Submissions

Author Guidelines

JSE Author Guidelines – Updated December 2025

Submit to journalofscientificexploration.org

JSE publishes Regular Articles, Literature Reviews, Student and Citizen Science papers, Brief Reports, Book and Multimedia Reviews, Essays, and Letters. Invited content in these categories is also published periodically. Authors are responsible for ensuring their  submissions meet APA Guidelines (7^th edition) and conform 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, or comments and criticisms. Studies can adopt diverse methods, including qualitative, ethnographic, historical, survey, philosophical, case study, quantitative, experimental, quasi-experimental, data mining, and data analytics approaches.

A. Regular Articles (~11K 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 – M_2/5 (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 < .01, percentage effect = 18%), for means tests (M₁ = 3.44 versus M₂ = 4.02, t = 3.443, p < .01, percentage effect = 11.6%).

B. Systematic, Narrative, and Scoping Reviews (~12K 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 and Multimedia 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: (a) Author Disclosures; (b) Content Overview; (c) Pros, Cons, and the Book’s Contributions to the Literature; (d) Recommendation; and (e) References (if applicable). For an example, see: https://www.spr.ac.uk/book-review/poltergeist-night-side-physics-keith-linder

Multimedia reviews can cover films, documentaries, recorded presentations or symposia, video series and reports, websites that are comprehensive resources, software for scholars, and even peer-reviewed articles in other journals that are pertinent to frontier science. Submissions are now being accepted, and authors should note that these multimedia reviews should include four components: (a) Introduction; (b)  Summary of the Media Content; (c)  Description of the Value of the Media to the Journal’s Readership; and (d) Critique of the Media. These components need not constitute major sections, but each issue should be clearly addressed in the submission. We strongly encourage prospective authors to discuss their topic for a multimedia review with the subsection Editor P. D. Moncrief (pdmoncrief@yahoo.com) prior to submission.

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 information:

• Author affiliations. Please provide ORCID numbers for authors as available.
• Abstract (~150 words). JSE uses an unstructured format for summaries and encourages language accessible to readers across different disciplines.
• 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, or fields of study, including interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches.
• Data-sharing requirements. Primary (raw) data (redacted for confidential or personally identifying information) must either be (a) 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), or (b) otherwise provided to qualified researchers on formal request.
• AI Use Disclosure. Authors must affirm either that no artificial intelligence (AI) tools were
  used to generate text or statistically analyze data in the manuscript, or—if AI tools were
  used in any substantive capacity—that such use was responsible, transparent, and fully
  documented. JSE recognizes that AI can play a constructive role in advancing frontier
  scientific methodologies, supporting rigorous data workflows, and strengthening authors’
  internal quality‑control practices. Any AI involvement must therefore be clearly described in
  the manuscript’s AI Disclosure section, including the specific tools used, the nature of their
  contribution, and the steps taken to ensure accuracy, integrity, and authorship. This policy reflects JSE's commitment to maintaining rigorous scholarly standards while encouraging
  responsible innovation, and it will be reviewed on an ongoing basis as AI technologies and
  best practices evolve.