Feedback wanted! Are these journals representative of the empirical research in each subfield? If you read a meta-science study that sampled these journals, would you feel it was a fair representation? Review journals & narrow topic journals excluded, eg leadership, depression - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

ianhussey.mmmdata.io • 477 days ago

Feedback wanted!

Are these journals representative of the empirical research in each subfield?

If you read a meta-science study that sampled these journals, would you feel it was a fair representation?

Review journals & narrow topic journals excluded, eg leadership, depression

Comments

seanpmackinnon.bsky.social•477 days ago

This list (to me) seems heavily skewed on prestige / high-impact journals. If that's intentional, then this list is fine, but I think that metascience studies have as a general rule, perhaps over-studied the prestige journals and ignored the more mid-tier places where most ppl publish.

j-p-reynolds.bsky.social•477 days ago

Is applied synonymous with organisational? It looks like that section is heavily loaded with organisational journals. Perhaps missing out on other applied fields

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Which journals would you suggest? We could either clarify the category as I/O or make it more representative of applied.

j-p-reynolds.bsky.social•477 days ago

I guess it depends on your aims. But I often see major health (non clinical) psychology journals categorised under applied. Eg Health Psychology, Annals of behavioural medicine, British Journal of Health Psychology - but there may be other applied domains - im just biased by my health background

pratherlab.bsky.social•477 days ago

I would recommend Journal of Cognition and Development but maybe too much overlap between Developmental Science and Developmental Psychology.

mattmakel.bsky.social•477 days ago

No educational, school, or counseling psychology

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/ianhussey.bsky.social/post/3kkwcqro6le23

odickhaeuser.bsky.social•477 days ago

Don’t forget Educational Psychology and it’s Key Journals: Journal of Educational Psychology, Learning and Instruction, Contemporary Educational Psychology

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

See my other replies re the need for replacements rather than additions. What to replace with what? How to evidence this representiveness?

psmaldino.bsky.social•477 days ago

What delineates “psychology” from closely linked fields? I’m allegedly a cognitive scientist and I’ve published in exactly one of these (NHB). I always to get people to focus on the question rather than the disciplinary tag. What about cultural, evolutionary, or modeling approaches?

psmaldino.bsky.social•477 days ago

It’d be interesting to rank journals in terms of how often they’re cited primarily by people in the same subfield vs by people in neighboring fields vs ostensibly very different fields.

drcpennington.bsky.social•477 days ago

How about Journal of Experimental Social Psychology for "social"?

syeducation.bsky.social•477 days ago

I don't see Psych Science as general at all, it is almost exclusively social and cognitive. The developmental category is somewhat skewed towards the earlier part of the lifespan--having an adolescence-focused journal in their would be good.

annajluecke.bsky.social•477 days ago

Or even an adulthood/aging-focused one as well

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Could either of you suggest which early development journal to drop and which one adolescent/adult/aging journal to add?

The current list is:
Child Development
Developmental Science
Developmental Psychology
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Infant and Child Development

syeducation.bsky.social•477 days ago

Depends on what exactly you are looking for, but Dev Science and J Exp Chi Psych are mostly redundant, and ICD is sort of in that same boat. Maybe remove the latter two and replace with Journal of Research on Adolescence and Psych of Aging.

annajluecke.bsky.social•477 days ago

Do you mean Psych and Aging - I'd second that! :)

mfriend1.bsky.social•473 days ago

Really? Disagree that JECP and DEVSCI are redundant. DEVSCI is highly selective for cutting-edge work. Lots of good science gets published in JECP.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Thanks!

chrisschuck.bsky.social•477 days ago

You could make an argument that to the extent "general psychology" is an integrative project with an explicit mission (not just a slightly wider range of topics), by its very nature this lends itself to reviews & conceptual work. So most GP would not make this list. E.g., Review of General Psych.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Yes indeed, most general journals get excluded as review journals

syeducation.bsky.social•477 days ago

Collabra is highly unique, the only true general journal in the field IMHO.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

great suggestion - can't believe i forgot collabra. I would drop BJP for Collabra. The British journals have good citation metrics but feel insular, no-one outside the UK mentions them much.

chrisschuck.bsky.social•477 days ago

Also great to include open access journals when possible! BTW, this was sort of what I had in mind when I was thinking general psychology as an explicit mission:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1089268019893974

olivergenschow.bsky.social•477 days ago

I missed somehow the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, the European Journal of Social Psychology, Acta Psychological, and Consciousness and Cognition...

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Remember that it’s substitutions only. Which would you drop for these?

olivergenschow.bsky.social•477 days ago

Oh. I see. I would not drop any Journal. You had a great selection. Is Jep: G fully cognitive though? Or rather general. At least the name would suggest it is general. 🤔

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/ianhussey.bsky.social/post/3kkwddbzsns2h the updated list has moved it to general. I think that’s a bit of a stretch when I read its contents, but it is their declared scope.

johnflournoy.science•477 days ago

I am biased but I think Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience should be part of the developmental area. Also Journal of Research on Adolescence.

Clinical: Clinical Psychological Science

Cog: Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Due to the nature of the meta science study there's good reason to not include neuro / cog neuro journals.

Clinical psych sci is indeed on the list.

johnflournoy.science•477 days ago

doh, pardon i missed clinical ps

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Which developmental journal would you drop for JRA?

