Abstract
It is hard to believe that my time as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Black Psychology (JBP) is winding down. In August the mantle that I’ve had the privilege of holding will be transferred to the new Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Beverly Vandiver. I have been connected to JBP for the majority of my 18-year academic career, starting off as an ad hoc reviewer for 3 years, then being on the editorial board for 1 year, then being appointed and serving as Associate Editor for 6 years, and finally being appointed and serving as Editor-in-Chief for 7 years. The JBP has become an inextricable part of my professional identity. It has been through my service for the JBP that I have become a vocal and tireless advocate and defender of Black psychology specifically and ethnic minority psychology more generally. As I prepare for life after JBP, I thought it would be appropriate to share my reflections and observations about JBP specifically, and the field of Black psychology generally.
In my message as the new Editor-in-Chief (Cokley, 2009), I shared my vision for JBP in the areas of (a) content, (b) impact factor, (c) review lag, (d) reviewers, (e) structural changes, and (e) commitment to high-quality publications. I would like to reflect on the successes and challenges that I’ve had in these areas.
Content
I indicated that racial identity articles accounted for the largest number of articles published in the journal (16%), and that my goal was to increase the number of health psychology (8%) and clinical application articles (4%). The most recent content analysis (Cokley, Awosogba, & Taylor, 2014) indicated that racial identity articles accounted for 13% of the articles published while health psychology accounted for 10% and clinical application accounted for 4%. I also indicated that I wanted to see more submissions in the area of African-centered psychology. Unfortunately, submissions in African-centered psychology decreased from 6% to 3%. I will say more about this later.
Impact Factor
When I became Editor-in-Chief, the JBP had recently gotten its first impact factor score of 0.86. We were excited because we believed this was a good score to get the very first time. Since then, the impact factor has seen both increases and decreases, which is not entirely atypical given the somewhat volatile nature of the metric. The impact factor scores for the previous years (2007-2014) have been 0.86, 0.98, 1.55, 0.96, 0.73, 0.96, 0.77, 0.85, respectively. We just heard that the impact factor for 2015 is 0.75. This continues the pattern of up and down impact factor scores. The impact factor is not a perfect metric, and I believe it often disadvantages journals that focus on issues of race and culture. Additionally, there are ethically dubious ways to “game the system” that will artificially inflate impact factor scores (e.g., requiring authors to always cite articles published within the past 2 years in the journal). We have maintained a stance that while we will always strongly encourage authors to cite, where relevant, previously published articles from the journal, we will not be heavy-handed in doing so. This stance has no doubt prevented us from getting higher impact factor scores, but it is one that I was ethically comfortable with. While there will likely always be external pressures placed on authors to publish in “high-impact” journals, I am confident that JBP will continue to attract bright scholars conducting rigorous scholarship that expands our knowledge about people of African descent.
Review Lag
I sought to continue the great work by the previous Editor-in-Chief, Shawn Utsey, in reducing the amount of time it took for manuscripts to be reviewed. This has long been a challenge for JBP. During the past 7 years, the average days from submission to final decision was 65, which amounts to slightly over 2 months. While I do not have data from the years prior to me becoming Editor-in-Chief, this review time is quite respectable and comparable to other major journals that I am familiar with.
Reviewers
Another challenge that I attempted to address was getting sufficient numbers of reviewers for the manuscripts submitted. This has probably been the biggest challenge that I’ve faced. I increased the size of the editorial board by six members, and added two additional Associate Editors making a total of six Associate Editors. My goal was to distribute the workload more evenly so as to not overly burden reviewers or editors. This move has been moderately successful; however, we still find ourselves sometimes struggling to find sufficient numbers of reviewers to review manuscripts. In these cases, the Associate Editors and I end up serving as additional reviewers, which gives us more work than what is typical of an Action Editor assigned to a manuscript. (The increase in workload and responsibilities also led me to successfully advocate to pay the Associate Editors a modest stipend, which is a common practice among other journals.) JBP is likely not the only journal that struggles with getting sufficient numbers of reviewers, because we are searching among a relatively small pool of published (and in rare instances, nonpublished) researchers, and ideally Black researchers who are content experts in the areas typically published in JBP. When a manuscript languishes in the review process for a longer than expected time, it is typically because the Action Editor is having difficulty finding someone to review the manuscript. When a reviewer declines to review a manuscript, the Action Editor has to start over in trying to secure another reviewer. This of course contributes to a longer than desired review lag. I tried during my tenure to address this issue but I was not as successful as I hoped to be.
