Additional Instructions for Commentators
Additional Instructions for Commentators
The Critical Rationalist ISSN: 1393-3809
All prospective authors (of both target articles and commentaries) are
asked to read these instructions carefully in advance of preparing a
manuscript. In any case, queries regarding any of these instructions
should be addressed to the
editors.![[*]](l2h-icns/foot.gif)
These instructions comment first on the general structure or style of articles for submission to TCR; we then provide a more detailed description of the preferred typographical conventions or layout, specified independently of what computer platform or tools may be used to prepare an a manuscript; finally, we provide a detailed specification of the preferred electronic manuscript format and submission procedure.
The following proposal was presented by Karl Popper in his address to the 47th Annual Meeting of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, in April 1963 (Popper, 1963). It was focussed specifically on the style or structure of scientific papers; however, without being in any way dogmatic, we suggest that it may provide some helpful suggestions for articles in almost any field. We would draw the attention of all prospective authors particularly to the need to be as clear as possible about the problems which they are attempting to address.
...Now the practical proposal I wish to make is this. We should, as a matter of course, give the widest freedom to scientists to write papers as they think fit. But we could nevertheless encourage a new style, a style totally different from the traditional one.A paper written in this new style might be in the following form:
It would start with a brief but clear statement of the problem situation as it stood before the research was started, and with a brief survey of the position reached so far in the discussion. It would then proceed to state briefly any hunch or conjecture related to the problem that may have motivated the research, and say which hypotheses the research hoped to test. Next it would outline the experimental arrangements, adding, if possible, reasons for choosing them, and the results. And it would conclude with a summary which would state whether any tests had been successful, whether the problem situation had changed in the opinion of the author, and if so, in what way. This part would also contain new hypotheses, if any, and perhaps some comment on how they could be tested.
Papers have been written in this new style, some of them upon my suggestion. They were not all kindly received by the editors. But I believe that in the present situation of science in which high specialization is about to create an even higher Tower of Babel, the replacement of the inductive style by something like this new critical style is one of the few ways in which mutual interest and mutual contacts between the various fields of research can be preserved, or rather recreated. And I hope that the interest of the intelligent layman may also be rekindled in this way.
All this, of course, is merely a proposal open to discussion. But these matters ought to be discussed. For there does not seem to have been much discussion of questions like this for a long time--perhaps not even since Bacon, almost 400 years ago.
Popper (1963, pp. 106-107)
The TCR editors specifically invite continuation of this discussion!
Original target article length should normally not exceed c. 8,000 words; commentaries should not exceed c. 4000 words.
All articles (including commentaries) must have:
Articles should be hierarchically subdivided, where appropriate. Each sectional (and subsectional etc.) unit should carry a short descriptive title (no more than 8 words).
All paragraphs should be numbered in a single sequence (i.e. independent of sectional divisions). These paragraph numbers should be used in lieu of page numbers for cross-referencing, as page references may not be consistent (or even exist) in the several alternative presentation formats in which the article will be potentially distributed.
Bibliographic citations in the text should use the author-date system--i.e. they should include the author's last name and the date of publication and may include page references. Examples of correct style are: Brown(1973); (Brown 1973; 1978); (Brown 1973; Jones 1976); (Brown & Jones 1978); (Brown et al. 1978).
Complete bibliographic information for each citation should be included in the list of references, provided at the end of the article. The reference list should be arranged in alphabetical order in the style of the following examples. Do not abbreviate journal titles.
Kupfermann, I. & Weiss, K. (1978) The command neuron concept. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1:3-39. Dunn, J. (1976) How far do early differences in mother-child relations affect later developments? In: Growing point in ethology, ed. P. P. G. Bateson & R. A. Hinde, Cambridge University Press. Bateson, P. P. G. & Hinde, R. A., eds. (1978) Growing points in ethology, Cambridge University Press.
Selecting one (ore more) submission format(s) for an electronic journal is a mundane, yet extremely vexed problem. The editors of TCR will not pretend to have identified a final or optimal solution. We will appreciate ongoing discussion of this issue, and will, in any case, continue to review the available technologies.
However: the current preferred electronic manuscript format for TCR is 7-bit ASCII text, marked up (for emphasis, mathematical notation, non-ASCII characters, footnotes etc.) in LATEX (Lamport, 1986). Support for hypertext features should be marked up using the LaTeX2HTML package. Citations should be marked up using the harvard package. The reference list should be prepared in the BibTeX database format. Where appropriate, figures should be provided as separate encapsulated Postscript files, and referenced from the manuscript using the epsf macro package.
TCR articles are made available in the source LATEX format: authors are encouraged to download articles to see examples of correct markup.
Authors are strongly encouraged to prepare their electronic manuscripts according to these guidelines, insofar as that is possible or practical; however, we recognise that many authors may not be familiar with these formats. Therefore, in preparing a manuscript for submission, please contact the editors for advice (e.g. on the availability of tools for conversion from other, proprietary, formats, to LATEX, etc.). In any case, while the resources of TCR are limited, we do not intend that the electronic manuscript format should ever represent an obstacle to publication!
The normal submission mechanism should be via email to:
tcr-editors@www.eeng.dcu.ie
Where the article consists of a single LATEX source file, it may be sent simply as the message body. Where the article involves multiple source files (e.g. Postscript format diagrams etc.), these should be combined into a .tar.gz or .zip format archive, and emailed as a MIME-encoded attachment. In either case, immediately in advance of sending a message containing an article, you should send a covering note, advising what method is being used. In the case of original target articles, this covering note should include a list of suggested commentators (with email addresses).
If you encounter any difficulties in following these instructions please contact us to discuss other alternative submission mechanisms.
Additional Instructions for Commentators
The Critical Rationalist ISSN: 1393-3809
