Citation impact, rejection rates, and journal value.

Comments on L. C. Buffardi and J. A. Nichols's (1981) list of rejection rates for psychological journals and further examines the relation between rejection rates, citation impact, and journal value. It was found that 69% of the variance in rejection rates was explained by area and type of journal. As Buffardi and Nichols reported, rejection rates were higher for APA than for non-APA journals (80.27% vs 65.37%), and citation indices were higher for APA than for non-APA journals (2.63 vs 0.91). Further results suggest that experimental journals have a higher Social Sciences Citation Indices impact than do general journals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Citation impact, rejection rates, and journal value": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by J. Rotton et al (American Psychologist, 1993[Aug], Vol 48[8], 911–912). Table 1 listed the journal Psychological Research twice, and the journals Cognition and Child Study Journal were omitted. The mean SSCI for applied journals in Table 1 should have been 1.17. Multiple rather than squared multiple correlations were reported for rejection rates. Area and type of journal explained 48% of variance in rejection rates, and the F ratio for predicting citations should have been F(9,28)?=?14.82. On page 912, the mean SSCI for experimental journals should have been 1.51. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1994-03368-001.) Comments on L. C. Buffardi and J. A. Nichols's (1981) list of rejection rates for psychological journals and further examines the relation between rejection rates, citation impact, and journal value. It was found that 69% of the variance in rejection rates was explained by area and type of journal. As Buffardi and Nichols reported, rejection rates were higher for APA than for non-APA journals (80.27% vs 65.37%), and citation indices were higher for APA than for non-APA journals (2.63 vs 0.91)… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Journal quality: The issue of diversity.

Reviewed the journal citations of 5 textbooks in developmental psychology to test whether a firm or final compendium of journal quality is possible or particularly desirable. The 5 tests provided 6,095 citations. Beyond 2 journals that the citations had strongly in common, each went in its own direction. It is concluded that any attempt to define these texts by some restrictive list of journals on which they agree fails quickly. The necessity of a listing of "quality" journals, across or within specialties, is questioned. (8 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Editorial Note.

Announces that, as approved by the Board of Directors and the Council of the APA, beginning in January 1956, a new journal, Contemporary Psychology, will be published by the Association. This journal will review books, monographs, films and related publications-a function presently performed by four different APA journals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ratings of psychology journals compared to objective measures of journal impact.

Compared the K. C. Mace and H. D. Warner (1973) list of chairpersons' ratings of psychological journal reputation and an objective measure of journal eminence. No close correspondence was found between ratings and citation counts for journals. For chairpersons, professional reputation of a journal is evaluated by criteria other than its visibility in the literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Additional Titles in Pakistani Psychology.

Comments on the article by S. M. Hafeez Zaidi (see record 1960-06828-001), which the current author reports was very precise and to the point, and points out a small omission. While discussing the professional journals, Zaidi has overlooked a professional journal in Pakistan which was in circulation from October 1949 to October 1950. It was a monthly journal called Nafsiyati Jaize. It was entirely devoted to original research in the fields of clinical, social, and applied psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Number of authors per manuscript in APA and EPF journals: 2000–2010.

The PsycINFO metadata records for American Psychological Association (APA) journal articles with publication years 2000 through 2010 were analyzed to obtain a count of authors for each article. The counts were accumulated for each year into categories of one through 25, with one additional category for articles with more than 25 authors. The criteria for journals to be included were that they carried the APA or Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF) imprint and that APA had significant involvement in the editorial process. There were 60 journals involved in the counts. (The number of journals varied over this period, ranging from 27 APA journals and 10 EPF journals in 2000 to 29 APA journals and 31 EPF journals in 2010.) For the years 2000 through 2010, this yielded 30,326 articles and 89,060 incidents of authorship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Double, double, toil and trouble: Pitfalls of suppositional inquiries of journal ratings.

Three recent comments in the September 1976 issue (Buss & McDermott; Levin & Kratochwill; Porter (see record 1990-57250-001; see record 1990-57248-001; and see record 1990-57249-001), attempting to deal with the difficult area of assessing journal "reputations," raised some interesting questions concerning our study reporting journal rankings (Koulack & Keselman, November 1975; see record 1976-24649-001). We are in agreement with Buss and McDermott (1976) that citations and rankings might not be measuring the same things, but we are in disagreement with Porter, who suggests that "fine ordering among journals is whimsical" (p. 675). In fact, as we suggest in our introduction and have demonstrated in the body of our article (Koulack & Keselman, 1975), journal rankings change as a function of type of work and area of interest. Perhaps Porter's (1976) findings might be a bit whimsical because of the procedure he used to obtain his correlations. Moreover, it is impossible to probe further because Porter does not present the rankings of the two journals chosen from the APA members' top 50, which appeared in either of the citation measures' top 50. Such data might provide some insight into the low correlations obtained between journal citations and rankings. For example, extremely low citation rankings on either citation index for these two journals, given their relatively high position in the APA membership rankings, would diminish the size of the correlation coefficients. The Levin and Kratochwill (1976) comment is somewhat annoying because it distorts a line from Shakespeare as well as misrepresents our presentation. They imply that (a) we thought our rankings represented a definitive approach to the journal rating problem, (b) we neglected to place emphasis on a table presented in the paper, and (c) respondents chose to ignore our instructions and in fact, rated journals on the basis of familiarity. In conclusion, we appreciate the fact that there are numerous ways of examining journal reputations (e.g., rankings by departmental chairpersons, rankings by APA membership, citations obtained from 77 psychology journals published in 1969, citations obtained from 3 psychology journals published from July 1973 to June 1975) and that each of them has potential value. However, comments that are not based on empirical investigation, such as those of Levin and Kratochwill (1976), are mere suppositions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Productivity ratings of graduate programs in psychology based on publication in the journals of the American Psychological Association.

