Open peer commentaries in Theory & Psychology

Theory & Psychology has always published commentaries on previously published articles. Typically, commentaries are not solicited, but are welcomed on any articles the journal has published. Theory & Psychology will continue to consider such unsolicited submissions of commentaries for publication. However, in this issue we are trialing a new format for the submission of commentaries. In particular, this issue features a series of commentaries on a single designated target article that are the response to an open invitation. In this we follow the example of other journals such as The American Journal of Bioethics and Behavioral and Brain Sciences, which regularly invite open peer commentaries on target articles. The purpose of trying this new format is to provide an additional avenue for debate and engagement among readers of and contributors to Theory & Psychology.

Last year, the article “Epistemic Violence in Psychological Science: Can Knowledge of, From, and for the (Othered) People Solve the Problem?” by Barbara Held was submitted to Theory & Psychology. The article went through the usual peer review process and was accepted for publication. Upon my request, Professor Held was kind enough to indulge me in trying this new format of engagement for Theory & Psychology and agreed to my designating her article a “target article” for which we invited open peer commentaries. Several months ago, I issued an invitation to submit proposals for commentaries on the article. The invitation was disseminated via email to anyone who had opted in to receive notifications from the journal’s web platform, ScholarOne Manuscripts, and via the journal’s Twitter feed (@Theory_Psych). In addition, I notified some individuals who I knew might have an interest in the article based on their own published work. I must confess that I was somewhat nervous that my invitation would be met with silence; after all, Theory & Psychology had never issued a call like this before and I did not know how people would receive it. It turns out I need not have worried. We were somewhat overwhelmed with the response we received. Indeed, we received so many responses that I decided to dedicate a significant portion of this issue to the commentaries. Even so, we received so many more proposals for commentaries than we were able to publish. We ended up selecting those that were most directly focused on the issues raised in the target article, as well as ensuring that we reflected the diversity of the responses we received. As such, we rejected some proposals simply because others were making similar points. I therefore want to thank everyone who responded to the call for proposals, and I also want to apologize to those who submitted a proposal but whose commentary was not selected for publication. I sincerely hope that you will seek out other opportunities to engage with the journal, whether this is through unsolicited commentaries, future calls for open peer commentaries, or full research articles.

Given the enthusiastic response to this call, it is very likely that we will attempt similar open calls for commentaries on target articles in the future. As this was the first time for this journal, there were inevitably some mistakes on my part, and many lessons learned. The experience also highlighted strongly the extremely wide range of theoretical commitments and interests that characterize the readership of Theory & Psychology. I designated Professor Held’s article as a target article because it is controversial and because the issues at stake in the article are extremely relevant to current debates not only in Indigenous and critical psychology, but also debates about the epistemological foundations of psychology as a whole. Nevertheless, I know that many readers are not interested in this area of scholarship. That is simply a reflection of the pluralistic nature of the journal, and the breadth of theoretical work we feature. In future calls, I hope that target articles will feature diverse topics and debates to match the content of articles published in Theory & Psychology.