Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Behavioral and Brain Sciences is a psychology and cognitive science journal distinguished by its unusual format of target articles followed by open peer commentary, published by Cambridge University Press in the United Kingdom and founded in 1978, now issued as a single volume per year with very few papers but exceptionally high citation impact per paperBehavioral and Brain Sciences（行为与脑科学）是一本以目标论文加开放同行评论这一独特体裁著称的心理学与认知科学期刊，由 剑桥大学出版社（英国）出版，创刊于 1978 年，现为每年一卷的连续出版形态，论文总量极少而单篇引用极高；该刊的写作方式与传统学术期刊差别很大，理解其体裁机制是理解本条目的前提。 its conventions differ markedly from those of conventional scholarly journals, so understanding the genre mechanism is a prerequisite for understanding this entry.^[1]

Scope

The journal publishes particularly significant and controversial work from any area of psychology, neuroscience, behavioural biology or cognitive science, under the full title An International Journal of Current Research and Theory with Open Peer Commentary.期刊的基本定位是发表心理学、神经科学、行为生物学或认知科学领域中特别重要且具有争议性的研究，其正式名称即为「带开放同行评论的当代研究与理论期刊」。

• Every target article is published together with twenty to forty open peer commentaries of tightly constrained length, aimed at criticism, interpretation and supplementation, so the discussion generated by a single paper is far larger than in an ordinary journal.每一篇 目标论文（target article）之后会同时刊出二十至四十条 开放同行评论（open peer commentary），评论篇幅受限，重点在批评、解释与补充，因此一篇文章实际带动的学术讨论规模远大于普通期刊。
• The target author then writes an author's response, which appears simultaneously with the article and the commentaries to form a complete three-part structure of paper, commentary and reply.目标作者随后撰写一段 作者回应（author's response），与原文和评论在同一期中同时呈现，构成完整的「论文加评论加回应」三段式结构。
• Commentators are drawn from specialists inside and across the discipline, selected from the journal's large formal body of BBS Associates and sometimes nominated by the author of the target article.评论作者被称为 评论人（commentators），从本学科内外的专家中遴选，产生于期刊庞大的 评论人社群（BBS Associates）这一正式注册机制，并可由作者本人推荐。
• The mechanism was originally modelled on the commentary service of the anthropology journal Current Anthropology, and its purpose is to promote exchange ranging from molecular neurobiology to artificial intelligence and the philosophy of mind该机制最初仿自人类学刊物 Current Anthropology 的「评论」服务，其目标是促成从分子神经生物学到人工智能与心灵哲学的广泛对话，投稿与评论均须经编辑部正式邀请。 both submissions and commentaries are made by formal invitation from the editorial office.

This genre determines the fundamental difference between the journal and its peers: it does not accept routine unsolicited submission but works mainly by commission, and whether a target article succeeds depends on whether it can provoke substantive dispute across enough disciplines rather than on the strength of its data alone这套体裁决定了本刊与其他学术期刊的根本差别：它不接受常规意义上的自由投稿，而是以约稿为主；一篇目标论文能否成立，取决于它是否足以引发足够多学科的实质争论，而非仅取决于数据的强度。正因如此，该刊每年只出版少量论文，却长期稳居行为科学与神经科学小类的第一方阵，并成为跨学科争议性议题的首选发表场所。 precisely for this reason only a small number of papers appear each year, yet the journal remains a fixture of the first quartile in the behavioural sciences and neurosciences categories and is a preferred venue for cross-disciplinary contentious questions.

History

• 1978: the journal was founded by the cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad, who served as its first editor, and it began as a quarterly published by Cambridge University Press, with print ISSN 0140-525X and electronic ISSN 1469-1825.1978 年： 期刊由 认知科学家 Stevan Harnad 创刊并出任首任主编，创刊时为季刊，由剑桥大学出版社出版，纸本 ISSN 0140-525X，电子版 ISSN 1469-1825。
• Around 2002: Harnad ended a twenty-five-year tenure as editor and was succeeded jointly by Barbara Finlay, Paul Bloom and Jeffrey Gray, after which the editorial leadership changed hands several more times.2002 年前后： Harnad 结束长达二十五年的主编任期，由 Barbara Finlay、Paul Bloom 与 Jeffrey Gray 共同接任，其后主编团队几经更替。
• During the 2010s: publication frequency was progressively increased from quarterly to bimonthly, and the official journal information page now records one volume per year, with papers published online continuously and identified by electronic article numbers rather than traditional pagination.2010 年代： 出版频次由季刊逐步加密至双月刊，官方期刊信息页目前标注为每年一卷，论文改为连续在线发表，卷内文章以电子编号代替传统页码编排。
• August 2026: the peer review system was migrated from Editorial Manager to ScholarOne, with new submissions handled by the latter while papers already under review remained in the old system, and the submission address was updated accordingly.2026 年 8 月： 期刊的同行评审系统由 Editorial Manager 迁移至 ScholarOne，新投稿改用后者，在审旧稿仍在原系统内处理，投稿地址随之更新。^[2]

Editors

The journal is run by a single editor-in-chief assisted by a board whose membership has remained notably stable, covering cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, social cognition and developmental psychology among other fields.期刊实行主编负责制，其主编人选与编委构成长期保持稳定，专业覆盖面横跨认知神经科学、进化心理学、社会认知与发展心理学等方向。

• The official editorial board page of Cambridge University Press still lists Paul Bloom of Yale University in the United States as the editor of the journal, even though that page has not been updated in some years, so the actual editorial arrangements may since have changed.剑桥大学出版社官方编委页面截至目前仍将 Paul Bloom（耶鲁大学，美国）列为该刊主编，尽管该编委页面在此后数年间未再更新，实际编务安排可能已有变动。
• Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Nick Chater of University College London have long served on the board, representing atypical neurodevelopment and cognitive decision science respectively.Simon Baron-Cohen（剑桥大学，英国）与 Nick Chater（伦敦大学学院，英国）长期担任编委成员，分别代表异常神经发育与认知决策研究方向。
• Shimon Edelman of Cornell University in the United States and Cecilia Heyes of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom are both senior board members, the former covering vision, language and computation and the latter the evolution of cognition.Shimon Edelman（康奈尔大学，美国）与 Cecilia Heyes（牛津大学，英国）同为资深编委，前者负责视觉、语言与计算方向，后者负责认知演化方向。
• Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College in the United States serves on the board and Joseph Fridman of Cornell University in the United States serves as communications editor, the latter being responsible for the scholarly dissemination of the journal.Thalia Wheatley（达特茅斯学院，美国）与 Joseph Fridman（康奈尔大学，美国）分别担任编委与传播编辑，后者负责期刊的学术传播事务。