SPPS Update from the Editor in Chief
Allen R. McConnell
Miami University
Two years ago, I provided the P readership with an update on Social Psychological and Personality Science, and I’m happy to do so again in 2014. Our editorial team has been receiving manuscripts for over two years, and we encourage researchers from all areas of psychology, including those who study personality and individual differences, to submit their work to SPPS.
Most of you know that SPPS is a journal that publishes short report papers (5000 words or less) and that it is sponsored by all of our major research societies, including the Association for Research in Personality (ARP). When scholars consider submitting their research to SPPS, they often focus on the size and scope of their work (e.g., is it a “short report sized” paper?), but there are many other reasons to consider submitting to SPPS.
First, although SPPS is sponsored by ARP, it is also an official journal of the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP), and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP). As a result, papers published in SPPS can build bridges between personality research and other areas in psychology, attracting readers from well beyond personality and individual difference domains. In fact, more than 7000 scholars in social and personality psychology throughout the world receive complimentary subscriptions to the journal, and thus, SPPS papers enjoy a large, interdisciplinary audience.
In addition to having a broad, international readership, SPPS provides thoughtful, timely, and to-the-point editorial feedback to authors on their work. During our first two years at the helm of the journal, our average time between author submission and action letter being issued is 39.31 days (SD=35.29). We have received more than 1400 manuscripts (with more than 1100 of them being new submissions). For newly submitted papers, our desk rejection rate is 31%. For submissions that are sent out for review, 50% are rejected. Thus, 19% of submissions receive revise and resubmit decisions, and the majority of those that are resubmitted are ultimately published in the journal.
During the last year, there have been a number of exciting developments at the journal that increase the attractiveness of publishing papers in SPPS. For example, in 2014, we expanded the number of annual issues from six to eight, increasing the number of issues by 33%. As a result, publication lag (i.e., time from acceptance to appearance in print) at the journal has shrunk from over a year to approximately six months. Also, we have begun a number of new initiatives to increase publicity about the work we publish, ranging from regular press releases on selected papers, to regular table of content emails sent to the membership of all of the major societies in the field to periodic “Best of SPPS” emails that highlight a curated selection of especially impactful articles. As a result, work published in SPPS is more likely to come to the attention of fellow researchers in personality psychology, colleagues in other disciplines in the field, and the public at large.
To help guide researchers who study personality and individual differences, I would like to comment on what SPPS looks for in submitted papers. First, SPPS is very excited about publishing personality and individual difference research -- so please consider it as an outlet that is interested in your work! Second, SPPS can be an especially attractive outlet for papers that extend personality and individual difference research into new areas, such as social cognition, relationships, emotions, group decision making, the self, and intergroup relations (just to name a few). As someone whose own training was in classical social cognition, I know that some of my most satisfying recent work has married mechanism and process (e.g., self-concept representation, impression formation, the experience of affect) with important personality and individual difference phenomena (e.g., Five Factor Model of personality, attachment style, implicit theories). SPPS is well positioned to publish work that truly is interdisciplinary and integrative, and we encourage researchers to consider this as one of the attractive features of the journal (though we are certainly interested in publishing mainstream personality and individual difference research too).
When considering issues of special interest to readers of this newsletter, I should note that we have an explicit policy to not publish scale validation papers. In our judgment, 5000 words is simply not enough space to adequately validate a new scale (e.g., structural studies, replications with multiple samples, tests of discriminant, convergent, content, and criterion validity). We understand that scale validation is important work, but the constraints of SPPS make it too difficult to do it well in 5000 words or less. Thus, scale validation papers will be desk rejected and authors will be encouraged to seek more appropriate outlets. We encourage authors to visit our website (http://spp.sagepub.com) for more details about our editorial teams policies and vision for the journal, including our team’s editorial policy (McConnell, 2013, which appeared in the January 2013 issue of SPPS). We discuss a number of pertinent issues, such as our views on replication, covariates in data analyses, mediational and path analyses, and that we take the 5000 word limit seriously (i.e., we really will send your paper back without review if it’s too long)!
Having been Editor in Chief of SPPS now for over two years, I continued to be inspired and humbled by everyone who contributes to the scientific enterprise and to SPPS in particular. Our field is composed of thoughtful, creative, and passionate scholars who all work in an interdependent fashion. They build their work on the past efforts of others and they construct new bridges to establish where the field is going. In addition to the energy and creativity of authors, we rely on the peer review process to improve our work and to gauge the contribution value of each paper we receive. Thus, I feel a debt of gratitude to our authors, reviewers, and editorial board members who are critical to SPPS’s success.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge my wonderful editorial team: Shira Gabriel, Rob Holland, Kurt Hugenberg, Dan Molden, Nickola Overall, Simone Schnall, Yuichi Shoda, Pamela Smith, Gerben Van Kleef, and Simine Vazire. They work tirelessly and thoughtfully on each manuscript that we receive, and they provide great feedback and guidance that improves individual papers and our field as a whole. I also benefit from the excellent support provided by the Consortium of Social and Personality Psychology (chaired by Linda Skitka, with ARP representation provided by Lynne Cooper). We are also fortunate to have an excellent team of professionals at Sage Publication as well. And lastly, please let me express my thanks to scholars like you who fill the pages of SPPS with amazing research and who serve the journal with your thoughtful reviews. It is the contributions of people like you who make being Editor in Chief of SPPS so rewarding, humbling, and inspiring.
All best,
Allen R. McConnell
Editor in Chief, SPPS
Reference
McConnell, A. R. (2013). Editorial. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 4, 3-5.