Efforts to Encourage Multidisciplinarity in the Cognitive Science Society.

Abstract

Schunn, Crowley, and Okada (this issue) have documented a situation that naturally concerns all of us, the extent to which the journal Cognitive Science and the annual meetings of the Cognitive Science Society represent the multidisciplinary breadth of the field of cognitive science. As editors of the Society’s journal, organizers of the 1998 meeting of the Society, and members of the committee of the Cognitive Governing Board who are participating in organizing the annual meeting, we agree that the multidisciplinary character of the journal and Society meetings is crucial for the Society’s value to the scientific community—indeed, is its reason for being. We are committed to a policy of including the strongest representation of all of the disciplines of cognitive science in the journal and the Society meetings that we can achieve. Of course, we are not the people who primarily shape the representation of disciplines in the journal and Society meetings. This representativeness is due mainly to the decisions of scientists in their choices of journals and meetings to which they submit their research papers. In our selections of papers for publication and presentation, we consider multidisciplinary representation as a major factor, and of course we are committed to publishing papers that make significant scientific contributions of importance to the multidisciplinary field of cognitive science. We will continue actively to encourage greater multidisciplinarity in the journal and meetings of the Cognitive Science Society. At the 1997 Society meeting, a new format was initiated on a trial basis for the purpose of increasing the representation of researchers working on topics that have not been strongly represented. This format was promising, and it will be used, along with other means, to continue the effort to broaden disciplinary representation at future meetings. The editors of Cognitive Science continuously seek ways to encourage submission of papers from disciplines that have been represented less strongly than others and to give disciplinary representation appropriate consideration in selecting manuscripts for publication.