacker’s ideas on constructional schemas (1991), Johnson’s work on image schemas (1987), and van Dijk’s proposals concerning discourse complexes and intertextuality (2014). More specifically, the present study gives cognitively plausible answers to the perennial questions: To what extent does recycling shape and constrain the human way of thinking? Is it bound to certain cultural traditions? Does it characterize the style of certain artists or artistic movements? How does it contribute to discourse? Are the products of recycling always imaginative and creative? Is it a mode of efficiency? The theoretical insights are applied to 440 editorial images of Egyptian and British origin. This investigation will aid both semiotics scholarship and cognition studies based on multimodal stimuli. (shrink)

The papers in this special issue are all descended from papers presented at the second Online Consciousness Conference. I founded the Online Consciousness Conference at Consciousness Online (http:// consciousnessonline. wordpress. com) in 2008 mostly because no one else would. Being inspired by the Online Philosophy Conference, I mentioned to several people that it would be great if we had something like that in Consciousness Studies. People I talked to were very enthusiastic but no one seemed like they wanted to initiate (...) the process. I figured I would give it a shot and have been pleasantly surprised by the results. Papers from the first conference were published in a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, papers from the second are in this special issue, and papers from the third conference (2011) are due to come out as a book in Springer’s series Studies in Brain and Mind. As I write this I am planning the fourth conference for February 2012. There is no way I could have known back in 2008 how well the conference would be received but I am grateful for that reception. (shrink)

The aesthetic experience may be defined as people's interactions with, and reactions to, objects, places, but also to the environment. Most psychological perspectives on the aesthetic experience argue that it results from the coordination of different mental processes such as perception, attention, memory, imagination, thought, and emotion. Physiological and neurological responses are also involved. Aesthetic experiences can take place while we observe works of art in museums and galleries as well as in other contexts such as natural and built environments. (...) Looking at a landscape, walking in a park, meeting people in a square, and walking into a building that is architecturally appealing are examples of natural and built environments where we can experience beauty, pleasure, attraction, and interest, among other aesthetic reactions.Research on aesthetic experiences has a long history, and in recent decades, the field has experienced tremendous growth in the number of empirical studies conducted. One of the areas that researchers have yet to fully address is the influence of the context (natural and built environments) on aesthetic experiences. We refer to context according to three broad categories: Context as natural environments, context as built environments, and environments for aesthetic experiences.Context as natural environments: People show a basic tendency to associate the natural environment with positive evaluations. According to an evolutionary explanation know... (shrink)