The Cambridge Journal of Human Behaviour (CJHB) is a student-led, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, quarterly journal for undergraduates. It hopes to enjoy various contributions from both social, psychological, and biological perspectives concerning the journal's central tenet: human behaviour. Namely, covering the mechanisms and forces behind behaviours, their enactment, and their varied consequences. The journal primarily seeks contributions from the fields of Biological and Social Anthropology (Archaeology and Human, Social, & Political Sciences Triposes, respectively), Psychological and Behavioural Sciences (PBS), and relevant topics within the Biological Sciences.
We hope to provide a platform and opportunity for cross-fertilisation interdisciplinarity in which the varying methodological frontiers of disciplines may converge, overlap, bisect, or even jar. Our focus is on human behaviour, however that may be taken and engaged with, from a phylogenetic and/or ontogenetic account. Our aim is to traverse the "two cultures" that often imagine themselves as having a "gulf of immutable comprehension" (Snow, 1965); viz. that of the social and natural sciences. Whilst we have decidedly delineated and recommended multiple disciplines to ground and analyse human behaviour (as listed above), these heuristic distinctions—rather than empirical ones—come to be understood as "utterly intertwined" (Sapolsky, 2018, p. 5).
By taking a broad definition of behaviour from the Cambridge dictionary as "the way that a person [...] behaves in a particular situation or under particular conditions", writing about human behaviour in this journal should seek to explain (aetiology, motivations, causality, etc.), contextualise (whether in a social environment or a molecular one, for example), and comment on (analyse multifaceted implications) how these behaviours come to be observed and understood. This is all with the necessary caveat of being bound within the epistemology and methodology of the author's field of inquiry.
Submissions must include: a manuscript of up to 5000 words, maximum; a cover letter; and an abstract. Submissions will be sent to two reviewers who blindly review the author's work, each sending an evaluation of "accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject" to an editor who sends the author a decision letter with comments (accompanying any reviewers' comments) for further revisions. From there, authors (if not already accepted) will continue revise and resubmit their manuscript with the same editor until it is finally passed on to the editor-in-chief for final review.
This rigorous format of peer-review should encourage students to submit original, well-written, and coherent works that may be adapted from previous essay for supervisions (although manuscript titles must be original) or other article submissions, offering students an insight into academic publishing. For more, see the "submission guidelines" and "join the team" in the Handbook.
For consistency and preparation for more rigorous journals, the CJHB will follow the formatting of the Journal of Experimental Psychology in relation to submissions, referencing (APA 7th Edition), copyediting, and reviewing processes. CJHB is also committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics in line with the University of Cambridge's policies. All authors must read the submission guidelines before submitting a manuscript. By doing so, authors agree to follow our publication ethics, including our policies on plagiarism.