Towards New Horizons

With the start of the new year 2024 and volume 31 of the European Journal of Health Psychology (EJHP), the journal’s editors would like to take the opportunity to present – not our New Year’s resolutions, but some new developments and changes concerning the journal.

Dear reader, when was the last time you went to the library to take a volume or the latest issue of a periodical off the shelf? We all know that actually walking to the library is good for our health, but the reality is that downloading PDF files while sitting at our desks or reading them on a laptop on the train is faster and more convenient. Thus, the editors of EJHP were unsurprised when our publishing house Hogrefe decided to discontinue the print version of the journal. Starting with this current issue 1 of volume 31, EJHP will be appearing as an e-only journal. Despite being published exclusively electronically, the journal will continue to publish one complete issue quarterly, including a title page, a table of contents, editorials, and articles, as well as other materials such as a list of reviewers or – as in the current issue – our Distinguished Reviewers of 2023. The current issue can be found online at https://econtent.hogrefe.com/toc/ejh/current.

Our well-established practice of publishing “advance articles” will also continue. As soon as an accepted article has passed proofreading and been released for publication, it will appear online as an “advance article” on the journal’s platform at https://econtent.hogrefe.com/toc/ejh/0/0. These advanced articles will then be compiled into regular issues at quarterly intervals. For those of us who find the sustainability and security of the scientific record important, it is worth noting that the preservation of all digital content is guaranteed: European Journal of Health Psychology is archived by the publisher with Portico, a community-supported preservation archive that safeguards access to e-journals, e-books, and digital collections.

Despite moving to purely online publishing, EJHP still offers different publication models. Thus, authors are free to choose between the traditional publishing option and “gold” open-access publication. The traditional, subscription-based publication option still works without any requirement for authors or their institutions to pay publication fees. Thanks to the e-only format even colored figures and graphs are possible without any additional costs. To download the version of the record of an article or to read it online, a subscription (individual or via an institution) is needed. It is worth noting here that even under this model authors can post their accepted manuscript versions in repositories or institutional websites at any time, thus allowing them to conform with most funders’ open access mandates. Alternatively, Hogrefe’s OpenMind program offers “gold” open-access publication. Information for authors on how to fund article publication charges (APCs) and about programs allowing authors affiliated with institutions from the UK, Germany, and Switzerland to publish open access without having to find funds for an APC can be found at https://www.hogrefe.com/eu/service/for-journal-authors/openmind or (for authors in the USA) at https://www.hogrefe.com/us/resources/publishing-with-hogrefe/for-journals/openmind.

Our editorial team has also undergone a few changes over the last year. Among the associate editors, Anja Tausch (Riedlingen, Germany) handed over her position to Manja Vollmann (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). We are grateful for Anja Tausch’s valuable work for the journal during her time on the team. We welcome Manja and are already thankful for her instrumental input in all things concerning the journal. We also extend a warm welcome to new members of our editorial board: Jeroen Bruinsma (Maastricht, The Netherlands) and Georgia Panayiotou (Nicosia, Cyprus) have joined our board to serve the journal by providing reviews and suggestions for future developments.

Changes and new developments also provide an excellent opportunity for us, as editors, to introduce ourselves and our perspectives on current topics in health psychology. What would we love to see published in EJHP?

Heike Eschenbeck (Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany) focuses in her research on questions of well-being, stress/coping, and health behaviors among children, adolescents, and young adults. She also deals with issues relating to health promotion and disease prevention in practice. She would like to read new and methodologically sound research on health and health promotion that considers the individual and the environments/settings where people are, the social and cultural contexts in which psychological processes are embedded. These might, for example, be studies in diverse samples on health and health promotion in childhood or adolescence, in families, schools, or social media.

Verena Klusmann (Furtwangen, Germany) takes a lifespan approach to the study of the dynamics in social cognitions, health behavior, and health, with a particular focus on aging and old age. She would like to see papers that take into account life-span dynamics or at least age effects and diversity aspects in general. She is also engaged with initiatives in research and health promotion that stand up against discrimination and diversity.

Manja Vollmann (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) is interested in factors and processes that promote and maintain well-being and health, both in patients with chronic diseases and healthy but vulnerable individuals. She is of the opinion that more theory- and evidence-based health interventions are needed, and she considers the European Journal of Health Psychology to be an excellent platform for such work.

Christel Salewski (Hagen, Germany) is interested in the accompanying processes and consequences of illness – with a special focus on chronic illness – in different phases of life and different social contexts. In particular, she looks at the role of illness representations both in coping with chronic illness and in relation to health-related behavior such as vaccination.

Claus Vögele (Luxembourg) does research in abnormal, biological, clinical, and health psychology. His research interests cover topics such as interoception, eating disorders, chronic pain, epigenetics, and eHealth.

Silke Schmidt (Greifswald, Germany) is interested in chronic conditions, particularly in children and adolescents, and associated health services research, prevention programs, and transition research, as well as behavioral indicators of well-being and quality of life in children. She would love to see manuscripts published in EJHP on cross-cultural research and method development regarding subjective health and risk perception.

The research activities of Andreas Schwerdtfeger (Graz, Austria) focus on cardiovascular psychophysiology, stress and emotion, psychosocial resources and resilience, and psychophysiological ambulatory assessment. He is particularly interested in manuscripts examining biopsychosocial pathways to health and disease using rigorous laboratory studies or ecological momentary assessment approaches that help us understand within-and between-person relationships in everyday life.

Heike Spaderna (Trier, Germany) has a focus on psychological and behavioral factors associated with clinical outcomes in chronic illness, particularly in cardiovascular diseases. She appreciates manuscripts with a strong theoretical background, and empirical studies that contribute to theory development.

We are currently living in a global situation full of changes and upheavals that require clear ethical positioning. Therefore, the editorial team would like to point out that racism and agitation have no place in our journal and combine this with the desire for peaceful, international scientific cooperation and the clear commitment of scientists to fundamental values and human rights worldwide.

To illustrate the editors’ personal takes on the journal, here are some statements:

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  “I consider the journal to be a very good outlet for work on the processes underlying ‘normal,’ i.e., non-pathological, health behaviors (such as healthy sleeping or eating). And I would like to see more submissions to the European Journal of Health Psychology on online-based health interventions.” (Christel Salewski)
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  “I work with mixed methods approaches and see great potential in using digital methods (e.g., artificial intelligence) and also for combining qualitative and quantitative analyses. And I would like to receive manuscripts on the issues of climate health and planetary health.” (Verena Klusmann)
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  “I appreciate submissions that focus on populations that are usually underrepresented in health psychological research but require special attention due to health disparities, such as individuals with lower socioeconomic status, migration background, or no-cisheteronormative identities.” (Manja Vollmann)
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  “When writing your paper for EJHP, reflect on the implications of your research; these may be theoretical, empirical, and/or practical. Brief Reports offer a good opportunity to publish a sound piece of research representing pilot work or new methodology.” (Heike Eschenbeck)

With this agenda, we look forward to another year in which, together with you, dear readers and authors, we would like to take the European Journal of Health Psychology even further forward. Hot scientific topics and high quality will continue to characterize us. In this sense, we also see the switch to a paper-free version of our journal as a timely impulse: by dispensing with the printing of entire issues – parts of which may not even be read – the journal will, we hope, make a significant contribution to sustainability and thus to planetary health.

The European Journal of Health Psychology is listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Social Scisearch, Journal Citation Report/Social Sciences Edition, PsycInfo, PsycArticles, PSYNDEX, Scopus, and in the International Bibliography of Periodical Literature in the Humanities and Social Sciences (IBZ).