《科学》发什么样的社会科学论文？【转】

社会科学与行为科学栏目主编愿景声明

Vision statement social and behavioral sciences science magazine

Hi everyone,

In June, I became the new editor for social and behavioral sciences at Science magazine. I accepted the position because Science holds a unique position in terms of being an academic journal that connects with the larger public to a far greater degree than any disciplinary journal.If you’re passionate about communicating your research to the world, then I think you’ll be excited about what Science has planned going forward. With that in mind, let me make a few announcements.

When I talk to academics, the most common question I receive has to do with Science’s identity. What kinds of social science papers do we publish? In thinking about how to situate Science within the social sciences, I feel that our strength is the ability to bridge acrosssocial sciences in a way that very few outlets can and at a level that none can match. Therefore, we will be emphasizing papers that cross over major fields more strongly than ever before (e.g. psychology and anthropology, economics and political science, sociology and computer science). Our goal is not to displace the top journals within any social science discipline. Rather, I hope to attract papers that might have a slightly more difficult time at a disciplinary journal for ‘fit’ issues, and that more importantly, would miss half of the audience that would appreciate it. Papers do not need to be co-authored by authors from different disciplines; rather, we are emphasizing research that crosses disciplines, has societal implications, and broad appeal. I think implicitly,these interdisciplinary papers were already most likely to advance at Science, and so I hope that by making this focus explicit, we will clear existing confusion and encourage cutting edge submissions at the intersection of disciplines.

The other major concern that I encounter has to do with scientific practice and reproducibility concerns within the social sciences. Science is actively engaged with these issues and continues to consider best practices going forward. Inparticular, I will be putting a stronger emphasis on the following points for the social sciences section. First, only a small percentage of papers are sentout for in-depth review. For these papers only, authors will be asked to upload their data to an online repository accessible to reviewers. I think that this approach strikes the right balance, such that most authors will not have to jump through even more hurdles in order to submit an MS that will likely berejected, while authors with a good chance at publication give reviewers accessto all of the information they need to make an informed decision. Second, inaddition to our advisory board, Science has a separate advisory board that focuses on statistics. We will be adding new board members who specialize in psychometrics, econometrics, and computational methods to the board to aid in decisions on social and behavioral science manuscripts.

As we move in these theoretical and methodological directions, we have also invited new members to our social and behavioral sciences advisory board. At Science,papers are first evaluated by myself, and then I send some of these papers toour advisory board, which is comprised of top academics in their respective fields. After consulting with the board, the editors at Science decide on which papers to send out for in-depth review. Inrecruiting new members of the board, I was not seeking the dozen or so bestsocial scientists in the world (though these people are amazing). Rather, I was seeking scholars who cross over disciplines in light of our increased emphasison interdisciplinarity and who complement each other’s strengths, theoretically and methodologically.

Incoming board members are cognitive scientists Susan Gelman and Nick Chater, social psychologists Kathleen Vohs and Betsy LevyPaluck, economist Ted Miguel, and anthropologist Daniel Nettle. They will join current board members reviewing social science papers, and together, these scholars will provide expertise in areas such as behavioral economics, economichistory, judgment and decision-making, cognitive linguistics, politicalpsychology, political economy, cultural evolution, social and behavioral ecology, economic sociology, social networks, computational social science, crime, poverty,gender, race, fieldwork, conflict and cooperation, and more. In the coming months,I will be adding additional board members with expertise in computational social science, sociology, political science, and statistics as I take on moreof those responsibilities.

Finally, some social scientists express concern that there is a lack of transparency into the processes at Science, and that some researchers have access to privileged information that others do not. If you ever have questions about publishing with us, contact me. I will also be active on social media,and if there is interest, I will host a twitter Q&A to answer any questionspeople may have about publishing with Science.For example, I am often asked about formatting for Science. As most papers are rejected, my approach is to be pretty loose about formatting, with the understanding that if a paper moves further into the process, we can revisit questions of word length and formatting at that time. Also, I love to hear about work that is in early stages. If you have promising data but need to think about how to follow it up, please reach out.I’d love to brainstorm about what would be needed to make a set of findings appropriate for Science, or to discuss how such findings would need to be framed in the context of the literature. I am also actively soliciting proposals for perspective and policypieces at Science. Science has a great track record of publishing commentary pieces in the social sciences and I’d like to build on our strength here. There are lots of other little things about Science that I never knew about until I got here, and so periodically I’ll post tips for potential authors online.

As I hope this letter makes clear, Science has big plans for the social sciences, including an increased emphasis oninterdisciplinarity,methodologically rigorous research, and increased transparency. To close, let me just reiterate that I think there is fantastic interdisciplinary social science research not being sent to Science.Let’s change that.

Best,

Tage S. Rai

Associate editor for social and behavioral sciences, Science magazine

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• 本文转自：https://psyarxiv.com/tnr9v/

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