Editorial

Abstract

It is an exciting time to become Editor of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. Over the past decade, JEAB has enjoyed an increasing trajectory of influence. The impact factor of JEAB is increasing, and exceeds or is similar to that of other, younger, journals that publish related content (e.g., Behavioural Processes, Learning & Behavior, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition). The number of articles submitted each year has also increased across this time frame. Thanks to my hard-working and thoughtful predecessors, my job as Editor over the next four years will be to stay the course of continued influence and improvements. As noted by Greg Madden in his previous editorials (Madden, 2013a, 2013b), the Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior formed a partnership with Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. The first issue of JEAB published under this partnership was in January of 2013. Since that time, the latency from submission of a manuscript to final publication has steadily decreased. The median time from receipt of an empirical manuscript to editorial decision is now about a month and a half. Authors enjoy manuscript submission and processing through ScholarOne (initiated by Editor Jim Mazur), along with the benefits of Early View to get their manuscripts published electronically as soon as possible after final acceptance. The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior is intended primarily for the original publication of experiments relevant to the behavior of individual organisms. This was the inaugural mission from the first issue in 1958 and remains so today. Authors have many more outlets for behavioral research than in 1958. At the same time, articles in JEAB increasingly incorporate wider theoretical influences, methodologies, and analyses. Although the mission is the same, the content has evolved as the content of the field of behavioral science has evolved. It would be odd indeed if the methodology and content were identical to that of the 1950's, or 1970's, or 1990's, or through the 2010's for that matter. Our science is not static: it is alive and changing, and JEAB's content reflects those changes. Translational research is one content area that has a long history in JEAB, dating back to the first issue in 1958 (Bijou, 1958; Flanagan, Goldiamond, & Azrin, 1958). This area was assigned a special editor relatively recently, in 2010. Along with the new Editor for Translational Research, Iser G. DeLeon, I consider translational research to be a bi-directional research strategy through which the discoveries of basic research are ultimately used to inform intervention for problems of practical significance. Translational behavior analysis has often taken one of three overlapping forms. In the first, the generality of basic processes is demonstrated in clinical populations (e.g., Ahearn, Clark, Gardenier, Chung, & Dube, 2003; Borrero et al., 2010; DeLeon et al., 2011). While this form may not be as widely appreciated as others, it can be critical when failures to translate reveal potentially important differences between the laboratory and other settings. In a second form, laboratory-derived principles are imported into the clinic to develop a novel intervention, refine an existing intervention, or otherwise illuminate the role of basic processes in the effectiveness of interventions (e.g., Kelley, Lerman, Fisher, Roane, & Zangrillo, 2011; Miller & Neuringer, 2000; Pritchard, Hoerger, Mace, Pennedy, & Harris, 2014). A third form is what Critchfield (2011) and others have termed “use-inspired basic research,” in which practical interests directly guide laboratory research to model clinical problems in the laboratory with human and/or nonhuman subjects (e.g., Mace et al., 2010; Sweeney et al., 2014; Sweeney & Shahan, 2013). All forms are welcome topics in JEAB. The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior also continues to publish research with a variety of species,