General Questions

• What is topiCS?
• Which types of submissions are possible?
• What format is required for submitted manuscripts?

Editorial Board

• The role of Associate Editors in topiCS
• The Board of Reviewers

Associate Editors

• Contacting prospective authors
• Word limits, page limits, limits on number of authors
• Publication timeline

General Questions

What is topiCS?

topiCS is a new journal devoted to Cognitive Science. It will be rigorously peer-reviewed. It will also be different from most journals in that the charge to the Associate Editors is to find exciting, under reported work, across the full-range of cognitive science topics, and to recruit the best authors in these areas to submit their work to an issue of topiCS.

Which types of submissions are possible?

Many types of submissions may be included in topiCS. What follows is a sampling, not an exhaustive list.

• Subject matter topic reviews of an area:
  New or emerging work from people in disciplines that may not consider themselves to be cognitive scientists, but who are doing cognitive science work. Reviews or updates on established cognitive science areas in which recent years has seen an upsurge of interest and/or a major paradigm shift.
  
  
• Autobiographic topics:
  Cognitive Science is old and established enough that many of our founders have reached the normal age for retirement but are still intellectually active and vigorous. A recurring topic (either in single issue format, or in a series of papers across many issues) would be to ask our founders to reflect on their legacy to cognitive science.
  
  
• Great debates:
  Two or more target articles that take different positions on a topic of interest to the larger cognitive science community. Smaller commentary articles discussing the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

What format is required for submitted manuscripts?

With the following exceptions, all submitted manuscripts must conform to the guidance of the APA Publication Manual.
— Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2001). (Fifth ed.). Washington: American Psychological Association.
— APA Style Guide to Electronic References (2007). Available from: http://books.apa.org. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Exceptions:

1. Include figure captions with figures on all manuscript submissions that will be reviewed. Once the paper is accepted for publication then you will receive specific instructions on how to prepare the paper for publication.
   
   
2. You may refer to human subjects as "subjects" rather than as "participants." The term "subjects" has an old and established tradition within empirical studies of human behavior and does not reflect any dehumanizing of the people who are recruited and participate in our studies. Depending on context and the study you may also refer to them in terms that seem appropriate, e.g., operators, pilots, gamers, etc.

Editorial Board

Many of the topics for topiCS will originate with the Board of Associate Editors. The Board would issue a call for papers on a given topic and would play an active role in recruiting authors to contribute papers. All papers would be heavily reviewed. Being invited to contribute to an issue of topiCS would not guarantee acceptance.

Note that one way to become an Associate Editor for topiCS is to propose an interesting and exciting issue. People who have organized successful symposium at the Cognitive Science Conference or other conferences should consider themselves and their symposium topic prime candidates.

As topiCS is an unusual journal, the role of Associate Editor will be a bit unusual as well. People with good ideas and established track records will be recruited to be Associate Editors for a 2–3 year term. However, rather than simply advising me and handling reviews for individual papers, the AE’s prime role will be defining a topic for an issue of topiCS, recruiting a strong set of papers (remember our page limit!!), and managing the review process. All papers will be rigorously reviewed and the AE who is handling the issue will be primarily responsible for quality control.

I anticipate that many/some/most AEs may wish to write an introduction to the issue that helps place the papers in time and context. Indeed, my expectation is that this introductory issue will be of wide interest to most subscribers and will most likely be read and cited as much (or more) than any other single paper in the issue. I will organize the review process for this paper.

This arrangement will result than a larger than normal Board of Associate Editors. I would anticipate that most AEs would work on shepherding one issue of topiCS through from conception to publication. However, during their term, I would expect these AEs to play an active role in advising me on the future of topiCS, identifying new topics, and helping to recruit new AEs.

The Board of Reviewers

topiCS will have a proportionately small Board of Reviewers compared to its Board of Associate Editors. For most issues, I would expect the AE in charge of that topic to recruit at least one reviewer per paper that has some expertise in that topic. However, as topiCS is intended to communicate with the greater Cognitive Science community, there will be a need for an “outside” reviewer on each paper; this is the role that most members of the Board of Reviewers will play.

To be clear, each member of the topiCS Board of Reviewer will be a noted expert in her or his field. However, they will also be extremely intellectually curious about a wide range of cognitive science topics. While I do not expect any give member of the review board to be equally curious about all cognitive science topics, I do expect that their intellectual interests and willingness to review will extend outside their areas of greatest expertise.

[top of page]

Associate Editors

Contacting prospective authors

We are developing a letter that will introduce prospective authors to topiCS. Our intention would be that the topiCS Editor would incorporate parts of the letter into their contact letter by cutting and pasting what they consider to be the most relevant paragraphs, or by including the entire letter as an attachment that follows their more personal introduction to their topic.

Word limits, page limits, limits on number of authors

Peer-reviewed journals play a quality-control role in the world of scholarly publication. Rigorous reviewing and extensive feedback to authors characterize the best journals. This process requires a strong commitment to quality and detailed reviews from many people for each issue. Likewise, high quality journals should look good and read well. These production standards require the services of a quality publisher and a team of copy-editors who can work with authors on their prose. These considerations mean that even in the world of electronic publication (topiCS will be both print and electronic) there is a practical limit on pages per issue.

The page allocation for topiCS is 200 pages per issue. This includes a few pages listing the editors, review board, policy of the journal, and any ads. Associate Editors (AEs) should aim for 180–190 pages for content. Depending on the issue, we could run nine 20-page papers or six 30-page papers or 19 brief papers. In practice I suspect that there would be a mix of paper lengths. Sometimes the mix would result as authors would send shorter papers than expected. In other cases the mix would result from the Associate Editor allocating more words to some papers than for others (e.g., target articles versus commentaries).

For issues of topiCS that survey an area (one without target articles), I would like to aim for about 8,000 words per paper (about 20 pages), with a total of 9 to 10 articles. The tradeoff is between depth and breadth and in many cases it would be better to go for breadth. In that case, having a mix of 15-page (6,000 words) and 20-page (8,000 words) papers might work well. Obviously having a few 4,000-word (10-page) papers is an option as well. The nature of the mix is something that the Associate Editor should work on with the Editor before contributors are solicited.

Publication timeline

Everyone wants to know, "how soon can my issue appear in print?" Fair question. The biggest chunk of time is the time you spend recruiting good researchers and the time they spend writing their papers. The timetable is driven by your slowest author and your slowest reviewer and you. Once all first drafts are completed and sent to topiCS here is what the timeline looks like:

• 0 month (START): All manuscripts are due to Editors.
• +3 month: The last of the manuscripts is reviewed; editor decisions are made; and letters are sent to authors.
  [Do not underestimate the amount of time it will take you to read all of the reviews, the paper, and write your letters.]
• +5 month: All 1st revisions are due in [authors need some time to revise their manuscript].
• +7 month: All 1st revisions are reviewed, editor decisions made, and letters sent to authors.
• +8 month: All 2nd revisions from all authors are due in.
• +10 month: All 2nd revisions reviewed, editiorial decisions made; and all letters are sent to authors.
• +11 month: All final revisions due from authors; all manuscripts are sent to publisher.
• +12–14 month: All papers published in the next issue of topic. [Our intention is to encourage a friendly competition among topiCS Editors. No one is promised any particular issue. Rather each one will go into the publication queue as soon as it is complete.]