A Possible Case of Censorship of Submissions on the Nature of Consciousness

Abstract

To advance the scientific understanding of consciousness, one should be open to theoretical pluralism to freely develop and rigorously test a wide diversity of paradigm candidates and communicate the ideas and findings to the scientific community. Science development is jeopardized when journals tend to present a field’s state-of-the-art findings in a biased or misguided way or suppress investigations of a particular perspective. We describe the challenges and pitfalls we faced as guest editors during the editorial review process of a special issue of the journal Frontiers on “The Nature of Consciousness” and how we responded to it. We describe and discuss how the journal staff overruled our editorial role to enforce what was very likely academic censorship. We then offer a couple of recommendations to authors and editors that may face similar issues. We believe that following these recommendations will ultimately contribute to practical and theoretical advances in the understanding the nature of consciousness and the mind–brain relation.