Politics and the Life Sciences

Welcome • Editors et al.
Information for contributors
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An online biosecurity course
developed in collaboration with
The Center for Arms Control
and Non-Proliferation

Welcome to PLS

     POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed journal with a global audience. PLS is owned and published by the ASSOCIATION FOR POLITICS AND THE LIFE SCIENCES, the APLS, which is both an American Political Science Association (APSA) Related Group and an American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) Member Society.
     The PLS topic range is exceptionally broad: evolutionary and laboratory insights into political behavior, including political violence, from group conflict to war, terrorism, and torture; political analysis of life-sciences research, health policy, environmental policy, and biosecurity policy; and philosophical analysis of life-sciences problems, such as bioethical controversies. Typical contributors include political scientists and political behaviorists; biosecurity and international-security experts; life scientists, clinicians, health-policy scholars, and bioethicists; moral and evolutionary philosophers; environmental scientists and ecological economists; political-behavioral and environmental historians; science-policy scholars and historians of science; and legal scholars.
     PLS is printed and mailed just twice a year, March and September, but papers succeeding in peer review are published online immediately after emerging from revision and prepress routines. These papers are thus available in full-text format for subscribers, for journalists on request, and for the general public in special cases before appearing in hard copy. Scholarship “published online before print” will continue to bear its online date when included in the next available print issue.
     Titles, abstracts, and full text are available here at the PLS website for APLS members and subscribing institutions, such as university libraries. Titles and abstracts can be searched and viewed by any visitor. Most titles and abstracts are also in MEDLINE, which is freely accessible at www.pubmed.gov; titles and abstracts are uploaded to MEDLINE once an issue is fully assembled.
     In 2007, PLS joined BioOne,^™ a prominent not-for-profit journal aggregator, as an inaugural component of its second collection, BioOne.2,^™ which is accessible online in subscribing libraries worldwide. Titles, abstracts, and full text are now sent directly from Allen Press, our printer, to BioOne.2^™ to be indexed for searching. All Internet users searching BioOne.2^™ can see all PLS titles and abstracts starting with VOL. 23, NO. 1. Individuals searching through subscribing libraries can download full-text PLS papers at no charge. Now, additionally, individuals searching BioOne.2^™ independently can download these papers on a “pay-per-view” basis.
     Titles, abstracts, and, in some cases, full text are available also in Academic Search Alumni Edition, Academic Search Premier, Academic Search Product Family, International Political Science Abstracts, Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection, and Social Sciences Abstracts — all aggregated for institutions by EBSCOhost,^® a commercial service.
     In 2007, JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization established to create, maintain, and make widely available a trusted archive of important scholarly journals, invited PLS to join its index.

Contacts
     Most questions regarding scholarly work — about its preparation, submission, review, disposition, refinement, print publication, electronic publication, ownership, instructional replication, and secondary-rights management — are addressed on the Information for contributors page. Other questions may be directed by e-mail to an editor:

Laurette T. Liesen, Ph.D., Department of Political Science, Lewis University, Contributing Editor for Submissions and Peer Review, LiesenLa@lewisu.edu.

Steven A. Peterson, Ph.D., School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, Editor for 26:2, 27:1, & 27:2, sap12@psu.edu.

Richard Sherlock, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Utah State University, Contributing Editor for Book Reviews, ruffie@cc.usu.edu.

R. H. Sprinkle, M.D., Ph.D., School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Contributing Editor for Electronic Publishing, sprinkle@umd.edu.

Problems at the PLS web site — access-rights denial, improper page display, browser incompatibility, factual or textual error — should be reported to the Contributing Editor for Electronic Publishing.
Many questions regarding subscriptions, payments, and fulfillment are addressed either on the Subscription information page or at the APLS website. Questions may also be directed to the APLS Executive Director.

Members’ sign-in for abstracts, XML full text, PDFs, and searching at BioOne.^™