A Possible Case of Censorship of Submissions on the Nature of Consciousness 1,2

: To advance the scientific understanding of consciousness, one should be open to theoretical pluralism to freely develop and rigorously test a wide diversity of paradigm candidates and communicate the ideas and findings to the scientific community. Science development is jeopardized when journals tend to present a field’s state-of-the-art findings in a biased or misguided way or suppress investigations of a particular perspective. We describe the challenges and pitfalls we faced as guest editors during the editorial review process of a special issue of the journal Frontiers on “The Nature of Consciousness” and how we responded to it. We describe and discuss how the journal staff overruled our editorial role to enforce what was very likely academic censorship. We then offer a couple of recommendations to authors and editors that may face similar issues. We believe that following these recommendations will ultimately contribute to practical and theoretical advances in the understanding the nature of consciousness and the mind–brain relation. these first-person subjective feelings, known as the “hard problem of consciousness.” Studies investigating neural correlates of processes related to level and content of consciousness, for instance, have grown prolifically in the last few years due to the advance in brain imaging techniques. Nevertheless, the mind–brain relationship is one of the most fundamental questions we still struggle to move forward with in this debate. The research topic proposed here intends to address the nature of consciousness and is open to include studies from philosophy to medicine, due to the complicated nature of the problem. More specifi-cally, we want to discuss whether the mind is an emergent property of the brain or whether they are somehow independent of each other. In this collection, we call for manuscripts covering the vast scope of theories and human experiences related to the mind–brain relationship. We will also accept original manuscripts addressing altered levels (such as anesthesia, coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, and sleep) and contents (such as meditation, trance, hypnosis, dissociative and anomalous experiences, perception, awareness, and consciousness-related psychiatric disorders) of consciousness that provide empirical evidence to this debate. Even though eminent discussions have intensively touched upon this topic and helped its progression, there seems to be no consensus regarding significant points such as the nature of consciousness. Our goal is to help construct an organized body of theoretical and empirical studies to gather different perspectives—or even disagreeing opin-ions, in an unemotional fashion—and eventually contribute practical and theoretical advances to the field. Resumen: se pluralismo teórico para desarrollar y evaluar con rigor una amplia diversidad de candidatos a paradigma y comunicar las ideas y los hallazgos a la comunidad científica. El desarrollo de la ciencia corre peligro cuando las revistas tienden a presentar los hallazgos más avanzados de un campo de forma sesgada o errónea, o suprimen las investigaciones de una perspectiva concreta. Describimos los retos y escollos a los que nos enfrentamos como editores invitados durante el proceso de revisión editorial de un número especial de la revista Frontiers sobre "La Naturaleza de la Consciencia" y cómo respondimos a ello. Describimos y discutimos cómo el personal de la revista anuló nuestra función editorial para imponer lo que muy probablemente fue una censura académica. A continuación, ofrecemos un par de recomendaciones a los autores y editores que se enfrenten a problemas similares. Creemos que seguir estas recomendaciones contribuirá, en última instancia, a los avances prácticos y teóricos en la comprensión de la naturaleza de la consciencia y la relación mente-cerebro.


Planning the Research Topic
On July 29, 2020, the manager of the journal Frontiers sent an invitation to Marina Weiler to launch a research topic as a guest editor. After accepting the invitation, Weiler received on August 3, 2020, an email from Frontiers' journal specialist stating, "as a guest editor of a research topic, you would act as a [sic] handling editors for submitted manuscripts . . . . Each research topic is made up of a geographically diverse team of 3 or more guest editors of your choice to define the scope of your topic and share the editorial responsibilities." On August 31, 2020, Weiler had a conference call with a Frontiers' journal specialist, who later sent an email stating that they would "choose the most appropriate journal/sections once you have a theme in mind and we will discuss the best matching" (i.e., Frontiers would select the journal that best matched the proposed topic).
Weiler contacted other colleagues (Martin M. Monti, Raphael F. Casseb, and Alexander Moreira-Almeida) who agreed to work with her as co-guest editors of the new research topic devoted to the study of human consciousness. On September 28, 2020, along with an introduction to the final team of guest editors, Weiler sent an email expressing our concern about properly choosing a specialty chief editor who would suit the scope of our topic, fearing experiencing a similar issue with Frontiers' research topics as had occurred in the past (Cardeña, 2015).
