Psychology & Neuroscience celebrates its first anniversary

EDITORIAL

Psychology & Neuroscience celebrates its first anniversary

J. Landeira-Fernandez^{I, II}; A. Pedro de Mello Cruz^III; Dora F. Ventura^IV

^IPontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

^IIUniversidade Estácio de Sá, Brazil

^IIIUniversidade de Brasília, Brazil

^IVUniversidade de São Paulo, Brazil

We are proud to announce that Psychology & Neuroscience is celebrating its first anniversary. In this first year, the Journal published 24 peer-reviewed articles in its two semi-annual issues, which included eight comprehensive reviews and 16 original research articles authored or co-authored by researchers from different countries, including Brazil, Colombia, United States, Mexico, Spain, Japan and Australia. The articles covered all five thematic sections of the Journal – Psychophysics and Perception, Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, Plasticity and Neural development, Behavior/Systems/Cognition, and Neuropsychopharmacology. All papers were reviewed by experienced senior researchers which guaranteed the high quality of the papers. Due to the international nature of the submissions, in order to further ensure the quality and accessibility of the articles, Psychology & Neuroscience required that they be proofread by two independent readers.

The present issue (volume 2, number 1) includes 11 articles covering the above five thematic sections. Again, they are distributed into reviews articles and original research reports and reflect our main idealistic aim and efforts to maintain and increase the quality of the Journal. As observed since the first issue published in 2008, contributions were made by authors affiliated to important institutions from both inside and outside Brazil, now including a contribution from Germany.

It is well-known that achieving a high impact factor, as determined by the Thomson Institute for Scientific Information, is an important goal for a Journal, both pragmatically and scientifically. In order to receive an impact factor rating, it is necessary to be indexed major databases, such as Scielo, PubMed, and PsycINFO. One of the criteria for such indexing is the age of the Journal, and thus Psychology & Neuroscience is not eligible yet to apply for these databases. However, we are working closely with them, and the prognosis for inclusion of Psychology & Neuroscience in one or more databases looks promising for next year.

Despite the lack of an official impact factor at this moment, the adoption of an open-access policy ensures that each paper published in Psychology & Neuroscience achieves its maximum visibility. An open-access system allows any article to be accessible online, anywhere, by anyone, at no cost. One of the main consequences of this widespread sharing of knowledge is the fact that open-access articles are now cited more frequently (Lawrence, 2001).

Scientific visibility of Psychology & Neuroscience has been further enhanced by adopting the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system. Each paper receives a DOI name, which allows its content to be unequivocally and permanently identified in a network. The DOI name associated with each article is a better system than the generally used internet pointers to identifiers such as the URL, because it identifies an object as a first-class entity, not simply according to the place where the object is located.

One of the Journal´s main features has been the relatively fast peer review process. The average time from submission to manuscript acceptance was around four months. This was due to the invaluable help from the prestigious and committed Editorial Board, who kindly accepted this important task and performed it promptly.

Looking back, it is very gratifying to envision the two issues of Psychology & Neuroscience published last year as two of the innumerable bricks required to generate intellectual bridges between the areas of psychology and neuroscience. Publication in this major area of intersection between psychology and neuroscience has gained the Journal considerable attention, not only from Brazilian psychologists and neuroscientists, but also from the scientific community as a whole.

During this short but successful history, we have received very positive feedback from authors, reviewers and readers alike, and this inspires us to continue working intensively on this very hard but exciting project. The Journal would not succeed if we did not maintain high standards of excellence and scientific relevance of the research appearing in the Journal. Therefore, we are indebted to all our colleagues who have offered time and expertise to achieve this goal. It has been a pleasure to work with this outstanding group.

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the graphic designers and copy editors. In particular, we would like to thank our devoted copy-editor, João Paulo Machado de Sousa from the Universidade de São Paulo - Ribeirão Preto, who has been with us since the first issue of Psychology & Neuroscience.

References

• Lawrence, S. (2001). Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact. Nature, 411, 521.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Jan 2011
• Date of issue
  June 2009