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Instructions for Commentators

Commentators must be BBS Associates or be nominated by a BBS Associate.
Please refer to the Instructions for BBS Associate Membership.

Note: BBS NO LONGER PUBLISHES CONTINUING COMMENTARIES

Please read and follow the new instructions VERY carefully.

This can save much time later on in the treatment. Also, please note that even if you have already received this letter with a previous commentary invitation, the instructions may have changed since then.

Note that in the interests of speed and efficiency, hard copies of the target article are no longer being sent to BBS commentators (except to the vanishing minority who are still unable to access the Web).

Quick Guide to the BBS Commentary Process

General Information

Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is a unique scientific communication medium, providing the service of Open Peer Commentary for reports of significant current work in psychology, neuroscience, behavioral biology or cognitive science. If a manuscript is judged by BBS referees and editors to be appropriate for Commentary (see Criteria below), it is circulated electronically to a large number of commentators selected (with the aid of systematic bibliographic searches and email Calls for Commentators) from the BBS Associateship and the worldwide biobehavioral science community, including individuals recommended by the author. If you are not a BBS Associate and wish to enquire about joining, please see the instructions for associate membership.

Once the Commentary stage of the process has begun, the author can no longer alter the article, but can respond formally to all commentaries accepted for publication. The target article, commentaries, and authors' responses then co-appear in BBS.

The purpose of the Open Peer Commentary service is to provide a concentrated constructive interaction between author and commentators on a topic judged to be of broad significance to the biobehavioral science community. Commentators should provide substantive criticism, interpretation, and elaboration as well as any pertinent complementary or supplementary material, such as illustrations; all original data will be refereed in order to assure the archival validity of BBS commentaries. Commentaries and articles should be free of hyperbole and remarks ad hominem. Please refer to and follow exactly these instructions before submitting a commentary.

General Format of Commentaries

Accepted commentaries received in time will be co-published with the target articles and the authors' response. (Please note that although commentaries are solicited and most will appear, they are subject to editorial review and acceptance cannot be guaranteed in advance.)

Please do not devote the limited space in your commentary to repeating the contents of the accompanying target article. Portions of commentaries redundant with the target article or with other accepted commentaries may have to be deleted by the editor. BBS also reserves the right to edit commentaries for relevance and style. In the interests of speed, commentators will only be sent the edited copy for review when there have been major editorial changes. (All commentaries are editorially reviewed; where necessary, they may also be formally refereed.)

Please provide an INFORMATIVE, INDEXABLE TITLE for your commentary. As many commentators will address the same general topic, your title should be a distinctive one that reflects the gist of your specific contribution and that is suitable for the kind of keyword indexing used in modern bibliographic retrieval systems. With around 150 active commentaries at any one time, it is also extremely helpful to us if you indicate at the very top of your commentary the name of the target-article authors on whom your are commenting. (There is no need to cite the entire target article, just the name of the authors will do.)

Step by Step Guide to Required Commentary Format

• The deadline for receipt of your commentary will be five (5) weeks from the date on which you were invited to comment.

• Email is now the medium by which BBS transfers and processes all of its material, from the first draft of the target article, through open peer commentary, to the author's response and final publication. We now no longer process hard copies (with their associated snail-mail delays), so these no longer need to be sent. Instead, and in order to facilitate the time-consuming and complex process of Open Peer Commentary (with up to 150 active commentaries at any one time), we now archive online drafts of the submitted commentaries on a hidden BBS website, accessible only to the target article authors.

• Commentaries can only be accepted in the following format:

1. HTML file submitted as an email attachment.



2. FIGURES may be in JPEG, GIF, TIFF or EPS format.
   However, if your commentary is eventually accepted for publicaton, TIFF or EPS format may be required.
   


3. All figures, tables and equations must be placed where you would like them to appear in print, at the proper location in the document with the corresponding figure captions below (or above the tables).





• In addition, please make sure your commentary has ALL of the following in this order:

1. THE NAME OF THE AUTHOR(S) OF THE TARGET ARTICLE
2. FOUR SEPARATE WORD COUNTS;


• ABSTRACT
• MAIN TEXT
• REFERENCES
• ENTIRE TEXT (TOTAL + ADDRESSES etc.)



3. AN INDEXABLE AND INFORMATIVE COMMENTARY TITLE for all authors of the commentary



4. FULL NAME(S)
5. INSTITUTION
6. FULL INSTITUTIONAL MAILING ADDRESS(S)
7. INSTITUTIONAL TELEPHONE NUMBER(S) (for correspondence)
8. ONE EMAIL ADDRESS EACH
9. ONE HOME PAGE URL EACH (where available)



10. 60 word ABSTRACT
11. 1000 word MAIN TEXT (with paragraphs separated by full blank lines, NOT tab indents)
12. ALPHABETICAL REFERENCE LIST(to APA STANDARD - we will convert it to BBS Standard in house)



• Except for BBS Special Issues, commentaries should be no more than 1000 words. Special Issue commentators are permitted an extra 400 words for each additional commentary on which they write (i.e. a commentary on three Special Issue papers would have a limit of 1000 + 400 + 400 = 1800).

• BBS's rigorous timetable constraints (requiring the coordination of target articles, commentaries, and authors' responses within the publishing queue) make it extremely difficult for us to process follow-up drafts of your submission. Please make sure that the paper you submit is the carefully checked final draft which you wish the authors to respond: second thoughts will require removing your commentary from the queue and holding it over for a later issue. (Small non-substantive corrections, not affecting the author's response, may be possible at a later stage, when you are sent the edited copy to review, but not before.)

• Please also ensure that your submission has been proof-read by a native English speaker before submission. This of course greatly improves its chances at the refereeing stage.