Editorial Report and Acknowledgement of Reviewers, 2014

The Journal of Social and Political Psychology (JSPP) has grown and developed well in 2014. To be able to handle the growing number of submissions to the journal, we expanded the editorial team over the summer. Based on the recommendations of our search committee consisting of four senior members of our Editorial Board (Dan Christie, John Duckitt, Colin Wayne Leach, Susan Opotow), we appointed seven new Associate Editors: Glenn Adams (University of Kansas, USA), Gülseli Baysu (Kadir Has University, Turkey), Boris Bizumic (Australian National University), Rusi Jaspal (De Montfort University, United Kingdom), Małgorzata Kossowska (Jagiellonian University, Poland), Siew Fang Law (Victoria University, Australia), and Shahnaaz Suffla (Medical Research Council/University of South Africa). The composition of the new editorial team reflects epistemological, methodological, theoretical, geographical, and cultural diversity in social and political psychology.

We also welcome several new members of the Editorial Board, located in Brazil, Egypt, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.

Special Thematic Sections

JSPP has continued to benefit from the commitment and support of guest editors, after the inaugural Special Thematic Section on “Societal Change” that was edited by Colin Wayne Leach, Leda Blackwood, and Andrew Livingstone and published in 2013 (see Blackwood, Livingstone, & Leach, 2013). We are excited about the Special Thematic Section published in 2014, on “20 Years after Genocide: Psychology’s Role in Reconciliation and Reconstruction in Rwanda”. It includes eight articles (plus an introduction) that showcase many of the ways in which psychology has engaged with issues of recovery in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, in many cases giving voice to Rwandan authors (see McGarty, 2014). Special thanks go to Craig McGarty (University of Western Sydney) for his initiative and dedication in guest-editing this section! Further Special Thematic Sections are already scheduled to appear in 2015 and onwards (see http://jspp.psychopen.eu/pages/view/special_sections_list). As we write this, the Special Thematic Section on “Decolonizing Psychological Science” (guest-edited by Glenn Adams, Tuğçe Kurtiș, Ludwin Molina, Ignacio Dobles, and Luis Gómez) is being finalized.

Submission Numbers and Decisions

In addition to the manuscripts submitted to the Special Thematic Sections, 88 new manuscripts were submitted to JSPP in 2014. The first decisions and editorial status of these submissions are presented in Table 1. For the new submissions (without those that were desk-rejected), the duration from submission to the first decision ranged between 29 and 101 days (M = 57.0, SD = 18.5). In addition to the new submissions, 17 submissions from 2013 are still under editorial consideration.

Publications, Citations, and Download Statistics

To date, JSPP has published 48 peer-reviewed articles (of these 29 in 2014),ⁱ which, according to Google Scholar (see http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=knb2n1kAAAAJ), have already been cited 45 times (as of 19 January, 2015). Table 2 summarizes in which countries the authors of these 48 articles are based. If one considers the frequencies for all coauthors, 37 percent are based outside the Anglo-American world (USA, UK, Canada, and Australia); in total the authors are based in 22 different countries, including 3 African (Rwanda, Ghana, South Africa) and 3 Asian countries (Malaysia, India, Lebanon).

The number of articles downloaded from JSPP’s website over the year has also steadily increased and is presented in Figure 1, by month.

The top ten articles published in 2013 and in 2014 in terms of download numbers are listed in Tables 3 and 4 (as of January 19, 2015).

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

Finally, we are grateful for the reliable and helpful support that we have received from the following 263 colleagues, who provided peer reviews for JSPP in 2014: