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Why publish in Constructivist Foundations?

Constructivist Foundations offers a variety of advantages compared to other journals. These features include:

❯ Interdisciplinary Outreach ■ Constructivist Foundations is a leading journal in multidisciplinary research, philosophy, history and philosophy of science and well placed among journals in education research and artificial intelligence. This means your published manuscript will have an impact in many disciplines.

❯ Wide Dissemination ■ Your published manuscript will be available for free, thus reaching many more readers compared to texts published in other journals.

❯ Extensive Discussion ■ Your article will not be published in isolation but will be accompanied by several open peer commentaries which increase the appeal of the article as they highlight further aspects and integrate various perspectives.

❯ Helpful Reviewing ■ Our double-blind peer reviewing is geared toward providing constructive criticism rather than straightforward desk rejection.

❯ Editorial Support ■ Our editors go to great lengths to help you optimize your manuscript.

❯ Impeccable Language ■ Your manuscript will be copy-edited before publication.

❯ Full Control ■ After acceptance you will have several opportunities to check and re-check your manuscript before it is published.

If you are working on topics pertaining to constructivist approaches we invite you to take advantage of these unique features and submit you manuscript to Constructivist Foundations.

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Guidelines for Authors

We require all authors to use the following Word templates which also contain detailed instructions. Please read these Author’s Guidelines carefully before submitting your text.

• Template & guidelines for target articles
• Template & guidelines for open peer commentaries
• Template & guidelines for book reviews

Send all material to submission/at/constructivist.info. Important: Make sure that the attached file is not bigger than 5MB.

Manuscripts must correspond to the Aims and Scope of the journal.

The journal publishes the following types of manuscripts:

Occasionally the journal publishes special issues focusing on a specific topic.

If you want to guest edit a special issue in Constructivist Foundations please contact us at special/at/constructivist.info with details about the topic of the special issue and a list of potential contributors and commentators.

Checklist

• We require all authors to use the Word template
• Please make sure to have carefully read the editorial policies before submitting your manuscript. In particular:
• Before submitting and while reviewing is still in progress authors must not post their submitted manuscripts (nor any draft versions of it) to any public preprint servers (including websites such as academia.edu and ResearchGate), nor on authors’ or institutional websites.

Before submitting your manuscript make sure that it contains the following parts.

• Title, optionally subtitle
• Author(s) with affiliation and email
• Structured abstract of about 200 words and up to 10 key words
• Introduction: The first chapter initializes the contact between author and reader, and should be guided by the question: “Why should the reader get involved with my paper?”
• Main text: Ideas should be presented in a logical sequence — “Is there a clearly defined progression of information? Does one paragraph lead smoothly into the next?”
  The writing style should be simple, using as few words as possible. Conciseness and brevity are valued.
• Conclusion:
  • Discusses the paper’s relevance — “How is my paper related to constructivist approaches?”
  • Optionally it may provide an outlook — “What could be done next?”
• Optional: Acknowledgement to people who have contributed but do not meet the criteria of authorship.
• Funding information listing all project and institutional funding the author(s) received while writing the manuscript.
• Declaration of competing interests regarding all competing interests in relation to the work presented.
• Alphabetical list of references. References must not be included as foot-/endnotes
• Biographical note of each author (please do not include photographs of the authors)
• List of up to 5 potential reviewers who are not in a direct work relation with (any of) the author(s) and who are qualified for double-blind peer-reviewing the manuscript
• Declaration of good scientific practice and against (self-)plagiarism.

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Detailed Guidelines

General

• The paper must be original work and must not have been published elsewhere
• The paper must be written in English.
  If English is a foreign language for you, please ask a native speaker of English to proofread your article before submission
• Overall length: 3000–9000 words, including abstract and references
• Use a simple single-column format
• To emphasize, use italics type; never use bold
• Submission formats: DOC, DOCX and RTF;
  We do not accept submissions in LaTex
• For each figure use a separate file;
  Use EPS or Adobe Illustrator (.ai) for vector-based graphics;
  Photographs and scanned material should be in JPEG or TIFF and have a resolution of at least 300dpi
• If you use copyrighted material (long quotes, photographs, figures, etc.) you must obtain the permission from the respective copyright holder before submitting the final version of your paper.

Structured Abstract

Each paper must contain a structured abstract in which the content of the paper is summarized in about 200 words. In contrast to normal abstracts, structured abstracts should be divided into the following sections.

❯ Context ■ What is the current situation in your discipline with regard to the topic of your paper? Why is it a problem in your discipline at the moment?

❯ Problem ■ Which problems do you want to solve? What are the reasons for writing the paper or the aims of the research?

❯ Method ■ What is the approach to the topic and what is the theoretical or subject scope of the paper? How are the objectives achieved? What are the main method(s) used for the research?

❯ Results ■ How did you solve the Problem described above? What was found in the course of the argumentation?