Identified 76 colleges and universities that were leading contributors of articles in 13 journals published by the American Psychological Association during 1970–1976. Productivity ratings were assigned to these institutions for each journal separately and for the composite of all 13 journals. These ratings, in turn, were compared with the "reputational" ratings of colleges and universities which had been assigned in a previous study by K. D. Roose and C. J. Andersen (1970). Considerable disparity in ratings according to the procedures of the 2 studies was found. 40% of the most productive schools received higher rankings in the present study than the previous one; 22% of the schools rated as adequate in the previous study were not identified as the most productive. The validity of ratings based upon subjective indexes of quality is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Friendship and friendship quality in middle childhood: Links with peer group acceptance and feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction.

The distinction between friendship adjustment and acceptance by the peer group was examined. Third- through 5th-grade children (N?=?881) completed sociometric measures of acceptance and friendship, a measure of loneliness, a questionnaire on the features of their very best friendships, and a measure of their friendship satisfaction. Results indicated that many low-accepted children had best friends and were satisfied with these friendships. However, these children's friendships were lower than those of other children on most dimensions of quality. Having a friend, friendship quality, and group acceptance made separate contributions to the prediction of loneliness. Results indicate the utility of the new friendship quality measure and the value of distinguishing children's friendship adjustment from their general peer acceptance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sample description, reporting, an analysis of sex in psychological research: A look at APA and APA division journals in 1990.

Extends a study by L. Gannon et al (see record 1992-23274-001) by examining the sex of Ss in American Psychological Association (APA) journals publishing original human studies research and by sampling all APA division journals publishing such research. Two issues of each APA and APA division journal published in 1990 were examined, yielding a sample of 504 articles from 26 journals. 79 cases (9.86%) clearly indicated using Ss of only 1 sex, 440 cases (54.93%) used both male and female Ss and reported sex fully, and 44 cases (5.49%) indicated using Ss of each sex without reporting exact numbers. The evidence suggests that there remains a significant tendency to consider male Ss as "normative," and results obtained from them generally applicable, whereas female Ss are somehow "different," and results obtained from them are specific to female Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

APA journals: Suggestions for a radical change.

The comments in recent issues on APA publication difficulties (Amer. Psychologist, 9, 37-40) have stirred me to present for consideration the following rather radical suggestions. Perhaps all articles of APA journals might be issued as separates, even though the existing journal names (and editors' domains) would remain unchanged. Perhaps all articles of APA journals might be issued as separates, even though the existing journal names (and editors' domains) would remain unchanged. To be accepted by an editor, an article must be accompanied by an abstract substantially ready for inclusion in the Psychological Abstracts. The "personality" of each APA journal will be maintained, but the physical appearance of the separately issued articles would be standardized. Prepaid subscribers would purchase only those articles chosen on the basis of regularly issued prepublication abstracts, and only enough copies of each article to meet its demand will be printed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of expertise and experience on risk judgments.

Compared the ability of 23 "expert" physicians and 93 undergraduates to accurately judge the risk associated with several diseases. Whereas the physicians gave substantially more accurate judgments, they still systematically overestimated the risks but in a manner different from the students. Two possible sources of this bias were examined: amount of coverage the diseases received in medical journals and the number of encounters with people suffering from the diseases. Greater medical journal coverage for a disease was significantly related to increased physician estimates of the risk of dying from that disease, even after controlling for the true mortality rate. However, subsequent path analyses revealed that the significant journal effect was not robust enough to reject the null hypothesis. The results for encounter frequency were more conclusive. For both physicians and students, increased frequency of encounters with people suffering from the disease was directly related to higher risk estimates. Results suggest that experts and nonexperts may use similar thought processes but make differently biased risk judgments because of their differing exposure to the risky events. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rejoinder to Kurtz.

Kurtz (1971; see record 1990-56874-001) is, of course, quite correct in noting that my comment (Schaeffer, 1970; see record 1990-56809-001) does not really answer my question; but this appears clearly indicated in the conclusions I draw in the final paragraph of my paper. His plea for the use of Psychometrika as a touchstone for the investigation of "favoritism" is also reasonable, but my data should be sufficient to answer his question here. In fact, for 1967, Psychometrika ranked second in terms of printing editors' contributions, and lowest (among the journals reviewed) in terms of printing outside contributions. Further, the correlation between my measure of "favoritism" and the Jakobovits and Osgood measure of "Rigor" (on which Psychometrika ranks second) also suggests this journal would be high on the measure of "favoritism." While it might then be possible to argue from these data (and Kurtz's premises) that almost all journals considered in this study are prejudiced in favor of outside contributors, such an argument would seem somewhat forced, and would minimally require more extensive sampling of this and related journals than I felt the question really deserved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Do APA journals play professional favorites?

Investigated possible favoritism in the publication policies of 4 American Psychological Association (APA) journals and 6 non-APA journals. While none of the APA journals had editors who were in private practice, retired or otherwise unaffiliated, all the non-APA journals had at least 2 editors in this category. Individual journals varied in the degree of professional favoritism shown, but this was not related to APA membership. Most journals devoted less than 10% of articles to editors' contributions, up to 33% to contributions from professional colleagues, and the remainder to sources outside immediate affiliations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of 80 psychology journals based on the Science Citation Index..

Ranked 80 psychology journals and those from closely related fields in terms of their impact factors (average citations per article) where the numerator for the impact factor was based on the total number of citations accruing to 1972–1973 articles in that journal in the 1974 Science Citation Index. The top 3 journals were Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin. Comparisons are made with a ranking study conducted by M. J. White and K. G. White (1977). For related article, see PA, Vol 56:4649. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)