There are a few changes in the horizon at the Journal of Economic Psychology.
First, effective January 1st, we are giving up double-blind reviewing. This method has become quite ineffective in a time when working papers can be found online at a keystroke. It is also a source of errors, delays, and incompatibilities of all types. So we are switching to single-blind reviewing (anonymous reviewers but known author identities), as most journals in our broad area. As soon as this change is implemented, we will be able to move forward on different fronts. One example is effectively allowing “My Paper, My Way,” where authors can essentially ignore format restrictions and papers bypass the initial administrative checks. We cannot do that now, because checks are necessary to make sure that anonymity is respected. Another example is starting to actually use Transfer Services, where a journal can suggest a transfer to another, more appropriate journal instead of rejecting the paper, and just forward the file. Again, we cannot do that right now, because the other candidate journals are not double-blind, so the manuscript needs to be changed anyway.
Second, we are opening the journal to short contributions. There will soon be a new Article Type, “Brief Articles and Replications,” limited to 4,000 words in length. We already allowed for replications (successful or not) of previously-published studies (and a Special Issue on that is coming out soon). The novelty are Brief Articles, which include focused reports on single empirical studies, data re-analyses for new purposes, variants of previously-published empirical studies (especially those published in the journal), and short formal-analytical contributions linked to well-established empirical phenomena. Brief Articles do not include opinion pieces, qualitative studies, or verbal discussions of the literature (such contributions are out of the scope of the journal).
Third, as part of Elsevier’s slow move away from the rather-uncomfortable EVISE platform and toward the more user-friendly Editorial Manager, the journal will soon follow suit (hopefully still in 2019). Everybody who has had to work with the bug-rich EVISE in the recent years will realize what a relief this is for the editorial team, but the interface is also much more comfortable for authors.
There are a few more changes and news coming, which I will announce here as soon as they are decided. For now, my co-editor Eldad Yechiam and I are quite excited about bringing the journal into a more dynamic era, and we believe that the three steps that we are taking now are all in the right direction.
Carlos' Ramblings 