In early 2022, Dr Michael Cifone and Dr Michael Silberstein founded the Society for UAP Studies to address a structural absence in the academic landscape: no learned society existed for the study of unidentified anomalous phenomena, and no dedicated peer-reviewed journal served researchers working on the subject. Organisations like the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies, the Galileo Project, and UAPx were gathering data. What was missing was the scholarly infrastructure to evaluate, publish, and build a methodological consensus around it.
The Society launched Limina: The Journal of UAP Studies in April 2022, the first double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to UAP research. Its founding editorial stated plainly: “Currently there exists no serious academic journal devoted specifically to the multifaceted UAP phenomenon. Limina is meant to rectify this oversight.” The journal is open access, charges no publication fees, and is modelled on the Journal of Consciousness Studies, which launched before there was agreement on what a science of consciousness was or ought to be.
The Journal
Limina (ISSN 2995-0384 online, 2995-0376 print) publishes biannually through the Scholastica academic platform. Its scope spans nine categories: technical reports on UAP observations, proposals on travel mechanisms drawing on classical and quantum physics, speculative submissions on revisions to natural science, psychological aspects (clinical, social, cognitive, neurological), conceptual foundations of a science of UAP, historical and sociological perspectives, cultural and anthropological approaches, book reviews, and commentary on published work.
Volume 1, Issue 1, published in January 2024 under the title “Foundations, Frontiers and Future Prospects of UAP Studies,” carried co-editorials by Cifone and by Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. Its contents included a research article on investigating UAP events through astronomical techniques by Dr Massimo Teodorani, a survey of instrumented field study methods by Philippe Ailleris, and a proposal for good scientific practices in UAP research by Dr Danny Ammon.
Volume 2, Issue 1, published in spring 2025, expanded the range. Its contributors addressed phenomenology and UAP, French philosophy of the paranormal, the nature-spirits hypothesis, historical analysis of UAP activity around the United States atomic warfare complex (1945 to 1975), and a quantitative analysis by Dr Matthew Szydagis of SUNY Albany titled “How much time do we have before catastrophic disclosure occurs?” Editorials by Rodeghier and Cifone bookended both volumes. The entire run is freely accessible online.
The Research Programmes
The Society operates several structured research initiatives alongside the journal.
The AURA/UPWARD framework (Accelerated UAP Research and Analysis / Unified Program for Weaving Anomaly Research and Discovery) assigns “Research Readiness Levels” to active projects and connects findings across disciplines into a shared knowledge map. A Forensic Methodologies Working Group, coordinated by Dr Josh Pierson and Eric Halford, advances best practices for gathering and analysing UAP encounter data across citizen science, instrumented observation, and official investigation.
A Standards of Evidence Working Group, planned for 2026 to 2027, will establish the field’s first community-driven evidentiary framework, explicitly modelled on NASA’s Biosignature Standards of Evidence initiative. The group intends to define protocols covering observational astronomy, atmospheric science, materials analysis, and human factors.
The Society is also supporting an international expedition to investigate the Baltic Sea Anomaly using non-invasive tools including multibeam sonar, sub-bottom profilers, and 3D photogrammetry, with SUAPS providing scientific advising and dual oversight of financial compliance and research integrity. A new publishing imprint, SUAPS Press, will debut with translation projects making key UAP Studies texts available in English.
The educational programme includes semester-length online courses (relativity and quantum mechanics, exotic propulsion physics, astrobiology and theology, ancient Indian wisdom traditions), monthly colloquia featuring scholars from institutions across four continents, and a community reading circle. The J. Allen Hynek Distinguished Lecture Series, named for the astronomer who founded CUFOS and created the Close Encounters classification, delivered its 2025 lecture by Dr Kevin Knuth of SUNY Albany on “The New Scientific Study of Unidentified Aerospace-Undersea Phenomena.” A four-part seminar by Dr Jean-Pierre Rospars, a former GEIPAN investigative scientist, covered fifty years of France’s institutional approach.
The Network
The Society’s advisory board and divisional leadership span more than forty scholars and professionals from institutions across four continents. The board connects to every major node in the UAP research landscape: Kevin Knuth (SUNY Albany, UAPx), Mark Rodeghier (CUFOS), Wesley Watters (Wellesley College, Galileo Project), Massimo Teodorani (SCU), Michael Vaillant (GEIPAN, UAP Check), Greg Eghigian (Penn State, historian), Brenda Denzler (Duke), Stephen Finley (Louisiana State), Erling Strand (Ostfold University, Hessdalen research), and representatives from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Prague Institute of International Relations, the Korean UAP Research Network, and INSERM in France.
Cifone, who holds a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Maryland and teaches at CUNY and St John’s University, was awarded a research fellowship at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen, Germany, beginning in October 2025. Silberstein is a full professor of philosophy at Elizabethtown College and a founding member of the University of Maryland’s cognitive science programme. The Society was featured on the front page of USA TODAY on 9 December 2025, in an article examining the emergence of UAP Studies as a formal academic discipline.
From the Archive
The Society for UAP Studies provides the scholarly infrastructure that the archive’s other documented organisations draw upon:
- CUFOS: Rodeghier co-authored Limina’s inaugural editorial. The Hynek Distinguished Lecture Series honours CUFOS’s founder.
- The Sol Foundation: Both contribute to the academic architecture, Sol through policy papers and materials analysis, SUAPS through peer-reviewed publishing and methodology.
- GEIPAN: Rospars brought fifty years of French institutional methodology to SUAPS’s seminar programme. Vaillant connects GEIPAN’s data systems to SUAPS’s advisory council.
- NARCAP: Teodorani, who contributes to both SUAPS and SCU, bridges the technical observation tradition with the academic publishing infrastructure SUAPS provides.
