Editorial

December 2006 marks the end of my first 3 years as Editor-in-Chief of European Psychologist and brings about some changes in the editorial team. Two of our Associate Editors, Adrian Furnham, University College London, and Gün Semin, Free University Amsterdam, are standing down after 3 years of hard work supporting the journal - and thereby the broader academic community, of course; my sincere thanks to them and my good wishes for their future endeavors. My grateful thanks too to Anastasia Efklides, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Katariina Salmela-Aro, University of Jyväskylä, and Lars Bäckman, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, who have also given me wonderful support as Associate Editors, and who have agreed to stay on for a further 3-year term.

An announcement for nominations for two new Associate Editors has already been published (see issue 3/2006 and www.hhpub.com/journals/ep/). Although the closing date for nomination was set to August 31st, if you have a personal interest or think you know someone who would be eminently suitable for such a post, please do get in touch. I do not consider the positions closed until they are in fact filled. Likewise, if you are interested in acting as reviewer or perhaps even joining the Editorial Board (where we will also be implementing some changes in the new year), then please contact the editorial office. Addressÿdetails are given on the inside cover of the journal.

In the light of the end of this year marking the midpoint in my term as Editor, I thought it appropriate to reflect a little on developments at European Psychologist and on how the aims I set at the start of my editorship have been met.

As you may recall, the main aim of our editorial policy has been to maintain the excellent standards set by the founding Editor, Kurt Pawlik, while seeking to expand the outreach of the journal and to encourage submissions from all fields encompassed by psychology. In particular, emphasis has been placed on fulfilling the mission of the journal, namely, to be a direct source of information regarding both basic and applied research throughout Europe and other regions of the world; to make European psychology visible globally; to promote scientific and professional cooperation among European psychologists; and to increase the visibility of EFPA in both Europe and beyond.

Looking back over the last 3 years I think I can say that we have indeed made good progress in fulfilling these aims. In particular, 2005 was a milestone for European Psychologist, not only because of our significantly increased submission rates and satisfactory reject rate (currently 70%), but also because we received our first listing by ISI and hence our first-ever impact factor (for 2004). This was admittedly modest at .691 and a ranking of 51 out of the 100 journals listed in the somewhat challenging category of “Psychology Multidisciplinary,” whereby EP must compete with some of the giants of the publishing world such as the Annual Review of Psychology, the Psychological Bulletin, the Psychological Review, and the American Psychologist, who rank 1 to 4, respectively, in this category. In case anyone is not sure what the impact factor (IF) of a journal means, it is a measure of the frequency with which articles in a journal have been cited in a particular year (the number of citations in a given year to articles published by a journal in the two previous years are summed and divided by the total number of articles published by the journal in the same period (for a fuller definition and explanation see http://scientific.thomson.com/free/essays/journalcitationreports/impactfactor/). However, in support of our claims that European Psychologist is becoming a premier broad-spectrum outlet for the work of psychologists both in Europe and beyond, the most recent impact factor (for 2005) already shows an important improvement: 0.849 with a ranking of 43 out of 101 journals, referred to by ISI as a remarkable increase.

The success of a journal, however, lies not just in its impact factor, but more in the service it offers to its readers and to its authors - in other words success centers around the material it publishes and how quickly decisions are made with regard to the material submitted for publication. The offer to authors was that they would receive an editorial decision within 60 to 90 days of submitting their manuscript, and this has been easily met during this editorial term. For example, in 2005 the average time for the first editorial decision was just less than 2 months, and for the second editorial decision (i.e., from receipt of revised manuscript) just over 1 month. These are excellent lead times for which European Psychologist can be justifiably proud especially -ÿbearing in mind that all manuscripts are subjected to an extensive external peer-review process at all stages.

With regard to service to readers, when I look back over the past 3 years I feel we have provided a broad coverage of the field (as is the expressed mission of the journal) delivered by a good blend of senior researchers of high international repute and younger, up-coming scholars. There has also been a good diversity of articles ranging from single research papers to organized sets of papers related to a common theme. The latter have primarily taken the form of special sections overseen by guest editors who are experts in a field and able to bring together very high-quality research on some “hot topic”; but we have also had articles or reports with commentaries by other leading authors, often with a response by the author of the source article. In addition, we have provided readers with news articles, book reviews, and a calendar of forthcoming events.

First and foremost, however, the journal is centered on bringing readers articles of the highest quality and scientific rigor on the most important topics of the day, covering both basic and applied research. In 2005, for instance, single research papers addressed various issues related to distress and health across the lifespan. Flouri (2005) found that early parental involvement was negatively related to psychological distress in mid-adulthood, even after controlling for various current sociodemographic variables. Read et al. (2005) reported that individuals' sense of coherence was associated with resistance resources, such as good cognitive functioning and social capital, which in turn was related to physical and mental health among people in their late 60s. Strelau and Zawadzki (2005) studied victims of traumatic experiences such as explosions in coal mines and flooding catastrophes. They found temperamental factors buffer or augment the role of the traumatic experience in the development of PTSD, measured even 3 years after the disaster.

European Psychologist is always interested in papers that have a particular relevance to the scientific foundations of social policies. An example is the review by Lujic et al. (2005) on psychobiological theories of smoking and smoking motivation. They showed that various types of smoking motivation in part follow a sequence during the initiation and maintenance of smoking, and therefore require different theoretical approaches to best explain interindividual differences. Obviously, such a paper has ramifications for the public debate on policies related to the ban on smoking in public spaces.

