About the Journal
AIMS AND SCOPE
The Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) is a no-fee, open-access, university-based multidisciplinary journal. It is maintained by Lund University and sponsored by the Center for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology (CERCAP) and the Parapsychology Foundation. JAEX, published twice a year (Spring and Winter), provides a forum for the rigorous study of anomalous experience and cognition. Anomalous experience refers to unusual but not necessarily pathological experiences, such as mystical and out-of-body experiences. They can be spontaneous or induced and have life-changing effects. Anomalous cognition refers to rigorous multidisciplinary research that seeks to improve our understanding of psycho-physical interrelations, including the hypothesis that organisms can be affected by spatially or temporally distant stimuli -unmediated by the senses or reason- and that intentions can directly affect physical systems, as well as attitudes, beliefs, and other variables related to such claims.
There are niche journals covering some of these areas but not a journal in which scholars can get a sense of the links across them, along with the important theoretical, practical, and even clinical implications. JAEX does not take an a-priori stance for or against anomalous cognition and welcomes quality papers regardless of the authors’ stance. Academic contributions from any related discipline, including the humanities, are welcome.
JAEX welcomes submission of the following types of papers:
- Research, whether quantitative, qualitative, or mixed, presenting original data, replication of studies, and re-analyses of collected data. This category includes experiments and correlational studies, as well as systematic single or multiple case studies, field research, historical analyses, and other forms of systematic inquiry.
- Registered reports, in which authors send a full study design for peer review before collecting data (see https://www.cos.io/initiatives/registered-reports).
- Theoretical, including implications of the theory and fit to the extant data.
- Methodological/analytical new proposals.
- Invited summaries of important new books or reviews of a topic.
- Invited debates on contentious issues.
- Book reviews.
- Letters to the editor about current issues or papers recently published in JAEX.
Open Access
All articles published in JAEX are open access, freely and universally accessible online, and archived in the open journal’s Lund University website (https://journals.lub.lu.se). Articles in JAEX can be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License CCBY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, with appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, a link to the Creative Commons license, and an indication if changes were made. The authors retain the copyright and full unrestricted publishing rights.
There are no charges for article submission or processing. JAEX uses the Open Journals System at Lund University (OJS), supported by Lund University’s Library. JAEX’s publisher is the Parapsychology Foundation (PF). JAEX is archived through PKP PN.
DOI and Indexing
Online and printed issues have ISSNs, and all published items have a Crossref DOI (digital object identifier), are archived in PKP PN, and are indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Google Scholar , and Researchgate from the journal’s inception. Applications to other indexing organizations will follow as JAEX matures.
Review Process
All submissions will be analyzed with a computerized plagiarism software. If there is no indication of plagiarism they will be reviewed using a double-masked (blind) procedures, with empirical and theoretical papers reviewed by at least two reviewers and book reviews by at least one. The authors should mask their identities in the manuscript, including the reference section when appropriate, and delete identifying information from the file name and the identifying information for it. Accepted submissions are copyedited for grammar and style. The copyedited version will be sent to the author(s) for any required changes and approval. A prompt response is required. Substantive revisions are generally not allowed after the manuscript has been accepted.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS
Submissions to JAEX ought not have been published elsewhere in whole or in part (except for isolated sections or earlier conference versions), nor be under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Authors, must follow standards of expected ethical behavior, as described in the Statement on Ethics and Publication Standards below. Any ethical violation will result in rejection of the manuscript. If the violation is discovered after the work is published, the paper will be retracted and further actions may be pursued.
Manuscript Preparation
Language
The text should be written in good American English. Authors who do not have a high writing level in English should consider sending their papers first to a professional academic editing service. Some style preferences of the journal: a) use “volunteer”, or “participant” instead of “subject”, b) avoid sexist language, c) use “masked” instead of “blind” conditions,” d) unless part of a quotation, do not use verb contractions (e.g., “is not” instead of “isn’t”), e) include the appropriate diacritical marks in the case of foreign names and words.
Style
Manuscripts must follow the 7th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, Washington) and be copyedited for spelling, grammar and content thoroughly before submission. There are various online sources that give specific information on the style if the authors do not have it. You can also check https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples
Format
Articles must not exceed 10,000 words including references and figures. They must be in Word (or compatible program), double-spaced, using Times New Roman Size 12 font. Longer papers of unusual importance may be considered for publication, previous authorization by the Editor. All manuscripts must contain an Abstract, Keywords, and clearly defined sections. Papers should be emailed to etzel.cardena@psy.lu.se
Research Papers
We recommend that authors consult APA journal article reporting standards (JARS; https://apastyle.apa.org/jars) as general guidelines for:
- quantitative research (https://apastyle.apa.org/jars/jars-quant-decision-flowchart.pdf),
- qualitative research (https://apastyle.apa.org/jars/qual-table-1.pdf), and
- mixed research designs (https://apastyle.apa.org/jars/mixed-table-1.pdf).
When relevant, research papers must include Objective, Method, Results, and Conclusion sections in the Abstract and the body of the paper itself. The method section, as appropriate, must include information about who interacted with the participants and the style of interaction. In the case of anomalous cognition studies, when appropriate the Methods section should report measures of a-priori beliefs by the researchers and participants about success in the experiment, attitudes about psi held, and so on. If no questionnaire can be administered, information can be provided following a scale such as this: 5 -strong belief in the success of the experiment -, 4 -moderate belief-, 3 -neutral, 2 -moderate non-belief, 1 -strong non-belief in the success of the experiment.