The current developmental list is:
Child Development
Developmental Science
Developmental Psychology
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Infant and Child Development

camhostinar.bsky.social•476 days ago

I would replace Infant and Child Development with Development and Psychopathology.

jonkorfmacher.bsky.social•476 days ago

I would also add Early Childhood Research Quarterly

drandreahoward.bsky.social•476 days ago

Yeah if you have to get rid of one, ICD because I don’t think it’s field-saturated yet, and J. Exper. might be less “developmental” than “studies in samples of children”. Developmental psych is outlet-diverse because people working across different ages target differing journals.

mfriend1.bsky.social•476 days ago

I would not replace any journals on that list.

johnflournoy.science•477 days ago

Based on very little actual info Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, or Infant and Child Development. :-/

juliaha.bsky.social•477 days ago

What are you aiming for? Diverse topics? Low- and high-tier or only high-tier? I would say cognitive is diverse in topic but not diverse in other aspects.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

A combination of high tier and diverse. I am looking to avoid people reading our results and dismissing them on the basis that they are somehow not representative, that there is a secret subfield in which all research is perfect and there are no problems - an unfortunately common response.

juliaha.bsky.social•477 days ago

And only empirical work? Otherwise I would add quantitative.

juliaha.bsky.social•477 days ago

Nevermind, just saw it in your initial text. Only empirical. :)

dremalt.bsky.social•477 days ago

I can guess what your response might be here, but I must make an impassioned plea for comparative / animal psychology - the original psychology! Journal of Comparative Psych, Animal Cognition, Animal Behavior, JEP:ALC...

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

In this case they're excluded for good reason - the study is on the prevalence of the use of behavioral measures, like an expansion of Baumeister et al 2007 "a science of self reports and fingers movements". I assume they're universal in animal psych, as non-humans aren't good at self reports.

dremalt.bsky.social•477 days ago

if only they were!

infotainment.bsky.social•477 days ago

The Applied category could be split into I/O psych and various other subfields, but not sure about details

Educational Psych is absent, despite being large and engaged with open science

malte.the100.ci•477 days ago

I see little evidence that edu is particularly invested in open science, e.g.: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25152459231156419

infotainment.bsky.social•477 days ago

It’s definitely behind other fields, but depends on DVs. People know the practices and issues on the ground now and the theory/advocacy papers are being published:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00461520.2021.1898961

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

There's definitely lots cut here, and many will be sad their field isn't represented on the list. Unfortunately every added journal increases the project beyond feasibility, so hard choices have to be made.

infotainment.bsky.social•477 days ago

Yes, always.

h/t @iopsychmemes, X

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ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Updated list - Do you think these journals are represenative of psychology as a whole?

Think of it like a mutual fund of shares: does it track the market of psychology generally?

Empirical journals only, no (cog)neuro.

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mattmattoni.bsky.social•477 days ago

Psychological Medicine comes to mind for clinical. More broadly, there are numerous psychiatry journals that may publish relevant clinical papers

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/ianhussey.bsky.social/post/3kkwo3zmfjc2e

mattmattoni.bsky.social•477 days ago

Ah I see! That's challenging - I do think it a psychiatry-focused journal could improve representativeness for clinical journals, but if there's a number limit I don't have a good suggestion of what to remove... 🫤

drandreahoward.bsky.social•476 days ago

Coming up with this list is clearly difficult. Two observations I have: the list appears to be selecting for higher impact factor and whatever associated biases. There’s also a bit of a gap in dev psych with no adolescence journals (J. Research on Adolesc, J. Youth & Adolesc, Emerging Adulthood)

drandreahoward.bsky.social•476 days ago

…and for that matter some missing on the aging side. I’d also look at Development and Psychopathology as a major outlet. But to answer your question, yes I think the list as-is basically captures the field fairly well.

michaeljkane.bsky.social•477 days ago

The cognitive list is pretty good, but it might over-represent memory research just a bit. I might replace JEPLMC with JEPHPP, to bring in more low-level perception/attention/motor work. PB&R covers the field well but it also includes review articles.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Good advice, thank you.

alylight.bsky.social•477 days ago

I dislike the addition of Frontiers-- a lot of people have concerns about their recent editorial process, which seems heavily biased toward accepting articles. So I am not sure they represent the quality of journals that use a more typical peer-review process.

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

As do I. However, they publish such a large number of articles that they're hard to ignore as source of psych research.

thmeyer.bsky.social•475 days ago

It seems a bit odd to include mass or pay-to-publish journals in this list, since most others on the list are considered 'leading' journals where it's difficult to get published

thmeyer.bsky.social•475 days ago

Reminds me of a 2D classification of journals I saw somewhere, where publications are selected for (1) high/low relevance and (2) high/low scientific rigour. Most journals currently on this list would be high on both, PLOS or Sci Rep would be high only on rigour, MDPI is low on both

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•473 days ago

PLOS high on right, lol

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

i.e., their quality should be examined rather than ignored

seanpmackinnon.bsky.social•477 days ago

Relatedly, even though I think they are borderline predatory, MDPI journals by sheer publication count should probably be represented in an "index fund" of journals.

One way to do it might be by publisher and market share

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

Gah this is the logic I used to include frontiers, but I don’t know if I can bring myself to be consistent and include MDPI

priyasilverstein.com•477 days ago

I'd say "Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders" is a bit niche for developmental psych generally, maybe replace with "Infant and Child Development"?

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

it's a little on the niche side yes, but do you think that infant/child dev is already well covered by the other journals? ie is the list of 5 as a whole better diversified by the inclusion of JADD, or is it apples with oranges?

priyasilverstein.com•477 days ago

Hmm, it’s true that it’s better diversified, but in the same way as adding a depression journal would be to clinical, imo!

ianhussey.mmmdata.io•477 days ago

I buy that logic. Hmm, a bit of a dilemma, as I we're fairly happy with the clinical ones.