❯ Implications ■ How does your paper affect the Context described above? What is the value of the paper? For whom are your insights beneficial? What do you suggest for future research? Are there identifiable limitations in the research process? What outcomes and implications for practice, applications and consequences are identified? What changes to practice should be made as a result of your paper?

❯ Constructivist content ■ What is the connection with constructivist approaches covered by the journal? How does it link to the works of constructivists such as Ernst von Glasersfeld, Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela et al.? Do you argue in favor of a new constructivist perspective?

❯ Key words ■ What are the up to ten most important concepts and notions in the paper? Which proponents of constructivism are central in your paper? Please provide a careful mix of general and more specific key words.

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❯ Paper type ■ Which type of inquiry do you follow? Choose one from:
Conceptual (philosophical-argumentative support) · Empirical (results from psychological, biological, physical, etc. evidence) · Synthetic (formal or computational models) · Survey (guiding summary of a field) · Perspective (of senior researchers) · Application (of constructivist concepts and insights to an applied discipline).

❯ Background(s) ■ Which scientific discipline(s) does your paper cover? Choose one or two disciplines from:
Artificial Intelligence · Arts · Biology · Cognitive Science · Communication Science · Computer Science · Cultural Studies · Economics · Educational Research · Environmental Studies · Epistemology · Ethics · Evolutionary Theory · History · Interdisciplinarity · Knowledge Management · Law · Linguistics · Mathematics · Media Studies · Medicine · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Physics · Law · Psychology · Psychotherapy · Statistics · Systems Science · Sociology; Add a new discipline if necessary.

❯ Approach ■ From which constructivist approach do you argue in your paper? Choose one from:
4E Cognition · Autopoietic Systems · Biology of Cognition · Constructionism · Enaction/Enactivism · First-Person Research · Neurophenomenology · Non-Dualizing Philosophy · Operative Constructivism · Personal Construct Psychology · Radical Constructivism · Second-Order Cybernetics.

Citing in the Text

• Surname of author(s) no comma Year
• More than three authors: use the the first author’s surname followed by “et al.”
• All quotes have to be accompanied by a page specification.
• Every page specification must be preceded by a colon in both text and reference part.

Examples

• Glasersfeld (2006) argued…
• “… text” (O’Regan & Noë 2001: 940).
• Langley et al. (1987: 103) showed that…

List of References

• As a rule, use a simplified APA-style
• Except for the first word paper and book titles are not capitalized
• Journal titles are capitalized
• No comma between surname and initials
• Page specifications are preceded by a colon
• Always list all authors (no “et al.”)

Examples of books

Langley P., Simon H., Bradhaw G. L. & Zytkow J. M. (1987) Scientific discovery. MIT Press, Cambridge.

Piaget J. (1954) The construction of reality in the child. Ballantine, New York. Originally published in French as: Piaget J. (1937) La construction du réel chez l’enfant. Délachaux & Niestlé, Neuchâtel.

Examples of book chapters

Foerster H. von (1984) On constructing a reality. In: Watzlawick P. (ed.) The invented reality. Norton, New York: 41–62.

Maturana H. R. (1978) Biology of language: The epistemology of reality. In: Miller G. A. & Lenneberg E. (eds.) Psychology and biology of language and thought. Academic Press, New York: 27–63.

Examples of journal articles

Glasersfeld E. von (2005) Thirty years radical constructivism. Constructivist Foundations 1(1): 9–12.

O’Regan J. K. & Noë A. (2001) A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(5): 939–1031.

Example of electronic sources

Brook A. (2008) Kant’s view of the mind and consciousness of self. In: Zalta E. N. (ed.) The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu on 31 July 2008.

Reprints and translations

Please cite the reprint or translation from which you quote or which you actually read and add a note about the original publication.

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Reviewing Process

« Our goal is to help you optimize your paper »

It is our philosophy that the articles published in Constructivist Foundations must withstand the scrutiny of the scientific community. Therefore, we apply a three-stage reviewing process (cf. Constructive Three-Stage Double-Blind Peer Reviewing):

Step 1

Upon arrival we screen submitted manuscripts for their general appropriateness and provide the author with editorial comments if needed.

Step 2

All regular articles that have been editorially accepted are subject to double-blind peer-reviewing. We encourage reviewers to produce fair and constructive assessments that anticipate possible objections of the audience.

Step 3

Authors of (conditionally) accepted papers are asked to revise their manuscript based on the constructive criticism of the reviewers. The revised version will be forwarded to the original reviewers for a final assessment. Together with the editors' evaluation they determine the final acceptance or rejection of the manuscript.

Finally, all manuscripts accepted for publication are copy-edited.

Since Volume 9, all published articles are accompanied by about four to ten Open Peer Commentaries (OPC) in which commentators openly discuss the content of the target article. OPCs provide a concentrated constructive interaction between the target author and commentators on a topic judged to be of broad significance to the constructivist community. The issues raised by the commentators are addressed in the Author’s Response to the commentaries.

Last update: 19 January 2022