Pre-registration and Access to Data
Research submission must clearly state which hypotheses (and analyses) were confirmatory and which exploratory. Although research pre-registration and use of data depositories are not currently required, they will be positively noted by symbols in the papers that use them. Research, particularly confirmatory, can be preregistered, for instance in https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/study-registry or ttps://osf.io/prereg, Data can be registered in repositories such as https://data.world or open-data.spr.ac.uk.
Title Page
The title page should include the title of the paper, the authors’ name and surname and their affiliation addresses and email addresses. The author to whom correspondence and proofs should be sent must also be specified. Indicate the corresponding author, including phone numbers (with country and area code), e-mail address, and complete postal address. Contact details must be kept up to date by the corresponding author.
• The title should be accurate, concise, and informative.
• Author names and affiliations. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lower-case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full email address of each author. If an author has moved since the work described in the article, or was visiting at the time, a present or permanent address may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main affiliation address.
Abstract and Keywords
An abstract, not exceeding 250 words, should be the second page of the manuscript, followed by a maximum of 8 keywords, reflecting the essential topics of the article. These keywords will be used for information retrieval systems and indexing purposes.
Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, which should make the topic understandable to a non-specialist. The review should go as far back into time as much as needed, rather than assume some arbitrary span such as the literature of the last 5 or 10 years. Also, when feasible, the authors should make reference to important works published in other languages than English.
Methods
The methods section should describe the design of the study, the setting, the participants and instruments involved, as well as the procedure. Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods and instruments already published should be indicated by a reference and relevant modifications described.
Ethical Considerations
Papers reporting empirical studies requiring ethical approval must state which Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided it, and that informed consent was obtained. Provide the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number if relevant.
Analysis
All general analyses must be described at length (e.g., do not just write that IPA was employed) and describe how the validity and reliability of the methods/measures/translations were evaluated in past or the current paper. In the case of statistical analyses, descriptive values must be reported besides inferential ones, which should include, whenever possible, effect sizes and their confidence intervals. The importance of a results should not be based exclusively on the “statistical significance,” or not, of the result, and consider using additional analyses such as Bayesian approaches rather than just reporting that a result was not significant (see e.g., Tressoldi, P., & Utts, J. (2015) Statistical guidelines for empirical studies. In E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz (Eds.), Parapsychology: A handbook for the 21st century.McFarlane). Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.
Results
Results should be clear and concise. The Results section may be broken into subsections with short, informative headingsand a summarizing statement.
Discussion
The discussion section should explore the significance of the results of the work, and integrate them to previous work, rather than just reiterating them. Specific recommendations for further research should be specific (i. e., do not write only “more research is needed”) .A combined Results and Discussion section may be appropriate.
Author’s Contribution
In order to give appropriate credit to each author of a paper, the individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be noted in this section, with a format similar to this: AB designed the study, organized the data collection, and drafted the first version of the manuscript. CD carried out the statistical analyses and was actively involved in revising the manuscript. EF participated in the data collection and helped revise the manuscript. All authors should have contributed intellectually to the study and have read and approve the final manuscript. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section. (e.g., those only providing help with data collection, providing language help).
Declaration of Interests
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. If no conflict exists, please state that ”The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.”
References
References must be prepared following American Psychological Association (APA) style, 7th ed. and rechecked carefully before submission. They should include DOIs, when available (authors should check their reference list for DOIs here: https://search.crossref.org/references). Every reference cited in the text should be present in the reference list and vice versa. Citation of a reference as '”in press'” implies that the item has been accepted for publication.The author is responsible for obtaining permission, when necessary, to quote excerpts or figures from any previously published material, and submit such permission with the manuscript.
Footnotes, Tables, and Figures
Endnotes are not acceptable, use instead footnotes sparingly, if at all. Number them consecutively throughout the article.Tables and figures should be understandable without reference to the main text. The same information should not be reproduced in both tables and figures, and should follow APA style in every respect. Each figure should include a single illustration and should fit on a single page. If a figure consists of separate parts, it is important that a single composite illustration file be submitted containing all parts of the figure. Tables and Figures must be embedded in the paper and also submitted as individual tiff or jpg (not pdf) files. Title and notes of the Tables and Figures shold be embedded in the file as regular text.
Corrections and Retractions
The policy of the JAEX is that all published articles shall undergo a thorough reviewing process, so that they can be relied to be accurate, fair, complete, and citable. This does not preclude the possibility that errors may occur. Important errors (i. e., not just a minor typo) will be mentioned in an errata section later on a numbered page that will contain the original article's citation. Cases where such corrections are insufficient to address will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis by the Editor in Chief.
Statement on Ethics and Publication Standards
JAEX adheres to the COPE Best Practice Guidelines described here http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf.
Its Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement is mostly based on PsychOpen (https://www.psychopen.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/guidelines/publication_ethics_and_publication_malpractice_statement.pdf):
Editors' responsibilities
Publication decisions
The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for deciding paper publication. S/he will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, or scientific stance. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, clarity, and thoroughness, the study’s validity,and its relevance to the journal's scope. Lgal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism willalso be considered.
Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.
Reviewers' responsibilities
Contribution to editorial decisions
The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.
Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified for reasons of competence or conflict of interest to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
Standards of objectivity
Reviews should be conducted impartially. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Acknowledgement of sources
Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.
Authors' duties
Reporting standards
Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an impartialdiscussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data access and retention
Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if possible. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgement of sources
Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited. Texts generated by AI are unacceptable. If AI was used during the development of the text, for instance in data analysis or visualization, this should be mentioned in the text.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication
In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication the work can be further used according to the CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it.
Authorship of the paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
The corresponding author ensures that all contributing co-authors are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in form of an erratum.
Online ISSN: 2004-1969
Print ISSN: 2004-1977