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British Journal of Psychology (2015), 106, 183–185 © 2015 The British Psychological Society www.wileyonlinelibrary.com
Editorial
Reflections on impact issues
In a world of scientific competition – among authors seeking to publish in the best scientific journals, but also among journals seeking to attract the highest quality paper submissions from the most influential authors – impact is the sacred cow which for many appears to represent success. But how scientists should measure impact is a matter of continuous debate. In the evaluation of journals, citation analyses have a long history (Garfield, 1972), and the journal impact factor (IF) is probably the single most important parameter of impact considered by authors when deciding where to submit their best work. Judged by this parameter, the British Journal of Psychology has made a rather successful development in the past 15 years, with an IF that increased steadily from 1.05 in 2000 to a considerable 3.39 in 2013. Today, the journal ranks 16th out of 127 in the ‘Psychology, Multidisciplinary’ category (according to ISI Journal Citation Reports). Needless to say that we are pleased about this positive development. But we should not forget that any single index of a complex concept such as ‘impact’ is subject to criticism. Some concerns with IF include that citations of articles are influenced by factors over and above their scientific quality, and that IF can handicap slow-paced disciplines such as psychology (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2013). Current trends towards normalization of impact with respect to the scientific discipline under scrutiny (Moed, 2010) may address these issues, and the introduction of a ‘5-year IF’ in addition to the traditional ‘2-year’ IF in 2007 certainly has been welcomed by many scientists in psychology. Less well known (although perhaps even more relevant) may be the findings that citation success of an individual article is only surprisingly modestly correlated with the IF of the journal in which it was published (Seglen, 1994) and that the IF, even of highly renowned journals, can be determined to a large extent by only a small percentage of very highly cited papers (Lehmann, Jackson, & Lautrup, 2006). Particularly for journals – such as BJP – with a relatively small number of published papers per year, this means that annual fluctuations of IF can be substantial and may depend on just two or three exceptional published papers. The British Journal of Psychology has a rich tradition in our field and needs to address today’s challenges in the world of scientific publication in order to do well among its competitors, while covering the many different facets of psychology. Of course, we should seek sustainable impact on our discipline that is expressed in many ways beyond IF. One key to this is the aspiration to be a truly international psychological journal (despite the name). Our current editorial board consists of leading scientists from all over the world, and current submissions suggest that this has further increased the international reach of the journal. Numbers of submissions in both 2013 and 2014 have also been consistently high (between 240 and 250 per year) – More than in any previous year. The almost inevitable downside of this is that paper rejection rates continue to be DOI:10.1111/bjop.12129
184
Editorial
very high, meaning that some high-quality submissions may be triaged especially when they appear more suited to a specialist journal. On the positive side, we were successful in reducing the publication lag to currently under a year. Since January 2013 (when the current editorial board took over), we have seen exciting scientific developments in psychology in general, and some of these are reflected in publications in the BJP. As is to be expected, we observe some predominance of personality and people in the topics represented. One contribution establishes that the personalities of people from nations that are geographical neighbours are more similar than those that are far apart (Gelade, 2013). Several papers that report subtle mechanisms of face perception have already begun to make an impact on the field, with for example, papers reporting that perceived adiposity in female faces conveys potentially important information about individual health (Tinlin et al., 2013), specifying the role of facial expression in the recognition of cooperators or defectors (Kovacs-Balint, Bereczkei, & Hernadi, 2013), or showing that UK business leaders have increased facial width-to-height ratio, a factor contributing to them being perceived as dominant by na€ıve observers (Alrajih & Ward, 2014). The last issue of 2013 featured an article entitled ‘On applying cognitive psychology’ by a true giant in our field, Alan Baddeley, accompanying his BPS Lifetime Achievement Award 2012 for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge (Baddeley, 2013). We anticipate that applicants for scientific grant proposals who, more often than not, are expected to highlight the ‘added value’ or ‘transferable output’ of their research (and thus impact for society rather than science), may well find Alan Baddeley’s insights