Editorial Report and Acknowledgement of Reviewers, 2019

What’s New in 2019?

In 2019 the Journal of Social and Political Psychology (JSPP) underwent several changes, some of which are gradual, others more substantial, so that 2019 can be considered a year of transition. We continued to see a trend of increasing numbers of submissions (see below). With regard to our Editorial Team, we welcomed two new Associate Editors: Sammyh Khan (University of Keele, United Kingdom) and Kesi Mahendran (Open University, United Kingdom). One of our Associate Editors also finished his service: Mark Brandt (Tilburg University, the Netherlands) – we thank Mark for his great contributions to the journal over the last years!

As before, we published two issues this past year. Issue No 1 of 2019 includes 24 original research articles, two theoretical articles, as well as one review article and one commentary. Issue No 2 includes nine original research articles, one commentary, as well as a Special Thematic Section with nine articles on “Multiple Perspectives in Conflict Settings: From Diversity to Pluralism”, guest-edited by Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, Steve Reicher, and Ramila Usoof-Thowfeek (see Elcheroth, Penic, Usoof, & Reicher, 2019). Many thanks to the guest-editorial team for editing this exciting Special Thematic Section, as well as to all the authors who contributed to it! With a total of 47 articles, 2019 marks the year with the highest number of publications in JSPP’s history.

However, 2019 is also a year of transition for JSPP because our publishing platform, PsychOpen (see https://www.psychopen.eu), moved to a new publishing model in order to cope sustainably with its growing numbers of journals within a non-profit framework. As part of the model, we are introducing page limits: 8000 words for quantitative papers reporting one study or two studies with a similar design and for commentaries, and 10000 words for qualitative papers, multi-study quantitative papers and quantitative papers with more complicated methods or analyses, and for review and theoretical papers. We are also introducing several open-science practices, related to data transparency, transparency of research design, research materials, analytical code etc. Supplementary materials will have to be uploaded to PsychArchives (see https://www.psycharchives.org).

Submission Numbers and Decisions

Not including the Special Thematic Sections, 186 (compared to 148 in 2018, 101 in 2017, and 79 in 2016) new manuscripts were submitted to JSPP in 2019. 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 on average within 16.5 days [range: 0 to 98]), the average duration from submission to the first decision was slightly below four months (M = 117.6, SD = 58.7; ranging from 44 to 350 days). Further improving the turnaround time for editorial decisions will be a high priority for us in the coming year.

Publications, Citations, and Download Statistics

To date, JSPP has published (not including our editorial articles) 232 peer-reviewed articles (47 of which were published in 2019). According to Google Scholar, these articles have been cited 2811 times (as of 11 February, 2020) (see http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=knb2n1kAAAAJ). Table 2 summarizes in which countries the authors of these 47 articles published in 2019 are based. Authors based within the Anglo-American world (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) dominate with 38.7% of all (co-)authors, followed by authors based in other Western countries. In 2019, unfortunately, there was no publication co-authored by scholars based in Africa or Latin America. We hope to see this change in the new volume, and further increasing the regional diversity among our authors remains a high priority for the journal.

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 to 2018 are included in the columns on the left. The download numbers have further increased in the first half of the year, with a spike in May, but then decreased again toward the end of the year.

The top ten most frequently downloaded articles (as of 11 February 2020) are listed in Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 includes the top ten among all articles that have been published so far in JSPP since its first issue; these are the same as last year, with just slight changes in ranks. Table 4 shows the top ten articles published in 2019.

Acknowledgment of Reviewers

Finally, we are grateful for the reliable and helpful support that we have received from the following 233 colleagues, who provided peer reviews for JSPP in 2019: