JAR: Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research

History

Susan Swiatek launched the Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research (JAR) in the first quarter of 2007 as an email-distributed quarterly magazine. Operating from Fairfax, Virginia (sueswi@iglide.net), Swiatek served as editor with a Board of Editors comprising John Carpenter, MSW, LCSW (Springfield, Missouri), Elaine Douglass, MS (Moab, Utah), and Barbara Lamb, MS, MFT, CHt (Claremont, California). Subscription was $20/year for four quarterly issues. The first issue was distributed as a complimentary copy with a request to forward it widely.

JAR positioned itself as "a global platform on which to debate the significance of the extraterrestrial presence." The editorial approach was openly pluralistic on the nature of the phenomenon (extraterrestrial, inter-dimensional, ultra-dimensional) but took the reality of abduction-encounters as a starting premise. The first issue's editorial described the phenomenon as "vitally important" and invited all "cogently argued points of view."

The magazine ran as a professionally typeset PDF with two-column layout, contributor headshots, and pull quotes. It was not a newsletter in the traditional mimeographed sense but a formatted journal distributed electronically. The $20 subscription was low for the quality of content; the editorial board members were donating their work. JAR represented an attempt to create something between a peer-reviewed journal and a popular magazine: serious, referenced, but accessible to non-academic readers.

The range of editorial positions was wide. Carpenter explicitly cautioned against "definitive labels such as 'good' or 'evil'" for abduction experiences. Lamb saw therapeutic potential. Hopkins and Jacobs emphasised threat. Lang pointed out the "profound implications for the future of humanity" implied by the infrastructure required for physical abductions at the reported scale. This spectrum was JAR's editorial stance in action: the debate itself was the point.