AJOB Empirical Bioethics: A home for empirical bioethics scholarship

摘要

Recently, the journal that you once knew as AJOB Primary Research changed its name to AJOB Empirical Bioethics. The renaming was prompted by a desire to announce clearly the scope of the journal and its focus on empirical scholarship in bioethics. AJOB Empirical Bioethics intends to be a welcoming forum for scholarship presenting empirical studies of bioethics issues as well as advancing conceptual or empirically informed inquiry in bioethics. Empirical studies of bioethics issues are valuable: they can help us to evaluate theory, suggest the need to revise policy, inspire new ideas and hypotheses, and address novel questions that cannot be resolved solely through reflection and analysis. Additionally, empirical bioethics scholarship can give representation to diverse participants and stakeholders and may offer important perspectives and values. While other journals will assuredly continue to be receptive to empirical bioethics scholarship, this will be the focus for AJOB Empirical Bioethics as it strives to become the preeminent venue for such scholarship.