Regulatory Affairs calls for papers / publications

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of World Medical & Health Policy: Alcohol and Public Policy

This special issue of World Medical & Health Policy seeks to contribute to understanding and improved health policy related to alcohol consumption, including medical, social, behavioral and economic outcomes. Papers evaluating the effectiveness of alcohol-related policies, in the United States* and around the world, are encouraged, with an eye to improving public health, wellbeing and general welfare.

Research that advances methodological investigation and improves measurement in studying relationships between alcohol-related public policies and health-related behaviors and outcomes is also welcome.

*The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's (NIAAA) Alcohol Policy Information System is particularly encouraged as a resource for proposed research

Abstract submission deadline: August 30, 2013

Contact: Bonnie Stabile, Deputy Editor, bstabile@gmu.edu

Notification of selected abstracts: September 20, 2013

Completed papers due: January 24, 2014

Presentation of research at half-day summit on Alcohol and Public Policy (tentative date: March 7th, 2014)

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Evidence & Policy: Epistemographies of Governmental and Professional Guidelines

Evidence & Policy is the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between research evidence and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners, as well as researchers. International in scope and interdisciplinary in focus, it addresses the needs of those who provide public services, and those who provide the research base for evaluation and development across a wide range of social and public policy issues – from social care to education, from public health to criminal justice.

Evidence & Policy invites contributions to a Special Issue on Epistemographies of governmental and professional guidelines

Guest editors: Ger Wackers and Rolf A. Markussen, Narvik University College, Norway

(Deadline for submission of abstracts (ram@hin.no): August 1, 2013)

Guidelines abound in all areas of social life. Governmental and professional guidelines constitute an important nexus in modern societies’ geography of expertise. They are a strange kind of tools. They do not produce scientific knowledge. Rather, they claim to mediate scientific knowledge and expertise. They do not have the power of law, granting practitioners discretionary space and leeway to make their own professional judgements. However, in audit or review situations, or in accident investigations, they assume the status of “state of the art” and bench mark. Guidelines re-enact and perform a hierarchy of expertise that grants scientific and cognitive authority to “laboratories” and other sites of scientific knowledge production. Simultaneously they configure practitioners as the ones in need of knowledge in order to improve their practice by making it evidence or knowledge based. This is a logic that is expressed in many policy documents across a wide range of governmental policy and professional fields. Guidelines for the development of guidelines have been developed in a range of governmental and international organisations. For clinical research The AGREE Collaboration, for example, provides a platform for the ‘Appraisal for Guideline Research and Evaluation’.

Despite their monologic format in a time that breathes dialogue, user involvement and participation, the production of governmental and professional guidelines has grown into an extensive industry. As an example, the Norwegian Health Directorate alone has currently 151 active governmental guidelines, of which 131 have been produced during the last five years. Guidelines do not only re-enact a hierarchy of expertise in their content. They also reproduce an expensive institutional infrastructure. This is accomplished through a recursive process in which governmental agencies and elite professional bodies identify practitioners' need for a better knowledge base of their practice. They commission guidelines that in turn legitimise the continued existence of the institutional infrastructure. The general confidence in the ability of scientific knowledge to improve governmental and professional practices, and in guidelines as necessary tools of mediation, is not matched by evidence that testifies to their effectiveness. There are studies though that address barriers to the implementation of guidelines in practice and call for better professional leadership to resolve these implementation issues.

Occupying a nexus between science and governance, the scientific literature that addresses epistemic issues in guideline production head on is scant. On the other hand, a sensitized and observant reader will find that guidelines, governmental and professional, figure in many research reports addressing other main issues. In the field of health care, for example, research on end of life care touches on professional guidelines for palliative sedation. Research on electronic patient records touches on guidelines for the proper coding of diseases that follow with the procurement and implementation of such systems. Research on the management of very expensive drugs touches on diagnostic guidelines for the selection of patients for treatment with and reimbursement of the expensive drug. These are guidelines that differ in the extent to which they allow leeway for the professionals' judgement, but also in the degree in which compliance with them is monitored and enforced in the practice they are aiming to regulate.

However, there are a number of on-going research projects that do pursue an empirical study of epistemic issues in governmental and professional guidelines head on, ethnographically. These have in common that they understand guidelines performatively as political agents. They share an interest in what guidelines do (enact or perform). We can sort them roughly into research that studies the genesis or production of guidelines on the one hand, and research that studies ready-made guidelines’ performance on the other. The first approach addresses the guideline-making practices and processes in which scientific knowledge, including epistemic uncertainty, is translated into this particular genre of governing devices. The other approach seeks to explore what ready-made guidelines do, what order they perform in the guideline’s text, for instance by questioning the scripts and user-configurations enacted. But also how they partake in the practices they are supposed to regulate, how they are received or rejected or translated, as well as how guidelines might appear as order-making devices beyond their proclaimed scope of intervention. In addition to pre-, post- and intra-guideline epistemic processes one can discern an infra-perspective with a focus on institutional, infrastructural processes.