a highly rewarding read. In the past 2 years, the BJP also featured empirical studies with an applied perspective. For example, we published papers showing the impact of interviewing style and crossexamination style questioning on children’s memory performance in the forensic context (O’Neill & Zajac, 2013), the substantial social consequences of conspiracism (Jolley & Douglas, 2014), and the positive influence that decision making in groups can have on elderly care residents’ social identity and cognitive performance (Haslam et al., 2014). A paper that attracted considerable attention in the public reported that chewing gum has a measurable effect in counteracting performance decrements in vigilance tasks (Morgan, Johnson, & Miles, 2014). But the journal also continued to publish major methodological contributions to our field, including a paper that reviewed the psychometric properties and problems of Cronbach’s alpha to assess internal consistency, and that discusses alternatives with practical recommendations (Dunn, Baguley, & Brunsden, 2014). Finally, the last issue of 2014 saw a target article that reported developments and current theories in the ‘hot’ field of empirical aesthetics (Leder & Nadal, 2014) and was accompanied by commentaries from other leading scientists in the field. It seems clear these kinds of contributions by eminent researchers in their respective field stimulate discussions that advance scientific knowledge. We appreciate the original contributions of our authors past, present and future. Beyond single parameters, the British Journal of Psychology will remain committed to publishing high-quality psychological science that makes true impact, in the many meanings of the word. Stefan R. Schweinberger1, Martin G. Edwards2 and Franz J. Neyer1 1 Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany 2 Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Editorial
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References Alrajih, S., & Ward, J. (2014). Increased facial width-to-height ratio and perceived dominance in the faces of the UK’s leading business leaders. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 153–161. doi:10.1111/bjop.12035 Baddeley, A. (2013). On applying cognitive psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 443– 456. doi:10.1111/bjop.12049 Della Sala, S., & Cubelli, R. (2013). Downloads as a possible index of impact? Cortex, 49, 2601–2602. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2013.11.002 Dunn, T. J., Baguley, T., & Brunsden, V. (2014). From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 399– 412. doi:10.1111/bjop.12046 Garfield, E. (1972). Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation – Journals can be ranked by frequency and impact of citations for science policy studies. Science, 178, 471–479. Gelade, G. A. (2013). Personality and place. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 69–82. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02099.x Haslam, C., Haslam, S. A., Knight, C., Gleibs, I., Ysseldyk, R., & McCloskey, L. G. (2014). We can work it out: Group decision-making builds social identity and enhances the cognitive performance of care residents. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 17–34. doi:10.1111/bjop.12012 Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 35–56. doi:10.1111/bjop.12018 Kovacs-Balint, Z., Bereczkei, T., & Hernadi, I. (2013). The telltale face: Possible mechanisms behind defector and cooperator recognition revealed by emotional facial expression metrics. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 563–576. doi:10.1111/bjop.12007 Leder, H., & Nadal, M. (2014). Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode – Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 443–464. doi:10.1111/bjop.12084 Lehmann, S., Jackson, A. D., & Lautrup, B. E. (2006). Measures for measures. Nature, 444, 1003– 1004. doi: org/10.1038/4441003a Moed, H. F. (2010). Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals. Journal of Informetrics, 4, 265–277. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.01.002 Morgan, K., Johnson, A. J., & Miles, C. (2014). Chewing gum moderates the vigilance decrement. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 214–225. doi:10.1111/bjop.12025 O’Neill, S., & Zajac, R. (2013). The role of repeated interviewing in children’s responses to crossexamination-style questioning. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 14–38. doi:10.1111/j.20448295.2011.02096.x Seglen, P. O. (1994). Causal relationship between article citedness and journal impact. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45, 1–11. doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(199401) 45:13.0.co;2-y Tinlin, R. M., Watkins, C. D., Welling, L. L., DeBruine, L. M., Al-Dujaili, E. A., & Jones, B. C. (2013). Perceived facial adiposity conveys information about women’s health. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 235–248. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02117.x
Copyright of British Journal of Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
British Journal of Psychology (2015), 106, 183–185 © 2015 The British Psychological Society www.wileyonlinelibrary.com
Editorial
Reflections on impact issues
In a world of scientific competition – among authors seeking to publish in the best scientific journals, but also among journals seeking to attract the highest quality paper submissions from the most influential authors – impact is the sacred cow which for many appears to represent success. But how scientists should measure impact is a matter of continuous debate. In the evaluation of journals, citation analyses have a long history (Garfield, 1972), and the journal impact factor (IF) is probably the single most important parameter of impact considered by authors when deciding where to submit their best work. Judged by this parameter, the British Journal of Psychology has made a rather successful development in the past 15 years, with an IF that increased steadily from 1.05 in 2000 to a considerable 3.39 in 2013. Today, the journal ranks 16th out of 127 in the ‘Psychology, Multidisciplinary’ category (according to ISI Journal Citation Reports). Needless to say that we are pleased about this positive development. But we should not forget that any single index of a complex concept such as ‘impact’ is subject to criticism. Some concerns with IF include that citations of articles are influenced by factors over and above their scientific quality, and that IF can handicap slow-paced disciplines such as psychology (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2013). Current trends towards normalization of impact with respect to the scientific discipline under scrutiny (Moed, 2010) may address these issues, and the introduction of a ‘5-year IF’ in addition to the traditional ‘2-year’ IF in 2007 certainly has been welcomed by many scientists in psychology. Less well known (although perhaps even more relevant) may be the findings that citation success of an individual article is only surprisingly modestly correlated with the IF of the journal in which it was published (Seglen, 1994) and that the IF, even of highly renowned journals, can be determined to a large extent by only a small percentage of very highly cited papers (Lehmann, Jackson, & Lautrup, 2006). Particularly for journals – such as BJP – with a relatively small number of published papers per year, this means that annual fluctuations of IF can be substantial and may depend on just two or three exceptional published papers. The British Journal of Psychology has a rich tradition in our field and needs to address today’s challenges in the world of scientific publication in order to do well among its competitors, while covering the many different facets of psychology. Of course, we should seek sustainable impact on our discipline that is expressed in many ways beyond IF. One key to this is the aspiration to be a truly international psychological journal (despite the name). Our current editorial board consists of leading scientists from all over the world, and current submissions suggest that this has further increased the international reach of the journal. Numbers of submissions in both 2013 and 2014 have also been consistently high (between 240 and 250 per year) – More than in any previous year. The almost inevitable downside of this is that paper rejection rates continue to be DOI:10.1111/bjop.12129
184
Editorial
very high, meaning that some high-quality submissions may be triaged especially when they appear more suited to a specialist journal. On the positive side, we were successful in reducing the publication lag to currently under a year. Since January 2013 (when the current editorial board took over), we have seen exciting scientific developments in psychology in general, and some of these are reflected in publications in the BJP. As is to be expected, we observe some predominance of personality and people in the topics represented. One contribution establishes that the personalities of people from nations that are geographical neighbours are more similar than those that are far apart (Gelade, 2013). Several papers that report subtle mechanisms of face perception have already begun to make an impact on the field, with for example, papers reporting that perceived adiposity in female faces conveys potentially important information about individual health (Tinlin et al., 2013), specifying the role of facial expression in the recognition of cooperators or defectors (Kovacs-Balint, Bereczkei, & Hernadi, 2013), or showing that UK business leaders have increased facial width-to-height ratio, a factor contributing to them being perceived as dominant by na€ıve observers (Alrajih & Ward, 2014). The last issue of 2013 featured an article entitled ‘On applying cognitive psychology’ by a true giant in our field, Alan Baddeley, accompanying his BPS Lifetime Achievement Award 2012 for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge (Baddeley, 2013). We anticipate that applicants for scientific grant proposals who, more often than not, are expected to highlight the ‘added value’ or ‘transferable output’ of their research (and thus impact for society rather than science), may well find Alan Baddeley’s insights a highly rewarding read. In the past 2 years, the BJP also featured empirical studies with an applied perspective. For example, we published papers showing the