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Tonya M Palermo, Editorial: Initiatives and Goals for the Next 5 Years of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Journal of Pediatric Psychology, Volume 43, Issue 1, January/February 2018, Pages 1–4, https://doi.org/10.1093/jpepsy/jsx137
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It is with enthusiasm that I step into the role as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology (JPP). Having served JPP as an Associate Editor under the editorships of Denny Drotar and Grayson Holmbeck, I had the benefit of learning from two amazing editors how to lead JPP to success. As a first step, I recruited an outstanding team composed of Associate Editors Melissa Alderfer, Dean Beebe, Marisa Hilliard, David Janicke, Bryan Karazsia, and Avani Modi; Student Editorial Liaison Aimee Hildenbrand; and JPP Editorial Assistant Susan Wood. I am particularly delighted to be able to continue working with the highly dedicated Susan Wood who I have known since 1996 from my days at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. In this editorial, I describe my inspiration for leading JPP and my own goals and ideas for keeping JPP impactful over the next 5 years.
My inspiration for wanting to steer JPP’s path for the next 5 years comes from my long-time mentor, colleague, friend, and former JPP Editor Denny Drotar. Training with Denny as a student and early career professional heavily influenced my career (for an overview, see (Palermo, 2014). Two areas particularly stand out: observing Denny’s contributions to the behavioral health of children through his sophisticated interdisciplinary research programs in adherence and chronic disease management, and witnessing firsthand his strong devotion to mentorship and training. Several of my initiatives for JPP over the next 5 years stem from Denny’s influence, especially in my focus on student involvement in the journal and my focus on increasing the quality and rigor of research in the journal.
Prior editors have made JPP a respected brand name in our field, and my primary goal is to sustain the high stature of the journal in regard to its reputation, impact factor, and reach. In addition, I have eight specific goals for JPP that I will focus on over the next 5 years. These include (1) engage students and trainees (and their mentors) in JPP, (2) expand JPP’s focus on intervention research and enhance quality of reporting of clinical trials in JPP, (3) enhance the quality of methodology and statistics, (4) provide practical guidance on writing manuscripts, (5) increase the reach of findings of JPP papers, (6) use targeted invitations to the editorial board to include physician investigators and international scientists, (7) enhance the appearance and ease of use of the journal and website, and (8) continue to use special issues to encourage research submissions in areas of importance to the field.
(1) Engage Students and Trainees (and Their Mentors) in JPP
A student’s first interaction with JPP often occurs during undergraduate or graduate school as a consumer of research, and then as an author. Potentially, students will have career-long ties to the journal as future reviewers, members of the editorial board, or of the editorial team. It is important to consider further ways that students could contribute to and engage with JPP (along with their mentors). I am excited to launch a new feature in JPP called the JPP Student Journal Club, which kicks off in this issue. The purpose of the JPP Student Journal Club is to allow trainees in pediatric psychology the opportunity to critically evaluate a published article through writing an accompanying commentary. I have asked students to focus on strengths and weaknesses of the articles to improve their ability to critically appraise research, and, in particular, to highlight controversial issues, innovations, and ideas for future research. I received a wonderful response to the first solicitation for applications and accepted 33 outstanding students (ranging from undergraduate to postdoctoral) into the journal club for 1-year terms. What this means is that I will keep these students in a database as qualified authors to potentially be asked to write a commentary over the next 12 months.
In this issue, the Featured Article is by Helgeson and colleagues, “Trajectories of glycemic control over adolescence and emerging adulthood: An 11-year longitudinal study of youth with type 1 diabetes.” Natalie Benjamin, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology at Marquette University, mentored by Dr Astrida Kaugars, wrote the accompanying commentary. I hope that the journal club provides a useful opportunity for students to further engage with the journal and to learn more about critically evaluating research in the field. Faculty mentors may consider using the featured articles and commentaries in their own seminars, courses, and journal clubs. If students missed this initial application period to participate, I will reopen applications for the following year in the spring of 2018, so please be on the lookout for announcements. See http://bit.ly/jpp_club for more information about the journal club.
We also continue with our active JPP Mentoring Program for Junior Reviewers that provides an opportunity for students to co-review manuscripts for the journal alongside an experienced faculty member of the Editorial Board. Students may contact Susan Wood at the journal for more information on how to participate.
(2) Expand JPP’s Focus on Intervention Research and Enhance Quality of Reporting
The last several Editors of JPP have lamented the limited intervention submissions to the journal, which comprised ≤10% of the total published papers over the past 15–20 years. While this might reflect few interventions being evaluated in the field, it seems more likely to reflect a bias about submission of intervention studies to JPP, perhaps in favor of submitting them to condition-specific journals (Holmbeck, 2017). While we are interested in receiving primary efficacy outcome papers, authors should also consider submissions of secondary manuscripts focused on aims related to identifying moderators and mediators of treatment effects. Moreover, randomized controlled efficacy trials are not the only stage of intervention research of interest to the journal, and we encourage authors to consider other translational stages such as translation to practice (Hommel, Modi, Piazza-Waggoner, & Myers, 2015). To encourage submission of the full pipeline of intervention research to JPP, I will solicit editorials, commentaries, and review papers to further educate our readership on translational stages of behavioral intervention research. This will include recommendations for publishing rigorous intervention research across translational stages.
