Aims & Scope

Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is an internationally renowned journal with an innovative format known as Open Peer Commentary. Particularly significant and controversial pieces of work are published from researchers in any area of psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology or cognitive science, together with 20-40 commentaries on each article from specialists within and across these disciplines, plus the author's response to them. The result is a fascinating and unique forum for the communication, criticism, stimulation, and particularly the unification of research in behavioral and brain sciences from molecular neurobiology to artificial intelligence and the philosophy of the mind.

Articles Types Accepted

• Target Article
• Target Article Proposal
• Précis (solicited)
• Commentary Proposal
• Commentary (solicited)
• Author Response (solicited)

Article Length Requirements

Target Articles: Must not exceed 14,000 words (and should ordinarily be considerably shorter).

Target Article proposals are pre-submission inquiries about the suitability of your proposed article for potential peer review and publication. The length should be approximately 1,000 – 2,000 words, and shorter still is also acceptable. 

Commentaries: Should not exceed 1,000 words, excluding references. Multiple Book Review commentators are permitted 2,000 words for the main text. 

Author Response: 6,000-9,000 words; it should never exceed half the length of the target article.

Preparing your article for submission

Format for Target Articles

Please make sure your target article file has ALL of the following in this order: 

• Four Separate Word Counts (for the abstract, main text, references, and entire text—total + addresses etc.)
• Title
• Full Name(s), Institutional Affiliation(s) (including Country), E-mail Address(es) and Homepage URL(s) for all authors (where available)
• Short Abstract (100 words)
• Long Abstract (250 words)
• 5-10 Keywords (in alphabetical order)
• approx. 12,000 word Main Text (with paragraphs separated by full blank lines, not tab indents)
• Acknowledgements (optional)
• Funding statement
• Conflicts of Interest statement
• Alphabetical Reference List (APA standard)

Target article authors must also provide numbered headings and subheadings to facilitate cross-reference by commentators. 

Format for Commentary Proposals

Please make sure your commentary proposal has ALL of the following: 

• All authors, including any possible co-authors, listed at the top of your submission document.
• What aspect of the target article or book you anticipate commenting on.
• The relevant expertise you would bring to bear on the target article or book.

Please title your proposal submission by indicating the last name of the first author of the target article or book. For example: "Commentary Proposal on [Author Last Name]"

Format for Commentaries (solicited only)

Please make sure your commentary has ALL of the following in this order:

1. The name of the author(s) of the target article
2. Four separate word counts (abstract, main text, references, entire text (total + addresses etc.)
3. An indexable and informative commentary title
4. Full name(s)
5. Institution
6. Full institutional affiliation(s) (including Country)
7. One email address each
8. One home page url each (where available)
9. 60 word abstract
10. 1,000 word main text (with paragraphs separated by full blank lines, not tab indents) (2,000 word main text for Multiple Book Reviews)
11. Acknowledgements (optional)
12. Funding statement (see Financial Support / Funding Statement below)
13. Competing Interest statement (see Competing Interests below)
14. Alphabetical reference list (APA standard)

Format for Author Response

Please provide a Title and an Abstract (up to 60 words). There is otherwise no required format for the Author Response, however many authors have found it useful to organize their responses around specific topics that have suggested themselves in the commentary. A table classifying the commentaries according to these topics as well as informative section headings can be useful. 

It is strongly advised not to leave any specific nontrivial queries or criticisms unanswered. We would ask that you cite every commentary at least once, for example, to rebut some specific claim, to answer with an extended argument, or simply to classify it into a set of responses raising similar points.

The response should provide an integration and an overview. It should avoid becoming a pastiche of replies to random points, but it is nevertheless important that specific replies should be addressed to specific commentators. To aid the reader, please bold the first instance of any commentator's name in each paragraph of the response. 

In summary, the optimally organized response will represent an appropriate balance, integrating the general themes in the commentaries and providing specific, thorough replies to the substantive points made, each point prominently identified by indicating the names of the commentators who made them.

Questions may be sent to the Managing Editor at bbsjournal@cambridge.org.

Style and Referencing

Spelling, capitalization, and punctuation should be consistent within each article and should follow American Psychological Association (APA) style. Please see the APA website (http://www.apastyle.org) and blog (http://blog.apastyle.org/) for more information.

