Direction and Scope of the European Psychologist
The European Psychologist (EP), as the singular scientific organ of the European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations (EFPA), has unique potential to inform psychologists, as well as the broader European community, about vital developments in the field that can have significant implications for practice, research, and policy. We are pleased to report that in the last year and a half, EP received numerous interesting, high-quality submissions on a broad spectrum of topics within psychology. Most of the submissions were empirical in nature and many did indeed have implications for practice, future research, and policy. However, EP is still striving to fulfill its true, full potential. With the aim of further strengthening EP’s role as a leading source of information on current developments across disciplines, we have been working, in conjunction with the publisher and with EFPA, on some exciting new directions for EP, both in terms of what will be published in the journal as well as in how it is disseminated.
Taking our cue from the long-standing successes of our sister journal, the American Psychologist (Anderson, 2006), EP will move toward publishing primarily integrative articles on topics of preeminent importance, relevant to both psychologists as well as the broader community. Further, EP’s already broad dissemination (for instance, via online journal article databases and platforms such as PsyJournals and PsycArticles) will be further extended with the launch of new subscription and translation schemes that aim to provide very affordable access to the journal for psychologists across the whole of Europe, whether affiliated to a university or not. This further broadening of EP’s “reach” will, we hope, help connect those in our field across national borders and across cultural and linguistic boundaries.
What We Will Publish
Original Articles
As we aim to make the journal an even more vital outlet for timely and cutting-edge psychological research across Europe, we will seek to publish highly relevant integrative articles of outstanding quality. Papers should be informative and appealing to psychologists working in the various specialized academic fields and to practitioners working in the various realms in which psychology is applied. Further, submissions should address topics with implications for the broader European community, for policy-making, for psychological practice, and/or for a broad spectrum of research endeavors. Thus material we publish will increasingly be in the form of integrative and review papers. Meta-analyses on topics of wide appeal will also be considered as long as they are written in a way that is accessible to psychologists from varied fields. Papers reporting on single, specific empirical studies will be considered only in rare circumstances, if they present findings from major multinational, multidisciplinary, or longitudinal studies, or results with clearly wide relevance. Submissions should thus be broad, address relevant questions with supporting evidence from empirical studies, have a nexus to public interest, and ideally include recommendations or implications for policy, practice, or the future of research in the area.
EFPA Documents
In addition to articles addressing timely topics for all psychologists, the journal will also include documents of interest to the EFPA community, such as news, reports, policy statements, keynote and award addresses, and archival or historical documents that are relevant to all European psychologists. Reports may summarize the activities of EFPA task forces or national member organizations, or provide perspectives on a topic or theme with input coming from across member countries – for example, by addressing the effects of certain laws or government structures on the practice of psychology or on psychological phenomena across countries. This new EFPA documents section will be managed by a special associate editor appointed by EFPA.
How We Will Disseminate the Journal
Subscriptions
EFPA and Hogrefe Publishing have designed a subscription plan that is anticipated to provide highly affordable access to the journal for thousands of individual members via their national associations, thereby providing psychologists across Europe with a link to one another and a vital source of reliable information. Member associations participating in the plan with EFPA will be able to offer an electronic subscription to EP to their members for around the cost of a cup of coffee. Providing such large-scale access to EP will, we expect, help connect psychologists across countries and help EFPA and its member associations keep their members up-to-date on the most relevant developments in the field. The subscription plan is currently being developed – details will be announced in due course.
Translations
European psychologists are a remarkably diverse group. Not only do we work in different settings, ranging from schools to hospitals, multinational corporations, private practices, and universities, but we also hail from a wide range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, from Iceland to Turkey, from Russia to Malta – with EFPA including these and 31 more nations in between. While EP’s official language, English, is widely understood, language can still present an obstacle to full understanding of the published material for some in the field. To facilitate better dissemination and understanding of the important material published in EP among the members of the numerous national psychology associations, EFPA plans to work with the national associations to translate “executive summaries” of the articles into their respective languages. Titles and references of original articles will continue to be published solely in English to ensure accurate citation; the plan is for article summaries translated into the local language by staff at cooperating member associations to be published electronically on the respective websites of the national associations.
How We Will Ensure the Highest Standards
EP will continue to use the masked peer-review process to ensure that rigorous quality standards are maintained. Original articles will be reviewed by the editor-in-chief and managing editor to ensure that they meet our initial criteria for further review: They must be accessible, relevant to the field as a whole, have implications for policy, practice, or further research, be presented in an integrative style, and address cutting-edge topics. In addition, articles must meet high standards of writing and readability. Once a manuscript has successfully passed this initial editorial screening, it will be sent out – as before – to expert scholars in the field for peer review. Authors who are not fully proficient in English-language academic writing are encouraged to work with a manuscript editor to ensure that their writing does indeed meet the highest standards. And as we mentioned earlier, individual empirical studies will typically not be accepted unless they meet the above criteria and present results from multinational or otherwise outstanding datasets.
Reports appearing in the EFPA documents section will be handled by the associate editor appointed by EFPA for this section and will meet criteria similar to those of original articles, in that they must be accessible, relevant, and have implications for policy, practice, or broad research or otherwise inform and connect psychologists on important topics.
Conclusions
In sum, we – the editors, Hogrefe Publishing, and EFPA – are looking forward with great enthusiasm to the future of bringing readers of EP the most relevant and important ideas in psychology. We are looking forward to receiving suitable manuscript submissions over the coming months – and to seeing them in print starting in 2013. Authors who are interested in submitting an integrative paper are welcome to send an optional initial proposal or abstract for feedback prior to full submission – or may of course send us the full manuscript. Papers for the EFPA section can also be submitted at this time. Finally, do keep your eyes open for more information about the subscription scheme and about translations from your national association in the course of the coming months!
References
(2006). Editorial policies of the American Psychologist . American Psychologist, 61, 1–9.