On October 1, 2020, the journal specialist congratulated us for "putting together a very strong editorial team" while ignoring our concern about finding a proper specialty chief editor for our topic. However, she also informed us that the guest editors would be responsible for the following: • Assessing whether or not a manuscript fits within the scope of the special issue and screening it with regard to whether or not it can be considered for inclusion and there-fore sent on to reviewers.
• Sending the manuscript to reviewers through the Frontiers' system (a quick, streamlined, and straightforward process). Editors are asked to ensure that each screened manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers.
• Reviewing the reviewers' comments and making a decision on whether or not the manuscript is to be accepted for publication.
Three of the guest editors had a web meeting with Frontiers' staff to propose and discuss details of the proposed topic; we explained its aims and emphasized we would welcome theoretical and empirical papers dealing with different aspects of human consciousness. Importantly, we clarified we were interested in manuscripts that pursued different theoretical backgrounds, including physicalist and non-physicalist perspectives of consciousness, as indicated in the topic's description. We also expressed our concern about any possible bias from Frontiers toward approving submitted manuscripts, exemplified by the negative experience Cardeña had had in the past. In response, Frontiers assured us that the guest editors would have complete editorial freedom and submitted papers would be approved based on scientific rigor instead of philosophical backgrounds. After this meeting, we sent Frontiers the final version of our research topic proposal, "The Nature of Consciousness": Since ancient times, humanity has shown a deep interest in "consciousness" and its many facets. Consciousness can be defined in terms of sentience (response to external stimuli), wakefulness and responsiveness (levels of consciousness), or awareness (access conscious thoughts, the content of consciousness). Yet another approach is the ability to subjectively experience the world, generating a feeling of presence-that is, phenomenal consciousness or qualia. A fundamental question is how a physical system such as the brain relates to P A G E 3 0 1 P A G E 3 0 2 Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) 2022, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 297-315 these first-person subjective feelings, known as the "hard problem of consciousness." Studies investigating neural correlates of processes related to level and content of consciousness, for instance, have grown prolifically in the last few years due to the advance in brain imaging techniques. Nevertheless, the mind-brain relationship is one of the most fundamental questions we still struggle to move forward with in this debate.
The research topic proposed here intends to address the nature of consciousness and is open to include studies from philosophy to medicine, due to the complicated nature of the problem. More specifically, we want to discuss whether the mind is an emergent property of the brain or whether they are somehow independent of each other. In this collection, we call for manuscripts covering the vast scope of theories and human experiences related to the mind-brain relationship.
We will also accept original manuscripts addressing altered levels (such as anesthesia, coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, and sleep) and contents (such as meditation, trance, hypnosis, dissociative and anomalous experiences, perception, awareness, and consciousness-related psychiatric disorders) of consciousness that provide empirical evidence to this debate.
Even though eminent discussions have intensively touched upon this topic and helped its progression, there seems to be no consensus regarding significant points such as the nature of consciousness. Our goal is to help construct an organized body of theoretical and empirical studies to gather different perspectives-or even disagreeing opin-ions, in an unemotional fashion-and eventually contribute practical and theoretical advances to the field.
Keywords: consciousness, qualia, materialism, reductionism, dualism On October 9, 2020, the guest editors received an email from a Frontiers' journal specialist, which read, "Everything looks good and promising." She also informed us that

Challenges
The first of the many negative experiences we had with this project started when Dr. Jim B. Tucker, whom we initially invited to contribute a manuscript, submitted an original research paper to our topic on August 15, 2021. The manuscript, "Memories of Previous Lives and the Nature of Consciousness," investigated cases of young children who reported alleged memories of a previous life, thus supporting the proposition that consciousness might not be wholly dependent on the neural processes of the brain but might exist separately from them.
