Introduction to Volume 11, Issue 4 of topiCS.

Abstract

The October 2019 issue of topiCS encompasses two topics. We lead with Biette and Stone's topic, Remembering with Others and follow with a very different topic for topiCS that was sparked by a paper published in another journal titled, What Happened to Cognitive Science?. Lucas M. Bietti (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Télécom ParisTech, Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3), Paris, France) and Charles B. Stone (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and The City University of New York, both in NY, USA) have organized a topic based around the idea that “remembering the past through conversations with others is a uniquely human endeavor”. To this end, they have recruited researchers to write 10 research papers and five commentaries. In addition, their introduction to this topic is written to communicate their excitement and passion to a broad range of Cognitive Scientists – not simply to others working in this specialty area. As always, the Editors' introduction to their topic can be freely downloaded from our Publisher's website by anyone interested in this topic. Our second topic, Commentaries on Rafael Núñez's article, “What happened to cognitive science?” was inspired by a paper published by Núñez and colleagues1 this past June in Nature Human Behavior. In that paper, Núñez et al., provide bibliotechnic analyses in support of their hypothesis that, as a discipline, Cognitive Science has not fulfilled its early promise. Exactly what that “early promise” was as well as the nature of the evidence that Núñez and colleagues cite is discussed by 10 Commentaries written by one or a team of Cognitive Scientists – including one paper written by an entire Department of Cognitive Science. These 10 short papers provide an interesting snapshot of the angst and optimism in our research community in 2019. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (max two published pages) and will be published without an abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 to 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. The Executive Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to the Executive Editor ([email protected]) or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).