Citing References in Text:

The References section should be in alphabetical order. Examples follow:

Journal article Author’s Last name, F. M. (Year published). Article title. Journal Title, Volume(Issue), pp.-pp.

Journal article with DOl Nevin, A. (1990). The changing of teacher education special education. Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, 13(3-4), 147-148. doi:XXX

Light, M. A., & Light, I. H. (2008). The geographic expansion of Mexican immigration in the United States and its implications for local law enforcement. Law Enforcement Executive Forum Journal, 8, 73–82. doi:XXX

Journal article without DOl (when DOl is not available) Good, C. D., Johnsrude, I. S., Ashburner, J., Henson, R. N. A., Firston, K. J., & Frackowiak, R. S. J. (2001). A voxel-based morphometric study of ageing in 465 normal adult human brains. NeuroImage, 14, 21–36. Retrieved from http://xxxx

No retrieval date is needed.

Journal article with DOl, more than seven authors Gilbert, D. G., McClernon, F. J., Rabinovich, N. E., Sugai, C., Plath, L. C., Asgaard, G., ... Botros, N. (2004). Effects of quitting smoking on EEG activation and attention last for more than 31 days and are more severe with stress, dependence, DRD2 A1 allele, and depressive traits. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 6, 249–267. doi:XXX

Journal article without DOl, title translated into English, print version Guimard, P., & Florin, A. (2007). Las evaluations des enseignants en grande section de maternelle sont-elles predictives des difficultes de lecture au cours préparatoire? [Are teacher ratings in kindergarten predictive of reading difficulties in first grade?]. Approche Neuropsychologique des Apprentissages chez l'Enfant, 19, 5–17.

Journal article with DOI, advance online publication Von Ledebur, S. C. (2007). Optimizing knowledge transfer by new employees in companies. Knowledge Management Research & Practice. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1 057/palgrave.kmrp.8500141

In-press article Briscoe, R. (in press). Egocentric spatial representation in action and perception. Philosophy and Phenornenological Research. Retrieved from http://cogprints.org/5780/l/EC...

Citations for Websites

Author’s Last name, F. M. (Year, Month Day published). Title of article or page. Retrieved from URL

Simmons, B. (2015, January 9). The tale of two Flaccos. Retrieved from http://grantland.com/the-trian...

Author response to commentaries: All invited commentaries received before the deadline are posted as they are received and are only accessible to the Authors and Editors. Please note that no commentary is officially accepted until the Editor in charge has formally reviewed it and notified both the authors and editorial staff. Please follow exactly the BBS Commentary Response Instructions before submitting your response.

If you have any questions or problems please email bbsjournal@cambridge.org.

Artwork, figures, and other graphics

All figures and tables should be supplied in separate files. Resolution: halftone images must be saved at 300dpi at approximately the final size. Line drawings should be saved at 1000 dpi, or 1200 dpi if very fine line weights have been used. Combination figures must be saved at a minimum of 600 dpi. Behavioral and Brain Sciences recommends JPG formats are used for electronic artwork. For more detailed guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the manuscript (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. Figure 1(a), Figure 1(b)).

Figure captions must be saved separately, as part of the file containing the complete text of the manuscript, and numbered correspondingly.

The filename for a graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, e.g. Figure1, Figure2a.

Reproduction of copyright material: Authors are responsible for obtaining permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. A copy of the paperwork granting permission should be provided to the Cambridge production editor. You may be asked to pay a permissions fee by the copyright holder; any permissions fees must be paid for by the author. For an example of a permissions request form please see the Cambridge Journals Artwork Guide.

Ethics and transparency policy requirements

Please review our ethics policies prior to submission.

Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organizers, family members, etc that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can easily be tagged and captured separately. 

Financial Support / Funding Statement

Within this section please provide details of the sources of financial support for all authors, including grant numbers, for example: 

“This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (grant number XXXXXXX)”. 

Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma and space, and where research was funded by more than one agency the different agencies should be separated by a semi-colon, with “and” before the final funder. Grants held by different authors should be identified as belonging to individual authors by the authors’ initials, for example:

“This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust (AB, grant numbers XXXX, YYYY), (CD, grant number ZZZZ); the Natural Environment Research Council (EF, grant number FFFF); and the National Institutes of Health (AB, grant number GGGG), (EF, grant number HHHH).”

Where no specific funding has been provided for research, please provide the following statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.”