Tucker's manuscript had been stuck in an "initial validation" process for 7 days when Weiler contacted Frontiers to ask to move the validation process forward and send the manuscript to the guest editors. Importantly, this was the first time any submitted manuscript had been in this initial validation process for so long. In comparison, all the previously received manuscripts had been cleared after 1 day (at that time, we had around 10 manuscripts submitted to our topic; thus, we had a general idea of the Fron-

P A G E 3 0 3 P A G E 3 0 4
Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) 2022, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 297-315 tiers' timeline to approve submitted manuscripts). Without receiving any response, the guest editors sent new emails on September 7 and 23, 2021, requesting Frontiers' editorial staff to provide some information regarding the current situation of the referred manuscript. To make the process fair and efficient, we also stressed that we would like to move the review forward and send it to experts for a thorough evaluation. Once again, our emails went without a reply. On September 30, 2021, though, Frontiers notified Tucker that his manuscript could not be accepted for publication in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience because the manuscript did not meet the scope of the specialty section to which it was submitted. However, this decision by the Frontiers' editorial office was unbeknown to all the guest editors.
On October 7, 2021, we contacted the journal manager of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience by email to express our discontent with the delay of the process: There has been a mistake regarding the initial validation of the manuscript submitted by Dr. Jim Tucker (Manuscript ID: 759145). The submission was rejected (without consulting us), claiming it "does not meet the scope of the specialty section to which it was submitted." We, the topic editors who defined the scope, are sure that the manuscript does fit our special section. To underpin our statement, we kindly note that the research topic call for abstracts reads as follows: We want to discuss whether the mind is an emergent property of the brain or whether they are somehow independent of each other. In this collection, we call for manuscripts covering the vast scope of theories and human experiences related to the mind-brain relationship. Furthermore, we will also accept original manuscripts addressing altered levels (such as anesthesia, coma, vegetative state, minimally con-scious state, and sleep) and contents (such as meditation, trance, hypnosis, dissociative and anomalous experiences, perception, awareness, and consciousness-related psychiatric disorders) of consciousness that provide empirical evidence to this debate (as defined in the original research topic call: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/17734/the-nature-of-consciousness).
The erroneously rejected manuscript presents a long and active line of research on "human experiences related to the mind-brain relationship" and aims "to discuss whether the mind is an emergent property of the brain or whether they are somehow independent of each other." The author of the manuscript addresses "experiences . . . that provide empirical evidence to this debate." [Abstracts for the three rejected papers are in the Appendix] Hence, we kindly asked the Frontiers' editorial office to move the manuscript back to the editorial review process so we could continue the assessment of its scientific merit and decide on the acceptance or rejection of this work. The response came a week later, when a Frontiers' research integrity specialist provided a new reason for the rejectionnamely, that it was not within the section's scope: While the manuscript may have been in scope for the research topic, all contributions to this research topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. The specialty chief editor of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience confirmed that this manuscript was out of scope for the section.
It should be noted that Frontiers performed the selection of the hosting journals for our topic according to the goals we described in the proposal. So we were surprised to P A G E 3 0 5 P A G E 3 0 6 Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) 2022, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 297-315 read that Tucker's manuscript did not fit the section's scope. Unhappy with this decision, Moreira-Almeida replied on October 18, 2021 (and did not receive a response): We insist to be respected as research topic-invited editors. It is not reasonable that we as editors do not have a chance to evaluate the quality of a manuscript that clearly fits the scope for the research topic (a scope that was approved by Frontiers).
Someone (we don't know who), with no discussion with us (the editors), contacted the author, rejecting the paper, claiming it "does not meet the scope of the specialty section to which it was submitted." We have experience as invited editors for special topics in scientific journals . . . and as book editors . . . and we have never seen anything like that.
Editors' decisions have always been respected. A respectful relationship that seeks rigorous scientific evaluation has always been the norm, as it is supposed to be in the academic world.
Hence, we insist the editorial office moves the manuscript back to the editorial review process so we can continue the assessment of its scientific merit to decide on the acceptance or rejection of this work.