impact of interviewing style and crossexamination style questioning on children’s memory performance in the forensic context (O’Neill & Zajac, 2013), the substantial social consequences of conspiracism (Jolley & Douglas, 2014), and the positive influence that decision making in groups can have on elderly care residents’ social identity and cognitive performance (Haslam et al., 2014). A paper that attracted considerable attention in the public reported that chewing gum has a measurable effect in counteracting performance decrements in vigilance tasks (Morgan, Johnson, & Miles, 2014). But the journal also continued to publish major methodological contributions to our field, including a paper that reviewed the psychometric properties and problems of Cronbach’s alpha to assess internal consistency, and that discusses alternatives with practical recommendations (Dunn, Baguley, & Brunsden, 2014). Finally, the last issue of 2014 saw a target article that reported developments and current theories in the ‘hot’ field of empirical aesthetics (Leder & Nadal, 2014) and was accompanied by commentaries from other leading scientists in the field. It seems clear these kinds of contributions by eminent researchers in their respective field stimulate discussions that advance scientific knowledge. We appreciate the original contributions of our authors past, present and future. Beyond single parameters, the British Journal of Psychology will remain committed to publishing high-quality psychological science that makes true impact, in the many meanings of the word. Stefan R. Schweinberger1, Martin G. Edwards2 and Franz J. Neyer1 1 Institute of Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany 2 Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Editorial
185
References Alrajih, S., & Ward, J. (2014). Increased facial width-to-height ratio and perceived dominance in the faces of the UK’s leading business leaders. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 153–161. doi:10.1111/bjop.12035 Baddeley, A. (2013). On applying cognitive psychology. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 443– 456. doi:10.1111/bjop.12049 Della Sala, S., & Cubelli, R. (2013). Downloads as a possible index of impact? Cortex, 49, 2601–2602. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2013.11.002 Dunn, T. J., Baguley, T., & Brunsden, V. (2014). From alpha to omega: A practical solution to the pervasive problem of internal consistency estimation. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 399– 412. doi:10.1111/bjop.12046 Garfield, E. (1972). Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation – Journals can be ranked by frequency and impact of citations for science policy studies. Science, 178, 471–479. Gelade, G. A. (2013). Personality and place. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 69–82. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02099.x Haslam, C., Haslam, S. A., Knight, C., Gleibs, I., Ysseldyk, R., & McCloskey, L. G. (2014). We can work it out: Group decision-making builds social identity and enhances the cognitive performance of care residents. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 17–34. doi:10.1111/bjop.12012 Jolley, D., & Douglas, K. M. (2014). The social consequences of conspiracism: Exposure to conspiracy theories decreases intentions to engage in politics and to reduce one’s carbon footprint. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 35–56. doi:10.1111/bjop.12018 Kovacs-Balint, Z., Bereczkei, T., & Hernadi, I. (2013). The telltale face: Possible mechanisms behind defector and cooperator recognition revealed by emotional facial expression metrics. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 563–576. doi:10.1111/bjop.12007 Leder, H., & Nadal, M. (2014). Ten years of a model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments: The aesthetic episode – Developments and challenges in empirical aesthetics. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 443–464. doi:10.1111/bjop.12084 Lehmann, S., Jackson, A. D., & Lautrup, B. E. (2006). Measures for measures. Nature, 444, 1003– 1004. doi: org/10.1038/4441003a Moed, H. F. (2010). Measuring contextual citation impact of scientific journals. Journal of Informetrics, 4, 265–277. doi:10.1016/j.joi.2010.01.002 Morgan, K., Johnson, A. J., & Miles, C. (2014). Chewing gum moderates the vigilance decrement. British Journal of Psychology, 105, 214–225. doi:10.1111/bjop.12025 O’Neill, S., & Zajac, R. (2013). The role of repeated interviewing in children’s responses to crossexamination-style questioning. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 14–38. doi:10.1111/j.20448295.2011.02096.x Seglen, P. O. (1994). Causal relationship between article citedness and journal impact. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45, 1–11. doi:10.1002/(sici)1097-4571(199401) 45:13.0.co;2-y Tinlin, R. M., Watkins, C. D., Welling, L. L., DeBruine, L. M., Al-Dujaili, E. A., & Jones, B. C. (2013). Perceived facial adiposity conveys information about women’s health. British Journal of Psychology, 104, 235–248. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02117.x
Copyright of British Journal of Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
