Brashears and Simpson Will Edit Social Psychology Quarterly

Dawn T. Robinson, University of Georgia

One of our discipline’s oldest journals, Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ), launched in 1937, one year after American Sociological Review (although the American Sociological Association did not take over the journal until 1955). SPQ was the first ASA journal to have co-editors, paving the way for the current trend of editorial teams among ASA journals. This summer, the stewardship of SPQ transitions to a new dynamic duo, Matthew E. Brashears and Brent Simpson. Brashears and Simpson will become the 25th editor(s)-in-chief of the journal. This editorial transition will take the journal to the University of South Carolina, a powerhouse in the subfield of social psychology for decades.

Besides the all-important task of designing the new cover for the journal, Matt and Brent have bigger designs on their mind. Their plans for stewardship of SPQ include building on the momentum already developed by the stellar previous editorships, including the current editors, Richard Serpe and Jan Stets. They plan to continue the efforts of previous editorial teams to further streamline and accelerate the review and decision-making process. In addition, they plan develop new guidance for reviewers to further reduce uncertainty at various stages of the review process. They hope to encourage submissions from a wider circle of sociologists and scholars across the globe and to adopt a more proactive stance toward publicizing research appearing within the pages of SPQ. Matt and Brent plant to continue the publishing popular research note format for publishing pithy contributions and encouraging the use of online supplements. Moreover, they want to move SPQ to the forefront of the movement for research responsibility and replicability by encouraging data deposits as well as the sharing of procedures, methods, robustness checks, code, and other information useful for reproduction and replication of empirical findings. In short, they want to make sure that the journal is in top shape for its next 80 years. Sociology’s premier journal in social psychology could not be in better hands. 

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