https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4432-0730
The Journal of Sport Psychology in Action is coming of age. JSPA has been assigned an impact factor of 1.8 based on performance from 2022. The process of gaining an impact factor is one AASP’s leadership, management, and I set in as part of the most recent AASP strategic plan. The landmark outcome just achieved confirms that this journal is beginning to emerge with a clear, distinct, and validated place within sport and exercise psychology. I extend a hearty congratulations to the aforementioned supporters, and to this journal’s editorial board, guest reviewers, contributors, and consumers.
This journal indeed has a place within the field of sport, exercise, and performance psychology, and it is a more important one than many of us understood when it began. The field of sport and exercise psychology is notably meant to be an evidence-based, science-driven, and transparent domain, accessible to those interested in motivation as pertaining to sport, exercise, and performance psychology. The norm in academic writing has often been to provide practical implications as the briefly stated culmination of empirical writing. The content in terms of practical utility has provided helpful hints of how sport psychology professionals, such as CMPCs, might adopt or adapt general strategies in their sharing of knowledge with clients. These suggestions would often be general, whereby the reader might “know of”, meaning they might gain a sense from afar of possible knowledge transfer. However, distillation to knowing by doing was not made clear. Knowledge transfer is an essential part of what the scientist—practitioner does, whereby evidence of utility is adapted in relation to one’s context, applied methodically, and continuously assessed for refinement.
When I began as JSPA Editor, there were several challenges that became evident. First and foremost was how to generate a pathway for this journal that could differentiate it from any other peer-review outlet in our field. As I indicated in two previous editorials in 2022, this journal is, and was always meant to be, different than any other. As opposed to competing with allied outlets for the same manuscript, this journal requires authors to be succinct. Manuscripts are typically concise, evidenced by the 12–15-page request denoted in our submission guidelines. Manuscripts to this journal also require a unique format. The theoretical and empirical basis found in manuscripts is meant to be streamlined, efficiently written, and clearly stated. Half of a concise submission is based on previous evidence, so as not to be proposed without existing thought as its founding tenets. The second half of the manuscript is then expected to be a clear, logical, with an easily applied pathway from previous knowledge to current application. Granted, contexts vary, as do practitioners. What remains, however, is the transparency from knowledge and knowledge bearer to knowledge seeker, followed by meaningful and contextualized knowledge transfer, and ideally, knowledge evaluation, and furtherance.
There have been several instances where submissions since my installation have been rejected because of lack of alignment of the submission with what the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action is seeking. Authors might have incorrectly anticipated that this journal would accept a manuscript akin to what allied journals in this field consider, but their efforts were misinformed. With many such a rejection I wrote a personal note asking the submitting author to consider a more closely aligned approach to what we seek as a JSPA manuscript, our telltale manuscript outcome. There were also frustrated authors encouraged to resubmit their work, as their approach was warmer that a straight research manuscript, but still not fully aligned with our mission and guidelines.
What I now see is word spreading about the JSPA. Submissions doubled in 2022 from 2021. In 2023, manuscript submission numbers are above those of 2022. Granted, it takes time for word to spread about a journal’s stylistic preference. With the emergence of an impact factor, this journal is now being recognized objectively as a serious contributor to our helping profession. Ideas that might have seemed exotic from the vantage of writing 12 years ago now seem to be normalizing, and intriguing. The theoretical and empirical basis to JSPA manuscripts must remain at the core of every successful contribution, but so too must be true practicality, in place of general suggestions and promises that seem opaque. Most every manuscript you will find in this journal will bring to the forefront the importance of science to practice, and practice to science. We are in exciting times, and there is no time like the present to read and write for the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action.
School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences, Laurentian University, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Sudbury, Ontario, [email protected]