Springer to publish new journal focusing on ethical issues in neuroscience

Neuroethics will offer free online access for the first 2 years

Springer will begin publishing a new peer-reviewed journal, Neuroethics, in March 2008. Appearing three times a year, it will provide a forum for interdisciplinary studies in neuroethics and related issues in the sciences of the mind. Springer will offer free online access to the full text of all articles during 2008 and 2009.

Neuroethics will be an important communication medium in the ethics of neuroscience and the neuroscience of ethics. The journal will be highly inclusive in its scope, publishing articles with a historical focus on earlier philosophical discussions of neuroethics, as well as articles with a contemporary focus. Reflecting the diversity of the neuroscientific field, the journal will provide a multidisciplinary forum for scholars from a broad range of areas, including bioethics, social and cognitive psychology, psychiatry, neurology and neurosurgery, the cognitive sciences, philosophy and law. Neuroethics will publish research articles, discussion pieces, short communications, reviews of significant literature, information about current scholarly activities in the field and an opinions section for readers’ commentaries.

Fritz Schmuhl, Publishing Editor Bioethics & Ethics at Springer, said, “With the launch of Neuroethics, Springer aims to provide a unified academic platform to foster rigorous debate on neuroscientific research and also to counterbalance fragmented representations on the ethical, legal, political and social implications of neuroscience.”