In this Special Issue we aim to bring together original research papers that address and critically assess epistemic issues (epistemographies) in and of governmental and professional guidelines from the two research fields that study science and governance, Science and Technology Studies (STS) on the one hand and Policy Studies on the other. This Special Issue is scheduled for publication in 2015.

The following time schedule will be pursued.

1. August 1, 2013: Deadline for submission of abstracts. Please submit abstracts of 200-300 words to ram@hin.no, outlining the paper that you would be able to contribute.

2. October 15, 2013: Invitations to write full papers will be forwarded to contributors.

3. March 1, 2014: Deadline for the submission of first drafts to guest editors at ram@hin.no .

4. June 1, 2014: Deadline for submission of final full text manuscripts to the journal.  These will at this stage be subject to the journal’s ordinary peer review procedures, and further drafts may be requested. The responsibility for final publication decisions rests with Evidence & Policy’s managing editors.

Contact information of guest editors:

Rolf Andreas Markussen
Narvik University College
Faculty of Health and Society
P.O. Box 385
N-8505 Narvik, Norway
E-mail: ram@hin.no
Mobile phone: +47 97070776

Ger Wackers
Narvik University College
Faculty of Health and Society
P.O. Box 385
N-8505 Narvik, Norway
E-mail: ger.wackers@hin.no

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Science, and Law: Responsible Conduct of Research

Within the context of a shifting research environment, the Journal of Philosophy, Science, and Law is inviting authors to submit new manuscripts that address the responsible conduct of research (RCR). Scientific research is conducted in a significantly different environment than it was 20 – or even 10 – years ago. Among the most notable changes are: new technologies that both yield highly novel results and decrease the transparency of the methods used; the increased pressure on academic researchers to secure intellectual property rights to their research; and interdisciplinary research efforts that are conducted collaboratively across the globe. These changes raise new challenges and questions about modern research practices. 

Topics suitable for this Call for Papers include but are not limited to:

• How technology contributes to the occurrence, or detection, of research misconduct.

• Whether the incidence of falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism or other problematic research practices is increasing.

• Whether contemporary peer review processes are adequate for assessing journal submissions or whether alternative methods should be used (e.g., open peer review).

• How RCR policies from federal agencies, including those ones from NSF and NIH, are affecting research practices.

• How federal regulations, including those from the U.S. Public Health Service relating to fCOI, are affecting research communities.

• Whether recent community RCR guidelines, such as the Singapore Statement, adequately address the challenges emerging from a highly interdisciplinary and international research environment.

Manuscripts submitted for inclusion in this special issue must be original work and should not be under consideration with any other journal. The word count for submitted manuscripts, including references and notes, should not exceed 5000 words.  Manuscripts should be accompanied by an abstract of no more than 200 words.  Authors should adhere as closely as possible to the Journal’s publication guidelines:  http://www.miami.edu/ethics/jpsl/submission.html. Authors should submit their manuscripts and abstracts via email attachments no later than August 1, 2013 to Dr. Levi Wood: LBWOOD(at)PARTNERS(dot)ORG. The email subject line should read JPSL-RCR. Accepted manuscripts will be published online in December 2013/January 2014.

Call for Manuscripts for a Special Theme Edition of the Journal of Medical Regulation: The Health Care Workforce in Transition: How Will Demographic Trends and Changing Delivery Models Impact Medical Regulation?

The submission deadline for manuscripts is October 1, 2013.

The Journal of Medical Regulation (JMR) requests manuscripts on topics related to this theme for inclusion in a special edition scheduled to appear in early 2014.

Health care workforce issues – from physician shortages to the rise of telemedicine and new federal mandates in the Affordable Care Act –are an increasingly important factor in the national dialogue about health care.

These issues bring questions for the medical regulatory community: How will the fast-changing health care workforce be most effectively licensed and regulated? What will state medical boards and others need to do to keep pace with the change of care delivery models and while ensuring public protection?

Prospective manuscripts for JMR’s special workforce edition may address a wide range of issues under the broad heading of the theme: demographic analyses of the physician and allied health care workforce; undergraduate and graduate enrollment levels; diversity and equity; economic, political and social trends impacting workforce; state and federal policy initiatives; international factors; etc.

All manuscripts should provide content and analysis that is relevant to the work of the nation’s medical regulatory community, including state medical boards. Content and analysis that deals specifically with the particular workforce challenges faced by state medical boards in this environment is encouraged.

