On Changes and Opportunities at AJOB Neuroscience

This article refers to:

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Autonomy is Political, Pragmatic, and Postmetaphysical: A Reply to Open Peer Commentaries on “Autonomy in Neuroethics”

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As the new Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the AJOB Neuroscience, I am aware that I have some very large shoes to fill. Paul Root Wolpe, who established the quality of the journal and served in that position for more than a decade, has decided to step down. I previously served as an Associate Editor with Paul for three years before taking over as EiC this year. This change in leadership at the journal mirrors larger, more general changes in publishing, which include more emphasis on digital publications and accessibility. My aim is that by (hopefully) steering the journal in a wise manner during these tumultuous times, these changes will now be going to be for the better. In addition to serving the scholarly community with Target Articles and related discussions, the journal is more open to various other publication types and for different methods.

As most readers of the journal know, Target Articles and Open Peer Commentaries (OPCs) are the dominant publication types in the AJOB family. AJOB Neuroscience is the sister journal of AJOB and has a reputation of excellence in serving the bioethics and neuroethics communities. Journals serve scholarly communities (and perhaps we need to emphasize this task more), and they serve them in different ways, wherever bioethics and neuroethics are being practiced - from Schools of Arts and Sciences via Medical or Law Schools to independent clinics or researchers.

Diversity of perspectives is bolstered by a variety of topics and methods that we accept for publication in our journal. As long as the scholarly work is rigorous and lies at the intersection of ethics and all things neuro (including neuroscience, artificial neural networks (ANNs) and neurology), it is a good fit for AJOB Neuroscience. This means that we are open to conceptual (see Crutchfield and Redinger 2024 in this issue), qualitative (see, e.g., Bluhm et al. 2023) and quantitative (see, Buchman et al. 2024; Dorfman et al. 2024 in this issue) methods, as long as they pertain to the communities that we as editors serve.

In taking over as EiC, I also want to make sure that the journal is quicker and more responsive to developments in the field while not compromising the academic integrity of the journal. Back when I was an early career scholar and author with the ambition to publish my work (say on Brain-Computer Interfaces, see Coin and Dubljević 2020), I would submit to the journal, then the paper may (or may not) get accepted, and even if it was accepted, it would languish for almost a year before it saw the light of day. Only after this process would OPCs get solicited. For example, my paper on the socio-political perspective on neuroethics (Dubljević, Trettenbach, and Ranisch 2022) was submitted when I was still an Assistant Professor and before I joined the journal as an Associate Editor. The slow process crawled on further if an author wanted to write a reply to OPCs. For instance, my Response to OPCs on the reformulation of the principle of autonomy in neuroethics (Dubljević 2013) only saw the light of day in 2016 (Dubljević 2016). As an author, this was immensely frustrating to me. The fact that my work was accepted but was not searchable or citable slowed down potential career prospects, and as any (early career) scholar knows, standing in the field crucially relies on the fact that the scholarly community knows and appreciates one’s work.

I am happy to say that the whole AJOB family now has a drastically improved time-frame concerning publication. These days, very soon after a Target Article is accepted for publication, it becomes available as “online first,” which is citable and searchable in relevant databases (e.g., PubMed). While this is one area that I can say represents a change for the better, there are others as well. A Target Article requires the highest level of quality in a scholarly work and has to be something more than a regular article in bioethics or neuroethics. It needs to significantly propel the debate forward and attract subsequent OPCs. Not all work, especially when done by early career scholars, is of that level of quality. It may be highly innovative, timely, or in rapid development, but not yet as strong as a Target Article needs to be. So, what to do?

Traditionally, graduate students were supposed to write book reviews prior to writing full-fledged articles. Unfortunately, many bioethics journals (AJOB included) have phased out book reviews. AJOB Neuroscience recognizes the value of book reviews, both in serving the community of scholars that considers the time needed to read whole books and in serving as a starting point for independent publishing from graduate students. For that reason, we not only accept book reviews (see. e.g., Brown 2010), but we also want to increase the number of book reviews in AJOB Neuroscience to one per issue and are currently recruiting a book review editor.

In addition, we have established different kinds of publication types in the journal. Instead of only relying on Target Articles and OPCs (which do not lose their importance), we also accept Insight articles (see e.g., Tang 2023) and Policy Forum papers (see e.g., Daly 2024). Insight articles are the publication type where highly important scholarly work in the field, though not yet fully developed to merit Target Article status, can be reported rapidly. The idea is that Insight articles are sort of “promissory notes” – the work will be of such quality that it may serve as the basis of a Target Article in the future, but the community needs to know about it sooner rather than later. The cover letters of such submissions should clearly state why the author(s) want to report the work in such a shorter format, why this work is not yet at the length of a Target Article, and why this is timely and important for bioethics and neuroethics.

The other type is Policy Forum papers. The reason why this form is a special kind of publication is that there are many policy changes on the horizon. At the interface between ethics and all things neuro (ANNs, neuroscience and neurology), plenty is going on in the policy arena, and the scholarly community needs to be more nimble in response to these changes. If there is upcoming legislation or strong suspicions that serious candidates for public office have a relevant policy change on their agenda (including regulation of neurotechnology, artificial intelligence or establishing “neurorights”) we want to be present at the forefront of the academic discussion – not after the fact. So, this shorter format is especially relevant today.

Now, I insist once more that we are serving the bioethics and neuroethics communities. We do that by taking into account certain things. With OPC proposals and OPCs, we are unable to publish everything that is submitted. Therefore, in addition to our serious concern for the quality of the OPC (proposal), we are sensitive to the question of where the author is placed. For instance, if we have several (high quality) OPC proposals essentially suggesting to cover the same issue in a Target Article accepted in AJOB Neuroscience, then we will be choosing voices that are under-represented in the journal (e.g., voices from Low- or Middle-Income Countries), as their perspectives can provide an added value to the ongoing discussion in bioethics and neuroethics. Sometimes this may cause offense – an established expert in the field might feel slighted because their OPC proposal was rejected. To that, I say two things: 1) a lot of the time we have to make tough choices, and 2) the editorial decisions at AJOB Neuroscience are non-negotiable.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This work is partially based on my presentation to the Editors’ Panel at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities on Oct. 13th, 2023, in Baltimore, Maryland. I am grateful to the audience members and fellow panelists for the lively discussion, which prompted many of the points raised here. I am also indebted to the members of the NeuroComputational Ethics Research Group (go.ncsu.edu/ncerg) for useful feedback on an early draft. Special thanks to Hunter Bissette and Steven Peppers for correcting some of the more glaring errors. I take full responsibility for any mistakes that remain.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.