Petr Bob and Jose Acacio De Barros, did not pass the initial validation step either and ended up being rejected by the Frontiers' editorial office on the following day. Two weeks later, a third manuscript, "Brain-Mind Dualism and Entropy," also from Bob, met the same fate. Once again, Frontiers did not communicate these decisions to any of the guest editors, and on October 21, 2021, we sent another email to Frontiers complaining about this overstep of our editorial attribution: While we understand that this Initial Validation step is crucial for maintaining the quality of the manuscripts and ensuring they fall within the scope of the journal, rejecting submitted manuscripts at this step without the guest editor's consent is unprofessional, to say the least. I feel highly disrespected as an academic scientist to see that Frontiers rejects manuscripts submitted by authors who were invited to contribute to our topic. A week later, we sent a follow-up email requesting a response that once again did not come. However, our labor-intensive editorial responsibilities that followed any submitted manuscript, such as finding appropriate reviewers, evaluating the reviewers' comments, and making decisions about publications, continued. Paradoxically, while Frontiers wanted to ensure that we were performing our editorial duties in a timely fashion, they were, at the same time, not allowing us to be editors-or at least not in an unencumbered way. Then, on November 5, 2021, after having our request ignored but continuously receiv- ing emails reminding us to take action on the other submitted manuscripts, we once again asked the journal to reverse the rejections: A few weeks ago, I let Frontiers know that I wouldn't be doing any more work as a guest editor for our Research Topic unless Frontiers stopped rejecting manuscripts without our approval. . . . As I mentioned before, such an attitude is unprofessional and abusive.
As soon as the editor-in-chief makes the papers available again . . . I will be more than happy to resume my editorial role.
Another guest editor, disheartened with Frontiers' disregard for our requests, sent an email on November 10, 2021: "We would appreciate an answer to our message. We would be glad to resume our editorial role as soon as we are respectfully treated as editors." Then, finally, on November 18, 2021, we received a vague explanation from the Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience journal manager regarding the rejections of two of the three rejected manuscripts: All manuscripts submitted to Frontiers go through the same rigorous quality checks, and we reserve the right to reject manuscripts at any point of the review process if they fail to meet these standards . . . the manuscript "Memories of Previous Lives and the Nature of Consciousness," this manuscript was deemed out of scope by the specialty chief editor of the journal . . . the manuscript "Observer's Mind, Does It Exist?" this manuscript was found to have a very significant degree of overlap with existing articles.

Resignation
Thirteen months after our research topic was launched, we informed the journal manager of our resignation as guest editors. The three eventful months that followed the submission of the first rejected manuscript were filled with negative experiences that could jeopardize scientific advancements and academic freedom. In what follows, we discuss the three main reasons for our refusal to keep working with Frontiers during this research topic.
The first reason concerns the paradoxical and somehow unclear editorial role Frontiers expected from the guest editors. On the one hand, the labor-intensive and timeconsuming duties related to any editorial role were requested almost daily. On the other hand, we had no freedom to decide which manuscripts merited peer review because three were rejected during the initial validation step without any guest editor's prior approval or disapproval. Importantly, we attempted to clarify the duties we would acquire as guest editors before launching the topic in a meeting with Frontiers representatives, whereby they guaranteed we would decide whether the manuscripts would be accepted for publication. However, that was not the case.
The second reason for stepping down from our editorial role was Frontiers' noncompliance with the agreed upon criteria for approving submitted manuscripts: scientific rigor and a match with the topic proposal. These criteria were not applied to any of the three rejected manuscripts. Our initial assessment was that they seemed scientifically sound and valid, fit the proposal scope, and should, thus, undergo the peer-review process. According to Frontiers' policies and publication ethics (https://www.frontiersin.org/about/policies-and-publication-ethics, 1.6. Retractions), they consider the following reasons as giving cause for concern and potential retraction: • clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data P A G E 3 0 9 P A G E 3 1 0 Journal of Anomalous Experience and Cognition (JAEX) 2022, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 297-315 fabrication) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error); • findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution, permission, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication); • major plagiarism; • the reporting of unethical research, the publication of an article that did not have the required ethics committee approval; • legal issues pertaining to the content of the article, e.g., libelous content; • major authorship issues, i.e., proven or strongly suspected cases of ghostwriting or sold ('gift') authorship; • politically motivated articles where objectivity is a serious concern; • the singling out of individuals or organizations for attack; • faith issues (e.g., intelligent design); • papers that have made extraordinary claims without concomitant scientific or statistical evidence (e.g., pseudoscience).
