Editorial Report and Acknowledgement of Reviewers, 2016

In 2016, the Journal of Social and Political Psychology (JSPP) has continued with the publication of two issues per year. Issue No 1 included a Special Thematic Section on “Rethinking Prefigurative Politics”, guest-edited by Jan Haaken, Flora Cornish, Sharon Jackson and Liora Moskovitz. This selection of articles sits squarely at the intersection of psychology and politics. It “responds to the 21st century proliferation of social movements characterised by the slogans ‘another world is possible’ and ‘be the change you want to see’” and “explores prefigurative politics as a means of instantiating radical social change in a context of widening global inequalities, climate change, and the crises and recoveries of neoliberal global capitalism” (Cornish, Haaken, Moskovitz, & Jackson, 2016, p. 114). Our sincere thanks to the guest-editorial team for contributing such an important Special Thematic Section to JSPP!

Issue No 1 also included – apart from our editorial report for 2015 – 11 additional articles on diverse topics within social and political psychology: seven original research articles, one theoretical article, two commentaries, and one review article. Issue No 2 completes the annual volume with eight more contributions: five original research articles and three commentaries.

Two Special Thematic Sections are currently in progress and are scheduled to appear this year and next year – “Collective Memories and Present-Day Intergroup Relations: A Social-Psychological Perspective” (guest-edited by Ana Figueiredo, Borja Martinovic, Jonas Rees, and Laurent Licata; planned for Vol 5, No 1) and “Multiple Perspectives in Conflict Settings: From Diversity to Pluralism” (guest-edited by Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, Steve Reicher, and Ramila Usoof-Thowfeek; planned for Vol 6, No 1).

Due to the high number of submissions (see below), in 2016 we also expanded our editorial team and were joined by the following new Associate Editors: Guy Elcheroth, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; Nurit Shnabel, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Laura K. Taylor, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland; and Jojanneke van der Toorn, Utrecht University, the Netherlands – welcome and thank you for your support! Our editorial team now consists of two Editors and ten Associate Editors, altogether from ten different countries.

Submission Numbers and Decisions

Outside the Special Thematic Sections, 79 new manuscripts were submitted to JSPP in 2016. The first decisions and editorial status of these submissions are presented in Table 1. For these submissions (without those that were desk-rejected, which took place within 1 to 45 days), the average duration from submission to the first decision was slightly below three months (M = 81.2, SD = 35.3; ranging from 10 to 182 days). In addition to the new submissions, 26 submissions from earlier years are currently still active in the editorial system; 3 of these have now been accepted for publication.

Publications, Citations, and Download Statistics

To date, JSPP has published (without our editorial articles) 116 peer-reviewed articles (34 of which were published in 2016). According to Google Scholar (see http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=knb2n1kAAAAJ), these articles have already been cited 489 times (as of 30 January, 2017). Table 2 summarizes in which countries the authors of these 116 articles are based. If one considers the frequencies for all coauthors, 34 percent are based outside of the Anglo-American world (USA, UK, Canada, and Australia); in total the authors are based in 31 different countries, including several African, Asian, and Latin American countries.

We are pleased to say that, due to the quality of published articles and solid citation patterns, JSPP has recently been accepted for inclusion in Scopus. Thus, in the future, JSPP articles can be found and located via this database as well.

The number of articles downloaded from JSPP’s website over the year is presented in Figure 1, by month. For comparison, the average monthly downloads for 2014 and 2015 are included on the left side. The numbers have further increased, although at a slower rate than before.

The top ten articles in terms of download frequencies (as of 30 January 2017) are listed in Tables 3 and 4. Table 3 includes all articles that have been published so far in JSPP, and Table 4 only those published in 2016.

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

Finally, we are grateful for the reliable and helpful support that we have received from the following 169 colleagues, who provided peer reviews for JSPP in 2016: