Author Guidelines – Updated July 2024

JSE publishes Regular Articles, Literature Reviews, Brief Reports, Book Reviews, Essays, and Letters. Invited content in these categories is also published periodically. Please ensure that your submission meets APA Guidelines (7th edition) and conforms to the parameters below.

There are no strict word limits, but guidelines for different types of submissions are given below. In all cases, authors should be as clear, direct, and concise as possible in their presentations. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to mandate revisions to the lengths of accepted papers in the interest of readability, accessibility, and space.

Contributions can be empirical research, critical or integrative reviews of the literature, position papers, policy perspectives, and comments and criticism. Studies can adopt diverse methods, including qualitative, ethnographic, historical, survey, philosophical, case study, quantitative, experimental, quasi-experimental, data mining, and data analytics approaches.

Article Processing Charges

The implementation of APCs is a proactive step towards securing the longevity and vitality of academic publishing platforms. Therefore, all papers (except for “Book & Multimedia Reviews” and “Correspondence”) received as of 1 June 2024 and accepted for JSE publication for 2025 and beyond will incur a fee of USD $250.00 for “corresponding authors” who are non-SSE members and USD $150.00 for “corresponding authors” who are SSE members in good standing (apply for membership at: https://www.scientificexploration.org/join). Note that authors’ personal, non-reimbursed payments toward publication costs are tax deductible in the United States. These modest APCs—while helping to offset operational expenses—also align with the principle of shared responsibility within academia. By contributing to publication costs, authors invest in the dissemination of their research findings and support the accessibility of knowledge to a wider audience.

A. Regular Articles (~12K words max). Primary research or interesting and important theoretical papers that foster the diversity and debate inherent to the scientific process. This entails novel or innovative ideas that have some ‘fragmentary' experimental or empirical support but which can be evaluated with logic and open-mindedness to present academia with provocative hypotheses that would otherwise be rejected by most conventional journals.

• All empirical results that have not been replicated should be called ‘preliminary’ with the findings treated as such. Peer-review and publication priority will be given to studies that are (a) pre-registered or (b) replications. Note that ‘replication’ can involve repeating the research procedure in a (nearly) identical separate study to be reported within the same paper (e.g., ‘Study 2: Replication’). Or, large datasets can be divided randomly into ‘Training’ and ‘Test (or Validation)’ sets, i.e., the research findings presented are those results that replicated in the Test set.

• To promote stricter transparency and context for readers, all analyses where appropriate should provide effect size statistics in the form of direct percentages of either association (correlative analysis) or mean percentage differences (ANOVA, t-tests, etc.). In the case of correlative analysis, reported results shall report R2 to provide a covariance percentage estimate. Mean tests shall provide a ‘percentage change’ indicating the actual percentage change between groups (e.g., M = 3.44 Group 1 versus M = 4.02, in Group 2, on a five-point scale is calculated by the following: ABS [M1 – M2/5 (scale range)] = 11.6% shift or change in means). Standard effect statistics also are allowed, so long as the above percentage techniques are likewise reported. These statistics should be reported in results as ‘percentage effect’ and follow immediately after standard statistical analysis notation. For correlation, (r = .43, p

B. Systematic, Narrative, and Scoping Reviews (~13K words max). All meta-analyses and systematic reviews should include a PRISMA flow diagram to clarify for readers how the exclusion/inclusion criteria were applied to create the literature set under consideration: See http://www.prisma-statement.org/

C. Brief Reports—Rapid Publications (~2K words max). These are usually pilot studies, direct or conceptual replication attempts of previous work, case studies, brief evaluations, reviews, or ‘citizen scientist’ efforts that are unique, first-time reports, with no more than two tables and/or figures and 10 references. This rapid publication option is especially appropriate for graduate-level student studies, pilot or preliminary research, or descriptions of important new methods or instrumentation. These reports are subject to blinded peer review in the same manner as research articles. Authors should follow all requirements for longer manuscripts when submitting Brief Reports, including that they have not been submitted or published elsewhere.

D. Book Reviews (~2K words max). Structured for readability and utility in which the content is suitably contextualized and includes links to general model-building or theory-formation in the respective domain(s). Please use the following headers, or otherwise incorporate these themes into the review: ‘Author Disclosures; Content Overview; Pros, Cons, and the Book’s Contributions to the Literature; Recommendation; and References’ (if applicable). For an example, see: https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/poltergeist-night-side-physics-keith-l...

E. Essays (~8K words max). Important conceptual or philosophical commentaries, observations, or arguments to spark constructive discussion or debate relative to theory, methodology, or practice.

F. Letters (~1K words max). Must address substantive issues relative to recently published content in the Journal.

Submissions (A) to (C), and (E) as appropriate, must also include the following 4 sections:

• Lay Summary (~150 words max). Placed at the beginning of the article before the scientific abstract, this is a short—1 to 3 sentences—bottom-line assessment of the value of the paper. Any technical terms used require a short parentheses description (which will educate). Include a closing conclusion sentence where it is clear that this is the researchers’ interpretation of the results.

• Implications and Applications (~150 words max). Placed immediately after the Discussion section to succinctly summarize or suggest how the study’s methods or findings can potentially inform the study of other issues, anomalies, fields of study, including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.

• Author Contributions (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). Please include this subsection under the Acknowledgments section. Follow standard guidelines such as this one from Elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/authors/policies-and-guidelines/credit-author-s.... Also, please include ORCID numbers for authors where possible (on the online submission page).

• Data-sharing requirements. Primary (raw) data (redacted for confidential or personally identifying information) must be uploaded to a freely accessible repository for independent verification or analysis by qualified researchers and the URLs shared in the paper and in a section called Data Availability under the Acknowledgments section. The Journal can provide such space.
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Citation Style and References. References will be published in APA Style Guide 7th edition style. All works cited in the text, appendices, figures, tables, and notes must be listed under References. Use full journal titles (not abbreviations), include URLs or DOIs where possible. Citations in the text take the style (Smith, 1970) and are not numbered. Other notes may be numbered.

Tables. Tables may appear anywhere in the text file, at the end of the file, or as a separate file. Tables should be in Word, Excel, or PDF format.

Figures. All figures should be at least 300 dpi and may embedded in the text file and/or uploaded as separate files.

Copyedited Files and Proofs. A copyedited and formatted PDF proof will be sent to the corresponding author for review.

Copyright. Authors retain copyright to their writings, under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC. However, when an article has been submitted to the Journal of Scientific Exploration for consideration, the Journal holds first serial (periodical) publication rights. Additionally, the Society has the right to post the article on the Internet and to make it available via electronic as well as print subscription.

Disclaimer. While every effort is made by the Society and the Editorial Board to see that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinion, or statement appears in this Journal, they wish to point out that the data and opinions appearing in the articles and advertisements herein are the sole responsibility of the contributor or advertiser concerned. The Society’s officers, agents, Editors, and the Editorial Board accept no responsibility or liability for the consequences of any such inaccurate or misleading data, opinion, or statement.

Privacy Statement. The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.