Instructions for authors

Instructions for GAC organizers: Position pieces

The position paper is not meant to be a consensus. It isn’t meant to present the opposing views and a potential way to resolve the controversy. It’s meant to outline the controversy’s current status, and discuss how to actually make progress.


Here is a “suggested” structure of the position paper that is meant to provide a certain degree of consistency across papers. If you feel that adding / removing parts would be beneficial to your own GAC, please do so.


  1. Introduction. State of the field & outline question / controversy.

    1. Brief historical account of the controversy and current status

  2. Adversarial standpoints. Explain in more detail the opposing / complementary viewpoints with regards to clarity of field/question/assumptions/etc

    1. Empirical questions & possible answers? Theoretical questions & possible answers?

    2. Could take the form of smaller ‘signed’ position sections to clarify who is on what ‘side’ of the controversy.

  3. Proposal. Suggested way forward: Share with us the result from your GAC kick-off workshop and discussions that followed

    1. How did the controversy/positions change as a result of the workshop, if it did?

    2. Were you able to find consensus on an unbiased approach that would resolve the controversy?

    3. Do you feel that further clarification of terminology/vocabulary, interpretation of empirical findings?

  4. Discussion (somewhat open ended...). Future directions, including potential alternatives, limitations, etc.

    1. Be as explicit as possible with regards to any suggested research avenues that arose through discussions

    2. Consider including potential additional steps or topics of discussion that you or others could tackle in the future


Keep it focussed, this is not a full literature review! Cite literature reviews instead (where applicable).


Suggested due date: mid-February following the CCN in which you hold your kickoff workshop

Expected length: Target ~10 pages published (this is very flexible of course).


NBDT web site: https://nbdt.scholasticahq.com/

NBDT instructions for authors (+LaTex template): https://nbdt.scholasticahq.com/for-authors


Please include “Generative Adversarial Collaboration (GAC)” as a keyword to your article!

Instructions for Commentaries

>> commentaries are individually-citable and receive their own DOI! <<

Commentary Submission Instructions

  1. Read the relevant GAC position paper. They're all on preprint servers and preprints will be posted above as they are submitted.

  2. Write a commentary piece following a similar format to the Brain and Behavioral Sciences Open Peer Commentaries, but with everybody invited!

    • Commentaries should contain a short abstract of about 100 words describing the main contribution of the commentary.

    • The main commentary text should be about 500-1000 words long (excluding references & figure captions).

    • Commentaries should contribute to the discussion in a way that is not covered by the original GAC opinion paper.

  3. Submit your article to a preprint server (arXiv, bioRxiv, etc) and then submit to NBDT following their general submission instructions.

    • IMPORTANT! Please include “Generative Adversarial Collaboration (GAC)” and the name of the GAC you’d like to comment on (see above) in your keywords at submission. This will ensure it gets routed to the handling editors for this special issue, Megan Peters and/or Gunnar Blohm.

  4. Your commentary will be reviewed.

  5. If accepted (or revise-resubmit-accepted), your commentary will be published to accompany the main GAC position piece in the NBDT special issue. Commentaries receive their own unique DOI.