Abstract
As we publish our second issue of Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ), we would like to introduce ourselves and our vision for the journal.
SPQ is the second-oldest journal of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the oldest in social psychology. Originating in 1937 under the name Sociometry, it became an official journal of the American Sociological Society in 1955 (the journal and society have undergone name changes since then). Social psychology’s intellectual roots are interdisciplinary, but it has always had one foot squarely in sociology, and sociology has always had a unique and important viewpoint within social psychology. After more than 80 years, SPQ remains the premiere journal for publishing research that emphasizes the social component of social psychology.
SPQ has been in good editorial hands for decades, relies on a community of dedicated scholars as reviewers, and does not have any major “problems to solve.” As SPQ editors, we see our primary charge as being good stewards of the journal—protecting the journal’s quality and mission while taking steps to advance its impact in a variety of ways. Specifically, this translates into four goals: (1) maintain the quality, speed, and clarity of editorial decisions; (2) encourage diversity of method, theory, and intellectual content; (3) continue adapting to evolving publishing standards that promote rigor and transparency; and (4) increase the international, interdisciplinary, and disciplinary presence of the journal.
First, SPQ has a reputation for delivering timely decisions with helpful feedback and clear editorial guidance. The outgoing editorial team (Matthew Brashears and Brent Simson) carried on this tradition and left the journal in great shape regarding submissions, decision processes, communication, and quality of published research. Our focus is on protecting that standard. Despite the burden our reviewers have felt from the ongoing stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been able to keep our average time to decision at 44 days. Our plan is to make decisions at this pace or faster in the future.
Second, we recognize that the scope, content, and quality of research contributed to a journal are determined by its community of scholars. We believe that editors can encourage and enhance diversity of method, theory, and content by signaling openness and providing relevant editorial expertise to evaluate a wide portfolio of research. We encourage research relying on social psychology’s core methodological approaches—ethnographic, experimental, and interview and survey based—as well as archival, computational, comparative, and cross-national research. Research published in SPQ likewise draws from a wide array of deductive and inductive theories. We have taken the early steps to signal our openness to a diversity of theory, method, and substantive area by sending calls for papers to a long list of ASA section email listservs and newsletters as well assembling an editorial board and deputy editor team with the relevant expertise to evaluate an intellectually diverse body of research. In addition, we want the journal to be seen as a welcoming home for research produced by a diverse array of scholars themselves. We have made efforts and plan to continue to expand our participation of nonwhite and LGBTQ scholars on the editorial board and in our reviewer base.
In addition to encouraging diversity of theory and method within social psychology research, we feel strongly about expanding the use of social psychological approaches to study diversity itself. The year 2020 marked 20 years since the publication of a landmark article in SPQ—“Color-Blind: The Treatment of Race and Ethnicity in Social Psychology,” by Hunt, Jackson, Powell, and Steelman—calling out social psychologists for lack of attention to race and ethnicity. A special issue in SPQ on the social psychology of race, racism, and discrimination followed in 2003. The article and special issue prompted a conversation that began to shape subsequent research in our field. We are organizing a 20th anniversary special issue to be published in 2023 organized around the social psychology of race, racism, and discrimination coedited by Corey D. Fields, Verna M. Keith, and Justine Tinkler. The deadline for submission of manuscripts is January 15, 2022.
Our third goal is to continue aligning SPQ’s publishing practices with evolving publishing standards. Innovations by recent editorial teams include publication of SPQ Snaps (author-distilled synopses for teaching use, available outside a paywall), encouragement of data archiving, and publication of online supplements. We will continue encouraging authors to archive anonymized data where ethically feasible and to publish online supplemental materials with details about methodology, robustness checks, instruments and protocols, and code. Access to such materials contributes to trust and reproducibility in ways that we think are invaluable for our research community.
We are also working on expanding the scope of SPQ Snaps to create multiple ways that SPQ research can be taught in sociology classrooms. We have increased our presence on social media, and we have already begun creating short video interviews with authors about recent articles to share via Twitter and Facebook. In addition, we think the pedagogical value of Snaps would be enhanced by including presentation slides with figures and tables. Sage currently publishes downloadable figures and tables on the SPQ website. Our vision, based on practices of the New England Journal of Medicine, is to publish author-created downloadable PowerPoint presentations that summarize the research for students. We are working on getting this up and running this year.
Our fourth goal is to increase SPQ’s visibility with international researchers and among researchers who conduct interdisciplinary research. In addition to maintaining a visible presence in sociological meetings, like ASA and Group Processes, one or more of the coeditors plan to speak at the business meetings of the following societies at least once during the editorial term: Society for Personality and Social Psychology, International Society for Justice Research, International Society for Research on Emotion, International Society for Social Network Analysis, and Society for Experimental Social Psychology. We also seek to increase marginally the number of social psychologists outside of sociology on the editorial board to signal openness to cross-disciplinary work and expand the necessary expertise for reviewing such work.
Finally, we are pleased to be joined in advancing SPQ by managing editor Malissa Alinor and three deputy editors (Corey D. Fields, Matthew Hunt, and Stefanie Mollborn). These outstanding scholars cover substantive and methodological areas where we have less expertise and handle manuscripts by authors with whom we have a conflict of interest. In addition to these deputy editors, we would like to welcome the scholars who joined the editorial board this January: Seth Abrutyn, Mark Berg, Damon M. Centola, Sapna Cheryan, Coye V. Cheshire, Steven E. Clayman, Linda E. Francis, Carla Goar, Verna M. Keith, Nikki Khanna, David E. Rohall, Mary R. Rose, Alicia D. Simmons, and Catherine J. Taylor. We would also like to thank the scholars who are in their second and third years of membership on the editorial board: Kraig Beyerlein, Celeste Campos-Castillo, Jenny L. Davis, Jacob Dijkstra, Long Doan, Susan Rebecca Fisk, Ara Allene Francis, Ashley Harrell, Jason N. Houle, Judith A. Howard, Ko Kuwabara, Freda B. Lynn, Christabel L. Rogalin, Kimberly Brooke Rogers, David R. Schaefer, Hana Shepherd, Erika Summers-Effler, Nobuyuki Takahashi, Linda R. Tropp, Beate Volker, Murray A. Webster Jr., and Geoffrey Thomas Wodtke. We look forward to working with this team as we continue to advance the mission of Social Psychology Quarterly.