Structural Changes
One of my major initiatives was to create a Brief Reports section. Similar to other journals, the Brief Reports section was designed to publish studies that (a) may have some minor methodological limitation (e.g., small sample size, measures with little psychometric support), (b) been limited in scope, (c) contained novel or provocative findings that needed to be replicated, or (d) contained other limitations. While not frequently used, the Brief Reports section has published interesting studies on topics such as weight, body dissatisfaction, and teasing among African American girls (Tyler, Johnston, Dalton, & Foreyt, 2009) and academic tracking of Jamaican high school students with depressive symptoms (Lipps et al., 2010). Another major (and unanticipated) structural change was the creation of the Hilliard–Jones Forum for African-Centered Psychology. This forum was created in reaction to an observation made by the most recent content analysis (Cokley et al.,2014) that there were few submissions of African-centered manuscripts and that they often did not make it through the peer-reviewed process. Concerns about this were expressed by the Association of Black Psychologists’ leadership, and initially there were discussions of establishing a second complimentary journal devoted solely to African-centered psychology. Given questions about the viability of a second journal, the forum was proposed to see whether the volume and quality of submissions would warrant establishing a second journal. The Hilliard–Jones Forum was named in honor of Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III and Dr. Reginald L. Jones, two giants in the field of Black psychology and key figures in conducting, publishing, and supporting African-centered psychology. The purpose of the forum is to highlight and disseminate outstanding scholarship in African-centered psychology. Our thinking was that the forum would be included in JBP issues when African-centered manuscripts had gone through peer review and had been accepted for publication. To date, we have not had the number and quality of manuscripts that we had hoped for, although our inaugural article on indigenous African healing practices as a mental health intervention (Ojelade, McCray, Meyers, & Ashby, 2014) was an exceptionally strong and innovative article.
Commitment to High-Quality Publications
In my new Editor-in-Chief statement I talked about how the standards of JBP, like other academic journals, had evolved over the years. I quoted Harris (2003) who stated that “research improves as the research base grows and as our methods and understandings become more sophisticated and advanced . . .” (p. 451). On one hand, this has been a good and necessary evolution of JBP, and I believe it has elevated our standing in the scholarly community. On the other hand, this has also resulted in angering some prospective authors whose manuscripts do not meet the high standards of our review process. This is the reality of maintaining a commitment to only publishing high-quality articles in JBP. As I’ve said on many occasions, you don’t become an editor to make or keep friends! My sole commitment during my 7 years as Editor-in-Chief has been to make JBP the absolute best journal that it can be through the publication of rigorously peer-reviewed articles that advance the field of Black psychology.
Final Observations
During my time as an ad hoc reviewer, editorial board member, Associate Editor, and Editor-in-Chief, I have read hundreds of manuscripts. What has become clear to me is that there are differing understandings about what constitutes an appropriate manuscript to be submitted to JBP. From my perspective, the underlying issue is that authors are operating under differing definitions and levels of commitment to the field of Black psychology. For years I have fiercely defended the idea that Black psychology is a viable field of psychology that needs to be given the same respect that any other field of psychology is given. For me this means that there is an established body of Black psychological literature, much published within JBP but some also published in other journals, in which authors should have some familiarity and grounding. The academic gatekeepers of Black psychology (i.e., editors, editorial board members), must have a consensus around a coherent definition and understanding of Black psychology. If Black psychology is no more than the application of what are believed to be universal psychological principles to Black populations, Black psychology has essentially been reduced to nothing more than the “darker” version of a Eurocentric psychology. This would betray the mandate given by the early architects and defenders of Black psychology, who fought and struggled to pave a way for JBP to exist. Conversations about the status of African-centered psychology within JBP continue to be needed. I have tried to uphold and carry on the traditions of excellence established by the previous editors, William David Smith, W. Curtis Banks, A. Kathleen Burlew, and Shawn Utsey. I hope that my intellectual “mentor,” jegna, and ancestor, Baba Asa Hilliard, is pleased with the work that I’ve done. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Black Psychology. It has been one of the highlights of my career. Peace and blessings.