For author information and manuscript guidelines, please visit http://jmr.fsmb.org.

Call for Papers for a Special Content Section of Health Policy and Technology: Adopting Health Technology

Health Policy and Technology is the official journal of the Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine, and is a cross-disciplinary journal focusing on health policy and the role of technology in health environments. The journal publishes relevant, timely and accessible papers and commentaries supporting policy makers, health professionals, health technology providers, patient groups and academia interested in this area where health, policy and technology converge.

Deadline for submissions 15th August.

National and international perspectives welcome on the following and other topics relevant to adoption of health technology:

-- case studies on adoption of health technology

-- establishing priorities

-- perspectives of patient charities

-- perspectives of health professionals

-- science and business partnerships

-- role of the regulators

-- involving policy makers

-- ethical dimensions

-- avoiding discrimination in health provision

For more information regarding author guidelines and online submission, visit the journal’s homepage: www.healthpolicyandtechnology.com.

All manuscripts can be submitted electronically using our online submission system: http://ees.elsevier.com/hlpt.

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Behavioral Sciences and Law: Disability, Law and Public Policy, and the World Wide Web

Behavioral Sciences and Law invites submissions for a forthcoming special issue on Disability, Law and Public Policy, and the World Wide Web. The Web has fundamentally changed the way we participate politically, socially and culturally within a complex network of dispersed communities. Although there is a substantial literature on the web and related law and public policy, fewer articles have examined the implications of the web for persons with disabilities and over the life course. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate in academic, legal, and policy circles about the reach and breadth of web accessibility technical standards and performance criteria, and their application under national laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, and international conventions such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In addition, there are evolving privacy and security considerations, copyright and ownership issues, and issues of free speech and censorship. To address these and other topics, this special issue aims to provide a resource for academics and researchers, legal and social advocates, online service providers, educators and employers, and policymakers interested in emerging legal and policy issues associated with the full and equal enjoyment of the web by persons with disabilities.

We invite conceptual, legal, and empirical papers on disability, law and policy and the web. Papers from multiple perspectives and novel as well as established disciplines are welcome, such as psychology, sociology, political science, education, business and management, healthcare, vocational rehabilitation, engineering, disability studies, cognitive science, computer science and design, human-computer interaction, and public policy and law.

Papers should be no longer than 30 pages, inclusive of all tables, figures and references. Shorter research notes and focused commentary (no longer than 15 pages in total) are welcome. References should be in American Psychological Association style, although a legally-oriented paper may use the Bluebook Uniform System of Citation. The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2013. Please send two electronic copies of the submission, one blinded for peer review, to John Petrila, J.D., LL.M., University of South Florida (jpetril1@health.usf.edu) or Peter Blanck, Ph.D., J.D., Burton Blatt Institute, Syracuse University (pblanck@syr.edu), the guest editor for this special issue.

Behavioral Sciences & the Law is a peer reviewed journal that provides current and comprehensive information from throughout the world on topics at the interaction of the law and the behavioral sciences. Appealing to academics, researchers, practitioners, policymakers, the journal balances theoretical, legal, and research writings to provide a broad perspective on pertinent topics.

Call for Papers for a Special Symosium of Reason Papers: The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Emergencies

Fall 2014 Symposium: The Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics of Emergencies

The Editors of Reason Papers are soliciting submissions of manuscripts for a special symposium on emergencies (due by March 1, 2014). Send submissions to reasonpapers@gmail.com. Inquiries welcome.

Submissions may grapple with any of a wide variety of issues related to emergencies (not an exhaustive list): How is “emergency” to be defined? How do we know when we enter/exit an emergency? How should moral and legal norms be formulated so as to take stock of emergencies–if they should? Are moral norms defeasible in the face of emergencies, or specially contextualized so as to preserve their indefeasibility? Who has special authority for decision-making in an emergency? How best to guard against abuses of power or corruptions of norms in emergency situations?

We’re looking for submissions across the broadest spectrum of relevant disciplines–philosophy, political science, legal studies, history, sociology, anthropology, medicine, criminology/police studies, strategic/military studies, etc.

Reason Papers is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal appearing annually each fall. It features book reviews and review essays along with full-length articles, symposia, and discussion notes of previously published articles. All manuscripts submitted for consideration as Articles are subject to a blind peer-review process (see Submissions page for instructions), and all contributions are subject to internal editorial review. Not limited to philosophy, we publish work by economists, legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and others, provided the content is normative in the philosophical sense. In addition to articles on moral, social/political, and legal philosophy, we also run essays on epistemology, aesthetics, art history, and classics.