In our portrait of IANDS we called its journal the organisation's most consequential building block. Time to introduce it properly: the Journal of Near-Death Studies is to this day the only peer-reviewed scholarly journal in the world devoted exclusively to near-death research – for more than four decades. And best of all: its complete archive is freely readable online.
From Anabiosis to the Journal of Near-Death Studies
The journal launched in 1981 under the title Anabiosis: The Journal for Near-Death Studies – "anabiosis" is the Greek word for revival. Its founding editor was the social psychologist Kenneth Ring, then also the young IANDS' first president. As early as 1982 the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson took over and shaped the journal for a quarter of a century; in 1987, with volume 6, it received its present name. In 2008 the counselling scholar Jan Holden of the University of North Texas followed, and she edits it to this day – volume 43 appeared in spring 2025.
The journal is published by IANDS itself; for a period (1997–2003) it appeared with the academic publisher Kluwer, which is why older volumes can still be found via Springer. It came out quarterly until 2018, and three times a year since 2019.
What appears there – and how it is vetted
The scope is broader than the name suggests: alongside near-death experiences and their aftereffects, the journal publishes work on out-of-body experiences, deathbed visions, shared-death experiences, after-death communication and related transformative experiences – expressly open to different theoretical readings, as long as the work is empirical.
Every submitted manuscript undergoes masked review by at least two scholarly reviewers: the reviewers do not know the author. That is the same procedure as at any other scientific journal – and it is exactly what distinguishes the papers there from experience reports in books or blogs: they had to pass through criticism before they were printed.
Milestones from four decades
Some of the most-cited works of near-death research appeared here. Perhaps the most famous example: Ring & Cooper 1997, "Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind" (volume 16, pp. 101–147) – the study of 31 blind persons, several of whom reported having seen during their near-death experience. We have devoted a separate article to this study. Add to that the work on veridical perception, case analyses such as the one around Pam Reynolds – and, year after year, the individual studies from which the field draws its data base.
Important for context: the journal turned scattered individual findings into a cumulative research tradition – a place where studies build on one another, measurement instruments become established and criticism remains on record. The biggest single breakthroughs, meanwhile, were deliberately placed in mainstream journals – such as van Lommel's prospective study in The Lancet (2001). The two belong together: the field's journal as the home of the ongoing debate, the big journals as the stage for findings that hold up there too.
The stress test: the 2007 Augustine debate
How do you tell whether a journal is a place of science or a club newsletter of the convinced? Best by how it treats its sharpest critics. In 2007 the journal delivered a remarkable example: it published three major critical essays by the skeptic Keith Augustine (across volumes 25 and 26), who read the near-death experience as hallucination and systematically challenged the evidence for veridical perception – arguably the most thorough skeptical attack on the field to this day. Each essay appeared together with commentaries by leading researchers (including Greyson's response in volume 25, issue 4) and Augustine's rejoinders – criticism and defence in the same issue, readable by anyone. That is exactly what scientific dispute should look like.
An honest assessment
Two things must fairly be added. First: the journal is the house journal of IANDS – published by an organisation sympathetic to the phenomenon. Second: the acceptance rate most recently (2021) stood at 71% – considerably higher than at major journals, which simply reflects the small number of submissions in a small field. But concluding that the contents are therefore worthless is too easy: the peer review is real, the critics get their say (see above), and the alternative would not be a stricter journal but none at all – a field with no place for review, reply and record. You read this journal the way you read any journal: study by study, with an eye on the method.
Freely readable: the open archive
Perhaps the most unusual point last: while most scholarly journals sit behind paywalls, the Journal of Near-Death Studies is almost completely open access. The University of North Texas – Holden's university – hosts the entire archive in its UNT Digital Library, from the Anabiosis issues of the early 1980s to today, more than 1,000 documents in full text. New issues are released after a one-year embargo. So anyone who wants to know what near-death research actually publishes – rather than what is claimed about it – can simply read it there.
Conclusion
Forty-plus volumes, three editors, an open archive and at least one thoroughly documented skeptics' debate: the Journal of Near-Death Studies is the place where a 1970s bestseller topic became a research field with a memory. It does not replace a Lancet study – but without this journal, the chain of questions, findings and rejoinders from which such studies arise in the first place would not exist.
Sources: IANDS, "About the Journal of Near-Death Studies" (history, frequency, review process, acceptance rate, embargo), iands.org; the journal's open full-text archive in the UNT Digital Library; Ring & Cooper, "Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind", Journal of Near-Death Studies 16 (1997), 101–147, full text; the Augustine debate in volumes 25–26 (2007), likewise in the UNT archive; supplemented by our portraits of Kenneth Ring, Bruce Greyson, Jan Holden and IANDS.
For more, see our curated knowledge collection and the research link directory – the Journal of Near-Death Studies is linked there directly.