APPROPRIATE CONTRIBUTIONS

The following is intended to guide and expand, not limit, the scope of articles.  As the environment of human research evolves, this section will evolve.  If your intended contribution does not fit the categories described here, you are invited to consult with the Editor-in-Chief at joan.sieber@csueastbay.edu.

Material appropriate for publication may be described with four cross-cutting categories:  topics, fields or disciplines, approaches, and type of article:

Topics:  Currently twenty-six topics have been identified.  See Aim and Scope.

Fields or Disciplines: Research may employ methods of various disciplines within social or behavioral science, biomedicine, pharmacology, or medical device fields. The work may occur in academic, health-care, industrial or other settings. Please identify discipline(s), method(s), and setting(s) in the abstract and method section.  Most research may apply to any scientific context of human research. If specific to one context, please indicate this in key words, title and abstract.

Approaches or Sources of Data: See Suggested Approaches.

Types of Articles: Although categories of articles  are not mutually exclusive, a submission should state whether it is intended primarily as an original empirical research, review, or theoretical and/or methodological paper.  If theoretical and/or methodological, the paper should include empirical data or results to demonstrate its applicability to solving ethical problems.  “Theory” is used here in its various senses. For example, a paper might present a model, method or paradigm for studying the meanings of privacy in a given culture based on Laufer and Wolfe’s* theory of privacy, or a theory of informed consent might be used to guide the methodology of cognitive interviewing in creating consent communication that participants understand, and so on.

 Some quantitative articles become more useful if accompanied by a case study or methodological paper that expands upon or illustrates the ideas that emerge from the quantitative presentation. The decision to seek an appropriate accompanying paper is sometimes made jointly by the editor and an author whose quantitative paper has been accepted for publication in JERHRE.

*Laufer, R.S., & Wolfe, M. (1977). Privacy as a concept and a social issue: A multidimensional developmental theory.  Journal of Social Issues, 33, 44-87.