Although retraction of a published paper is somewhat different from a journal executive rejecting a paper supported by guest editors, the processes are similar, and the criteria for retractions can be used to examine the reasons for Frontiers' actions. Frontiers never discussed the scientific quality of the submissions nor provided us with any objective reason why the manuscripts were rejected. Such an unclear and obscure attitude was interpreted, from our end, as censorship because Tucker's paper suggested that consciousness might exist separately from the brain and Bob's papers contained words such as soul, nonphysical entity, and brain-mind dualism that may raise a red flag for physicalist scientists. We assume that Frontiers possibly rejected the manuscripts based on the last two items, criteria that clearly do not apply to any of the submissions. We, the guest editors, echo the words of Cardeña (2014), ironically published in a Frontiers journal, that "the scientific method should be applied in a non-dogmatic, open, critical but re-spectful way that requires a thorough consideration of all evidence as well as skepticism toward both the assumptions we already hold and those that challenge them" (p. 2).
The third and last reason concerns the total disregard for our editorial requirements and discontentment. Our history with Frontiers is composed of frustrating attempts at communication, with no one providing us the name of the person in charge of the journals and the rejections. The scarce and vague responses that we received did not open any possibility for discussing a constructive and scientifically sound solution for the issues discussed above. Although it was easier for us, the guest editors, just to turn a blind eye to Frontiers' misconduct and move the research topic forward, we strongly felt that this was not the right thing to do. The scientific method is an invaluable procedure to humans' endeavor to understand nature and the human mind. Science is a process that progresses while acknowledging and working hard to fix its inevitable weaknesses and mistakes. Scientific journals have an essential role in this scientific process, ensuring the research is appropriately peer reviewed and communicated to the scientific community. Unfortunately, that was not the case for our topic.

Lessons and Recommendations
In light of all this background, we learned that, ideally, the scientific editorial process We then offer a couple of recommendations to authors that eventually come to face similar issues than the ones reported here. Following these recommendations will ultimately contribute to practical and theoretical advances in the field.
• When abuses of editorial power occur, it may be an ethical duty to resign rather than participate in a compromised process.
• It is worthwhile exposing abuses of editorial power.  Vol. 2,No. 2, has ceased functioning and later become associated with another brain. This supports the proposition that consciousness is not wholly dependent on the neural processes of the brain but can exist separately from them. This leads to an exploration of the places of consciousness in relation to the physical world, and which of them may ultimately be primary.
• "Observer's Mind, Does It Exist?" Petr Bob, Charles University, Prague, Jose Acacio De Barros, San Francisco State University. October 19, 2021: Manuscript submitted October 20, 2021: Article rejected by Frontiers in Neuroscience editorial office Rene Descartes described res extensa as a main characteristic of the external world structured from material bodies. On the one hand, he postulated that the human mind has a specific kind of "observing" existence that he called res cogitans, the soul. Recently, Francis Crick described some basic rules for the future science of consciousness, arguing that the traditional Cartesian concept of the soul must be replaced by a scientific understanding of how the brain produces the mind. On the other hand, some scientific research has suggested the opposite to be true, that the mind may influence the brain in measurable ways. According to scientific thought, the first world (res extensa) is composed of material bodies that also create the brain and its structures. The second world (res cogitans) is characterized by the "observer" as the basic existing nonphysical entity that, according to some interpretations of quantum mechanics, may "create" reality through the process of observation (or, technically, measurement).
According to recent evidence, mental functions and consciousness are related to specific brain structures, but at the same time, there is evidence that mental functions and consciousness are related to binding of distributed and synchronized neural activities. Recent findings strongly suggest that the neural binding cannot simply be explained within the paradigm, suggesting localization of the mental functions needs a substantial revision of the philosophical scheme of the Cartesian concept of the brain and localization of consciousness and the so-called "brain-mind dualism." These findings indicate that binding and synchronization of distributed neural activities enable information integration, which is crucial for the mechanism of consciousness. There is increased evidence that disrupted binding and information integration produce disintegration of consciousness in various mental disorders. These disturbed interactions produce patterns of temporal disorganization with decreased functional connectivity that may underlie specific perceptual and cognitive states. Together, these findings suggest that the process of neural or cognitive unbinding influences more irregular neural states with higher complexity and negatively affects information integration in the brain that may cause disintegrated conscious experience, decreased mental level, or the loss of consciousness. In this context, recent findings suggest implications for future research focused on the mutual relationship between psychological states assessed by psychometric measures and brain physiological activities measured through complexity analysis based on mathematical and physical descriptions.