Journal of Research in Personality, Editor's Report
Richard Lucas
Michigan State University
As I have done in past issues of P, I'd like to first take this opportunity to thank all the authors and reviewers who have supported the Journal of Research in Personality during this past year. Obviously, the journal couldn't exist without these efforts, and I am grateful to all those who have contributed so much of their time to making the journal function smoothly. This year, I am feeling especially grateful, as after nine years, my term as Editor in Chief will be ending. I can honestly say that it was a great experience, one that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys reviewing or who feels some desire to help shape the field through editorial work.
I am also extremely grateful to the editorial team that I was lucky to work with during these past nine years. I'll start by thanking Brent Donnellan, who, as Senior Associate Editor, really served as a co-Editor through the years. In addition to his incredibly efficient and thoughtful decisions, Brent was an equal partner in shaping journal content and setting journal policies. The journal wouldn't be nearly as good, and my time at JRP would not have been nearly as rewarding and fun, if it weren't for Brent. I would also like to thank all the associate editors who served during my term: Peter Borkenau, Erika Carlson, Susan Charles, Phebe Cramer, Colin DeYoung, Mike Furr, Kate McLean, Fred Oswald, Uli Schimmack, Oliver Schultheiss, Ryne Sherman, Susan South, Jule Specht, Jennifer Tackett, and Simine Vazire. As anyone who has taken on such a role knows, the job of an associate editor can be challenging. There is a steady stream of new articles to process, decision letters to write, revisions to handle, and occasional tricky issues to deal with; and all of these editors did an incredible job. A quick look back at any of my prior P columns, columns where I would emphasize turnaround times and other statistics, shows that we have been able to maintain an extremely efficient editorial schedule at JRP, and that is due entirely to the efforts of these editors.
As anyone who has been paying attention knows, the field changed quite a bit between 2009 when I started, and 2017, the year I will finish. Although concerns about power, publication bias, questionable research practices, etc. have been discussed for decades, the shift in how the field perceives these problems has been pretty dramatic. I think the thing that I am most proud of is the way that JRP was able to quickly adapt to these changes and to institute new policies that kept us at the forefront of publication standards and methodological innovations. And when I say that I am proud of the way that the journal was able to adapt to these changes, I really mean that I am proud to be a member of ARP, where there is a clear appreciation for the importance of these issues and where solutions to the problems that have been identified have been so openly embraced. This allowed JRP to easily and without controversy adopt new policies that I believe will make research in the field better.
For example, the journal now explicitly encourages replications (especially replications of research originally published in JRP), it evaluates these replications using results-blind procedures, it allows for registered reports, and it emphasizes and tries to reward open practices including the sharing of data and materials. Future meta-scientific research can evaluate the effectiveness of these policy changes, but it is encouraging to see the members of our organization embracing practices that seem mostly likely to improve the quality of research that we produce. As an illustration of these values, I was especially excited to see that both of the most recent winners of the JRP best paper award (Finnigan and Corker's 2016 paper on stereotype threat and Damian and Robert's 2015 paper on birth order) were not only replications, but replications that primarily reported null results. Each of these studies used extremely strong methods to address interesting and important questions, and it is exciting to see them recognized for these qualities. It is encouraging that such papers not only have a home at the official journal of ARP, but are recognized as especially strong examples of good science.
Finally, as 2017 winds down, I encourage ARP members to take a look at three special issues that the editorial team (with some guests) organized. In the April issue, Jennifer Tackett and Emily Durbin put together an excellent collection of papers on research on youth personality. In the August issue, Simine Vazire and Ryne Sherman published a special issue on within-person variability in personality. Finally, in a forthcoming volume, Brent Donnellan and I will publish a special issue focused on replications of important findings in personality psychology. Each of these special issues focuses on an important topic in personality psychology, and the articles within these issues will have a strong impact on the field.