The video below shows large columns, made up of small line-segments. The columns appear to swing from side to side, like tilted towers. In reality, of course, the columns and line-segments are perfectly vertical. The perceived tilt is illusory.

So what's going on here?

This illusion is a nice demonstration of Gestalt theory, a German a school thought that was developed in the early 20th century by Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Köhler, and Max Wertheimer. Theories in psychology tend to become outdated rather quickly, but Gestalt theory is a notable exception. It is as relevant today as it was a century ago.

In German, Gestalt means 'shape', but in this context it refers to something that is greater than the sum of its parts, or a 'unified whole'. Which, according to the Gestalt psychologists, is a good characterization of perception. If we see a chair, for example, we don't consider the parts of the chair separately, one at a time. ("I see a leg, uhm, another leg... and something that could be a seat.") We simply see a chair. We can see that a chair has legs, of course, but the perception of the chair as a whole comes first. In other words, we automatically group objects together into a single, coherent percept.

This tilt illusion is the result of perceptual grouping. More specifically, in this case we group those line-segments together that are adjacent (law of proximity) and have the same colour (law of similarity). You can see an illustration …

Things are moving quickly in the land of academic publishing. And not necessarily in a bad direction. Just days after the public announcement of PeerJ, another open access venture has opened its doors: Scholastica.

Scholastica is a start-up by a Chicago-based collective of young researchers, designers, and developers. It is a unique concept in the sense that it is not an academic journal per se, but an infrastructure that facilitates the publication of open access journals. So its customers are journal editors, rather than prospective authors. Anyone who wants to start an academic journal, or who seeks a better outlet for an existing journal, can do so with Scholastica, which offers tools to handle all the editorial chores that come with running a journal. And there can be no doubt about it, the Scholastica web portal looks smooth, professional, and, well... good. I suppose that's the benefit of having professional designers and developers in your team.

Photo: Cory Schires (left) and Rob Walsh working on Scholastica.

But the question is, of course, whether Scholastica will be able to attract enough journals to sustain itself. And also, whether Scholastica is different enough: It is modern and refreshing, but still centred around the traditional concept of academic papers published in individual academic journals. 

About these things and more I'll speak with Rob Walsh, one of the co-founders of Scholastica.

Sebastiaan: What inspired you to start Scholastica? Was the project borne out of frustration with the traditional system of academic publishing? Did you …

New open-access journals aplenty, usually nothing to get too excited about. Just a few minutes ago, I received an invitation to submit a paper for a special issue of the open-access International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. For just E850 I would have the honour of contributing to this 0.33 impact factor journal (somewhat surprisingly it has an impact factor)—A clear case of straight-to-spam.

Yet today I read an article on the Nature website about a new open-access initiative that seems very promising. It is called PeerJ, and is founded by Peter Binfield and Jason Hoyt. These are credible names, previously linked to PLoS ONE, the most successfull open-access journal, and Mendeley, a free reference management service.

Essentially, PeerJ is a members-only peer-reviewed open-access journal. Members-only, because in order to submit you have to become a member of the journal. Peer-reviewed, because papers are refereed by experts. And open-access, because all papers are freely released under a Creative Commons license.

So far nothing remarkable (aside perhaps from the membership), but there are two things that set PeerJ apart from the competition. The first is the pricing. Authors pay for a lifetime membership that allows you to publish one, two, or unlimited papers a year. For respectively, $99 (US), $169, and $259 per lifetime! There are no additional fees, so once you are a member, publishing a paper is free. Compare this to the $3,000 per paper that Elsevier charges for sponsored articles, and even the $1,350 …

Cogsci.nl supports the open-access model of academic publishing. A journal is open-access when its content is free of charge, easily accessible, and available for re-use with the sole restriction that attribution be given to the source.

See this article for a perspective on the difference between open-access journals, and journals that offer content for free, but under restrictive licenses.

Below you can find a list of open-access journals (and open-access options in journals that are not exclusively open-access) in the broader field of cognitive science and neuroscience This list is obviously incomplete. Please feel free to post suggestions!

• Behavioral and Brain Functions focuses on behavioral aspects of neuroscience and on behavioral dysfunction.
  
• BMC Neuroscience focuses on all aspects of neuroscience.
  
• Brain and Behavior covers a wide range of topics within the broader field of neuroscience.
• Elsevier Sponsored Articles is an open-access option that is available for many journals published by Elsevier.
• i-Perception is the open-access sister journal to Perception. As the name suggests, the focus of the journal is on perception research.
• Journal of Eye Movement Research is a young journal that focuses on eye movement research.
• Journal of Neuroscience is the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience that offers an open-access (Open Choice) option.
• Journal of Vision focuses on vision and eye movement research. (Note: free content, but not open-access)
• Frontiers in Psychology is a collection of journals, each focusing on a different aspect of psychological science
  
• Open Biology is a journal of the Royal Society that …

Let's face it, psychological experiments tend to produce flimsy data. As a result, it often happens that experimental psychologists fail to replicate the results of others. You can deal with a failure to replicate gracefully, defending your results if necessary, and ultimately admitting you were wrong if indeed you were. Since psychologists are wrong all the time there really should be no shame in this.

Recently(ish), there were two high-profile non-replications that attracted considerable attention. I think these two cases illustrate the different ways in which scientists can interact. And I won't be coy about passing moral judgement here: There is a good and a bad way.

The first case is kind of amusing, I think. It concerns a study by Daryl J. Bem that purportedly proves the existence of precognition, clairvoyance, or whatever you want to call it. From the abstract:

"This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by 'time-reversing' well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur."

The fact that this was published in a serious scientific journal is bound to draw scepticism. I hear the taxpayer wondering: "Is this what you guys are doing with my money?" Well... yes.

But on the other hand you could also argue that the publication of this paper demonstrates that researchers can be quite open minded. Bem's study may be silly, but it's not flawed in any obvious way, so it deserves …