About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Enacting Cybernetics is an open access journal published by the Cybernetics Society. It is focused on exploring and developing the many ways in which cybernetics may be practiced in the world.

Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with purposive, regulatory, and reflexive systems of all kinds. Its central concept is that of circular causality or feedback, where the outcomes of actions are taken as inputs for further action. As cybernetics developed, its scope broadened beyond its initial scientific and technological framing to include work in contexts such as action research, architecture and design, the creative arts, family therapy and counselling psychology, management and organisation, and pedagogy. Enacting Cybernetics understands these creative, practical, and therapeutic domains as ways in which the core ideas of cybernetics may be further developed, leading to new critical perspectives and enriching scientific and technical approaches. After all, examining practice to form new insights that, in turn, lead to new practices is an example of the sort of circularity with which cybernetics is concerned.

Enacting Cybernetics publishes peer reviewed research articles and case studies and a variety of editorially reviewed contributions. The journal invites contributions that engage deeply with cybernetics, its possibilities, histories, and practices, and especially those that develop its radical transdisciplinarity in tangible ways.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published online as a continuous volume and issue throughout the year. Articles are made available as soon as they are ready to ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in getting content publicly available.

Special collections of articles are welcomed and will be published as part of the normal issue, but also within a separate collection page.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. There is no embargo on the journal’s publications. Submission and acceptance dates, along with publication dates, are made available on the PDF format for each paper.

Authors of articles published remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to the Creative Commons license agreement.

Authors are encouraged to publish their data in recommended repositories. For a list of generic and subject-specific repositories that meet our peer review criteria, visit the Open Access Directory or datacite.org.

Archiving & Indexing

The journal’s publisher focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. This journal is indexed by Google Scholar and content is LOCKSS enabled.

Annotation and post-publication comment

The journal platform permits readers to leave comments on the publication page. Readers will need an account to leave comments. The journal platform also includes in-browser annotation and text highlighting options on full text formats via hypothes.is. Readers will have the option to make these publicly available, available to a group, or private.

Advertisement policy

The journal does not normally display adverts. On occasion, the editorial board may decide to display advertisements that are of relevance to its scope and will be of interest to the readership (e.g. upcoming conferences). All advertising space is provided free of charge and the editor and publisher have the right to decline or withdraw adverts at any point. Adverts will include a text heading to make it clear that they are adverts not related to the journal.