Another focus of research papers in 2005 was on psychological interventions to promote competitive and to avoid risk behaviors. Fernandez-Ballesteros (2005) introduced the “Vital Aging-M” program for optimal aging, with commentaries by Almeida (2005) and Kruse (2005). Using multimedia, and based on a comprehensive understanding of the aging process, the program aims at promoting psychosocial factors to increase well-being; evaluation results have been encouraging. Iversen et al. (2005) compared approaches to changing young peoples' risk attitudes and traffic-related behaviors, and found a traffic-safety campaign superior to a behavior-modification program. Many other issues of similar relevance were addressed in research papers (naturally not all of which can be covered in a 1-year period), from psychology of interindividual differences to the application of psychology in industrial-design processes.

During 2005 two Special Sections were published in European Psychologist. One edited by Efklides brought a collection of papers on the role of affect in the self-regulation of behavior. Self-regulation refers to goal-setting in accordance with one's self as well as to the enactment of the resulting action. The various papers addressed component processes, such as the role of interests (Sansone & Thoman, 2005) and of mood states (Gendolla & Brinkmann, 2005) or dealt with the social context of joint action regulation (Salonen et al., 2005). In a wider perspective, self-regulation of action is of particular relevance for collaborative research across disciplines whose core is human behavior.

The Special Section by Salmela-Aro and Schoon (2005) on human development and well-being explicitly referred to the social and economic contexts. Based on studies comparing historical periods (Veenhoven, 2005) or countries (Schoon et al., 2005), it seems clear that satisfying opportunities and roles with regard to economics and intimate relationships are the key to life satisfaction. In a particularly interesting observational approach, Delle Fave and Massimo (2005) demonstrated that the pivotal element in such roles is the experience of complex and socially meaningful challenges and activities. Feldt et al. (2005) showed the relevance of early experiences for the sense of coherence achieved in midlife. Other papers, such as Caprara and Steca (2005) and Daukantaite and Bergman (2005), addressed the role of affect and self-regulation during earlier periods of the lifespan (and thus related nicely to the Special Section edited by Efklides).

In an ideal world, a Special Section takes stock of a problem and comes up not only with a synthesizing view on future frontiers of research, but also with a new insight into the mechanisms of a psychological phenomenon. In this regard, I want to draw your attention to the recent Special Section by Bäckman and MacDonald (2006). Taken together the contributions allow the validity of various claims concerning the famous association between decline in cognitive performance and impending death to be evaluated - read about the results for yourself!

We have also tried to ensure a European-wide coverage, as befits the title of our journal and its mission of being a “direct source of information regarding both basic and applied research throughout Europe.” When looking at the range of countries covered by both author origin and research focus I think I can say that we have come very close to achieving this. Given that the European Union currently comprises 28 countries (including acceding and candidate countries), since 2004 we have published articles representing about two-thirds of them. For example, in issue 1/2005 we had papers focusing on two different aspects of psychology in Poland (Brzezinski & Strelau, 2005; Furnham, Wytykowska, & Petrides, 2005), on the risk attitudes and behavior among Norwegian adolescents (Iverseen, Rundmo, & Klempe, 2005), as well as news articles covering Hungary, Malta, and Iceland.

Although we have to take the “European” part of our title seriously, it does not mean we are not interested in or would exclude the rest of the world. Indeed, we have strong submissions from outside of Europe, especially from the United States, Canada, and Australia, and I am especially pleased to note that many papers are coauthored by researchers cooperating across borders. A splendid example of this is the paper on psychological differences among university students in Central and Eastern Europe concerning emigration (Frieze, Boneva, Sarlija, & Ferligo et al, 2004), which involved researchers from the United States, Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Russia, and the Czech Republic.

European Psychologist is also the official organ of EFPA, and as such it is very interested in bringing readers information concerning professional developments and generally developments in the areas of teaching and training. A good case in point was the focus on the assessment of professional standards and progress toward a European-wide standard in qualifications in psychology in line with EU policy. In particular, the development of a European Psychology Diploma was covered by three papers by Lunt (2005), Bartram and Roe, (2005), and Poortinga (2005). These papers were complimented by commentaries by two experts in the field, Fisch (2005) and Frederickson (2005), and by a reply by Lunt (2005), all of which formed an exciting and comprehensive coverage of this very urgent and important current topic.

Finally, I should like to come back to the lifeblood of any journal - submissions and authors. If you are interested in submitting a paper (either as an empirical article, a review, or a report), then it couldn't be easier. Just go to our website (www.hhpub.com/journals/ep/) where you will find advice to authors and a very user-friendly online submission portal. And should your paper be accepted, then you can be sure of very high visibility indeed - the electronic fulltext of European Psychologist, starting with Volume 1 (1996), is available online at www.hhpub.com/journals/ep/index.html and via PsycARTICLES™ at www.apa.org/journals/epp.html, which is a database of fulltext articles from the journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, the Canadian Psychological Association, and Hogrefe & Huber Publishers. All of which means your work can be accessed by the 13,000 plus individuals and institutions that currently hold licenses! Also, if you would like to send a news article, then please get in touch. As already mentioned, full contact details are given both in the journal and on the web. I am looking forward to hearing from you.