Over the years, I have been concerned about reporting practices for intervention studies. Although the journal has guidance to authors about reporting of randomized controlled trials using CONSORT, reporting practices continue to be highly variable. At this point, I believe it is clear that author instructions are not enough and that more targeted efforts are needed at the level of reviewer and editor to ensure higher-quality reporting in the journal and more success at publication of intervention studies in the journal. To address this need, I introduced a student position on our editorial team to review intervention studies with a specific focus on enhancing the quality and transparency of trial reporting. The first student to fill this position is Aimee Hildenbrand, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Nemours Health System. See her editorial (Hildenbrand, 2018) for a complete description. Instructions to authors for intervention studies have been updated, and now all intervention trials (randomized and nonrandomized) must use checklists following TREND guidelines for nonrandomized trials or CONSORT for randomized trials, and undergo an additional review for transparency in reporting. Aimee and I will be working together on special projects such as a review of trial registration and outcomes reporting that may help guide future policies for the journal. I believe that JPP could serve as an exemplar to other psychology journals in enhancing the quality of trial reporting.
(3) Enhance the Quality of Methodology and Statistics
I would like to continue prior Editor Grayson Holmbeck’s efforts to enhance the quality of research methods and statistical analyses in manuscripts submitted to the journal. Under his editorial term, an excellent special issue on quantitative methods (Karazsia & Berlin, 2014) was published providing a number of valuable resource papers. I would like to provide further guidance to authors by soliciting resource-type papers on specialized methods including intervention research (e.g., analysis methods and design issues), ways to enhance cross-sectional research, validation of measures, and updates on effect size reporting.
(4) Provide Practical Guidance on Writing Manuscripts
Prior Editor Denny Drotar prepared an useful series of “how to” editorials that provided guidance to authors about constructing effective papers for JPP including writing a convincing introduction (Drotar, 2009b) and reporting methods (Drotar, 2009a). More recently, Wu and colleagues wrote a useful commentary on writing qualitative research reports (Wu, Thompson, Aroian, McQuaid, & Deatrick, 2016). These are all freely available on the JPP website and I encourage authors to use these papers as resources.
Over my editorial term, I would like to continue this set of resources by also providing guidance in additional areas such as writing systematic reviews and writing and reporting intervention studies.
(5) Increase the Reach of JPP
There is opportunity to better disseminate the important research of authors by interacting with social media and using innovative marketing activities. Two new initiatives are already underway to address this goal. First, JPP is now on Twitter with Associate Editor Marisa Hilliard leading this effort to disseminate findings from the journal. Authors are highly encouraged to interact with JPP on Twitter at @JPedPsych. Second, Oxford University Press has begun a virtual issue campaign that provides coverage of topics of interest that can be disseminated broadly and made freely available (these are collections of related papers published in the past 2 years). The first virtual issue released last year focused on pediatric cancer, and I have plans to continue to use this forum to share the important research findings of our authors with new audiences.
(6) Use Targeted Invitations to the Editorial Board to Include Physician Investigators and International Scientists
I have established term limits on the Editorial Board to allow more opportunities for engagement by new editorial board members through targeted invitations. In particular, I have already filled spots with early career professionals and would like to now focus on targeting physician investigators and international scientists committed to research on the interrelationship of psychological and physical well-being of children. Historically, few physicians have served on our editorial board, although they represent an important group of collaborators and authors to the journal. I believe that JPP will greatly benefit from their increased involvement. In addition, the journal receives ∼45% of its submissions from outside the United States, but our editorial board does not reflect this diversity. I have started on a goal to expand the number of international scientists on the Editorial Board, and have recently recruited new editorial board members from Canada, Europe, Australia, and South America. I will continue these efforts over my editorial term.
(7) Enhance the Appearance and Ease of Use of the Journal and Website
In addition, I will continue to address details to enhance authors’ experiences interacting with the journal and website. This includes a new cover to enhance the appearance of the journal (as seen in this first issue). I am also in the process of working with Oxford University Press to make improvements to the website, particularly to increase ease of accessing author instructions and forms to ensure that submission to JPP is as seamless as possible. I have also implemented a process to access Oxford’s plagiarism software for every submission to JPP.
(8) Use Special Issues to Encourage Research Submissions on Topics That Are Important to the Field
I am continuing the work of prior editors on developing special issues to encourage submissions on topics important to the field. I hope this brings new and emerging topics to the journal as well as stimulates additional focus on areas that have been neglected in the field. For example, condition-specific special issues may be particularly useful in bringing more intervention research to JPP. I also see this as an opportunity to engage new guest editors with JPP and expand engagement.
Last year, when I talked with Denny about my interest in applying for the editorship of JPP, I told him about my ideas for the journal and in particular the influences he had on my vision. If he was still alive, I know he would have given generously of his time to review a draft of this editorial. Moments like this remind me of the tremendous loss in my own personal life and in our professional discipline with his passing in March 2017 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Over the next 5 years, I am dedicated to carrying on the important work that Denny inspired. It is a great honor and privilege to lead JPP as the next editor.
Conflicts of interest: None declared.