A Letter from the Editor of Evolution and Human Behavior
Dear HBES members,
I hope this letter finds you all in good health and relatively sane. I am pleased to give the membership an update on EHB. As many of you already know, Elsevier recently migrated the online submission system to Editorial Manager. Together with the production staff and the Editorial Board, I have been working to identify issues and improve usability. I expect it will take a few more cycles to work out all the kinks so I ask for your continued patience.
The Editorial Board continues to work through this challenging time to compile several upcoming issues and I’d like to share them with you. Slated for 2020 are two special issues. The first special issue, organized by Coren Apicella, Ara Norenzayan, and Joe Henrich is on non-WEIRD research and due out in September. The second special issue, organized by Willem Frankenhuis and Dan Nettle, is on Life History Theory and due out in November. This will close out volume 41. For each of the special issues, please be on alert for calls for commentaries. A few selected commentaries will be compiled and appear in a subsequent issue early in 2021. More information will be provided in the introductory article/editorial that will accompany each special issue. There are 2 more special issues in the works and I will provide an update as these take shape.
In issue 6 of 2019, EHB piloted a new format—featured article, commentaries, and author response. The test article for this format was on current debates surrounding menstrual cycle effects and, from the feedback I’ve received, several HBESers felt it was a valuable contribution to the literature. I strongly believe it is important to advance the field’s knowledge across all content domains and one way to do this is to organize effective discussions. There are several topics across anthropology, biology, economics, philosophy, and psychology in need of clarification and (friendly) debate. My intention is that this new format will provoke discussion, generate collaborations, and solidify our scientific foundations. There are 6 issues of EHB per year and I would like to move toward including a featured article with commentaries and response in each. Currently, selection of target articles and commentaries is initiated by the Editor, but I welcome inquiries. Note: Not all articles will lend themselves to this format.
Typically, at the annual HBES meeting, we announce the winner of the Margo Wilson Award, an award made by the Editorial Board for the best paper published in EHB in the preceding year. Selection for the 2020 Margo Wilson Award for the best paper published in EHB in 2019 will be announced in the summer newsletter.
Finally, there are several changes to the Editorial line-up I’d like to share. First, a warm welcome to four new Associate Editors: David Puts, Greg Bryant, Tess Robertson, and Andy Delton. They join Coren Apicella, Rebecca Sear, Josh Tybur, and Willem Frankenhuis to round out the 2020 Editorial Board. Second, Dan Hruschka, after 7 years of service, will be stepping down as Associate Editor. Dan’s contributions to the field have been immeasurable and I am grateful to have had the chance to work closely with him on the journal. Thank you, Dan, for everything you’ve done.
I look forward to receiving your excellent scholarly works via the online submission portal. As always, my mission as EiC of HBES’s journal is to raise the level of discourse, advance knowledge within and across borders, and disseminate to the academy, media, and public our multi-disciplinary research on evolution and human behavior.
Stay well,
Deb Lieberman
Editor in Chief, Evolution & Human Behavior
