Call For Papers | Scientific bubbles: definitions, context, and approaches

General Info

Submission deadline: 30 September 2026

Guest editors:

• Dr. Miles MacLeod. University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.
• Dr. Federico Boem. Niccolò Cusano University, Rome, Italy.
• Dr. Y. J. Erden. University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands.
• Prof. Dr. Cyrus Mody. History Department, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands.

Special Issue info

In this special issue we seek to investigate the relevance of ‘bubbles’ as a concept to account for and evaluate episodes and events in science. Economists and others have long been fascinated - and challenged by - bubble-like phenomena in markets, which on standard economic accounts appear irrational and in need of explanation. Technological development has often been analysed as bubble phenomena and, as a few scholars have previously noted, science itself can undergo similar episodes. As in economic cases, scientific fields may exhibit rapid increases in activity on a given topic, seeming to involve something like speculation, followed by relatively quick collapses in that activity. On the face of it, bubbles in science are a challenge, insofar as they seem to represent a failure in science and result in costs overall to society.

Cases which might be analysed in these terms include topics within nanoscience (e.g. nanomedicine), neuroscience (e.g. MRI, neurotechnologies), AI (e.g. medical diagnostics, expert systems), bioengineering (e.g. CRISPR), regenerative medicine (e.g. stem-cells), materials science (e.g., high-temperature superconductors), physics (e.g., cold fusion). There are potential historical cases, such as Bertillonage, S-matrix theory, or biophysics. Some bubbles also form across wide-ranging transdisciplinary formations, e.g., cybernetics, behavioralism, or nanotechnology.

We welcome contributions from a wide variety of fields which can help reflect on and evaluate the relevance of the bubble concept to science. Contributions can come from history, philosophy, and sociology of science (STS), scientometrics, economics, cognitive science, science policy, or any other field involved in the analysis of science and scientific behaviour.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• How to define, conceptualise, and identify bubbles in scientific contexts
• The causes of bubbles in science
• The potential costs (and benefits) of bubbles and the implications for scientific integrity
• Whether bubbles are intrinsic to science (and human behaviour more generally)
• Analogies between scientific bubbles and those in other contexts, such as economic ones
• The use of “bubble” for categorising and explaining particular scientific cases, and where it falls down
• Analysis of contexts/cases within which bubbles develop, expand, and implode
• Responses to bubbles: how might science policy respond to better information on bubbles in science
• What the relations are between bubbles and scientific misconduct.

Manuscript submission info

You are invited to submit your manuscript at any time before the submission deadline, 30 September 2026. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Dr. Miles MacLeod via m.a.j.macleod@utwente.nl.

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript, and select the article type of “VSI: Scientific Bubbles” when submitting your manuscript online. Both the Guide for Authors and the submission portal could be found on the Journal Homepage here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/studies-in-history-and-philosophy-of-science

All the submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Upon its editorial acceptance, your article will go into production immediately. It will be published in the latest regular issue, while be presented on the specific Special Issue webpage simultaneously. In regular issues, Special Issue articles will be clearly marked and branded.

Keywords: Scientific Bubbles; Hype; Economic Bubbles; Scientific Integrity

Source and more information: https://www.sciencedirect.com/special-issue/329039/scientific-bubbles-definitions-context-and-approaches