Editorial.

03Original 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, as it has since the beginning (e.g., Ferster, 1958). A particular example of this long-running tradition is the upcoming January 2016 special issue on Comparative Cognition, edited by Edward Wasserman. This issue will contain articles reporting experiments on the behavior of Clark's nutcrackers, dogs, lemurs, orangutans, pigeons, rats, rhesus monkeys, robots, spiders, wolves, and an echidna (a monotreme marsupial egg-laying mammal). The issue also includes experiments conducted in a variety of settings, including the laboratory, a zoo, primate centers, and the wild. All these forms of research, in terms of species, settings, and topics, are welcome too in JEAB. The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior of course also continues to consider research on anything authors do that constitutes an experiment relevant to the behavior of individual organisms. One area of explosive research growth is delay discounting, which is the decline in value of temporally remote outcomes. A PubMed search using the term ‘delay discounting’ for the last complete year (2014) returns over 150 papers covering many topics of human concern, including addiction, obesity, and other health-related behaviors. Delay discounting has deep roots in JEAB, with seminal papers published here including Ainslie (1974), Chung and Herrnstein (1967), Mazur and Logue (1978), Rachlin and Green (1972), and Rachlin, Raineri, and Cross (1991). The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior has long been and will remain a central figure in this area, which represents a fantastic success story for basic behavior analytic work. Finally, I would probably be remiss if I did not note in some way that my editorship represents a new milestone for the journal: I am the first woman to edit JEAB. I don't know how it happened, that there has not been a woman in this role before me, nor how it is that I in particular am the one to be the first. I confess I find the topic awkward. Over the years and in different ways, I have had the good fortune to benefit from the helpful mentorship and encouragement of a number of former JEAB editors, including Vic Laties, Tony Nevin, Marc Branch, Rick Shull, Andy Lattal, Len Green, Jim Mazur, and Greg Madden. I thank them all. I suppose I should at least speculate about why it took until now for a woman to edit JEAB. I believe that this situation reflects at least in part the general underrepresentation of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010). The Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB) has traditionally drawn heavily on all STEM aspects. Women and girls are often encouraged in different directions than men and boys, and much of the fundamental skills and knowledge required for a career in EAB arguably fall into the realm of traditional male activities. The differential treatment of the genders takes many forms, some explicit, some implicit, some hostile, some well meaning, but together it adds up to fewer women than men in STEM disciplines (e.g., Beede et al., 2011; Hill et al., 2010). Studies document some of these forms. For example, parents and teachers of girls rank their math prowess as lower than boys with the same objectively measured performance (Espinoza, Areas da Luz Fontes, & Arms-Chavez, 2014; Yee & Eccles, 1988). College faculty are less likely to respond to the same email asking about research opportunities if the email comes from a woman than a man (Milkman, Akinola, & Chugh, 2014). Science faculty are less likely to offer to hire or mentor a student with the same exact qualifications if they believe the student is a woman than if they believe the student is a man (Moss-Racusin, Dovidio, Brescoll, Graham, & Hamdelsman, 2012). Notably, the biased responses to girls and women in these studies do not just come from men. Women show the same biases (although male scientists are more reluctant to accept empirical evidence of gender bias than are female scientists; Handley, Brown, Moss-Racusin, & Smith, 2015). Perhaps in part for reasons such as these that discourage women in STEM disciplines in general, there are fewer women than men involved in EAB at every level, from undergraduate students, graduate students, assistant professors … all the way up the line. Over the course of my career, I have been the only woman in the room many times. We cannot expect routine top-tier involvement by women in the field of EAB if there is not a strong pipeline. For women who reach the entry faculty level of their academic careers, hiring preferences in STEM disciplines actually favor equally qualified women over men (but not less-qualified women over more-qualified men; Ceci & Williams, 2015). Furthermore, drop out rates between the bachelor's degree and Ph.D. in STEM disciplines are now similar for men and women (Miller & Wai, 2015). The most efficient interventions would therefore focus on stages prior to the bachelor's level. Fortunately, there is a growing awareness and effort to encourage girls and women in STEM disciplines, and there are signs that it is working (Hill et al., 2010). For example, women now comprise the majority of engineering and computer science majors at some universities (McBride, ). More specifically, the number of women as first authors in JEAB has increased gradually since its inception (Laties, 2008) and now stands at 33% in 2014. Quite coincidentally, and as I have realized now only in writing this editorial, the current percentage of the board of editors who are women is also 33%, which again represents an increase across the years (Laties, 2008). To me, the Journal of the Experimental Analysis has always stood out for several reasons, chief among them being the high quality of work published here and the helpful review process (see also Madden, 2012). These will not change under my term. In an era when psychology is making news because less than half of its published findings are replicable (see Open Science Collaboration, 2015), I am comforted to know this is not the case with JEAB. Many experiments published here contain multiple replications of the phenomenon in the same experiment (see Sidman, 1960). Most experiments published here contain built-in replications and extensions of prior findings. This core soundness, I would argue, is the result at least in part of the focus on experiments relevant to the behavior of individual organisms. The result is an interlocking, cumulative web of solid, reproducible phenomena, many of which ultimately find beneficial uses outside their original publication in JEAB. Furthermore, reviews from JEAB are notably thorough, helpful, and respectful. I will continue the guidelines from my immediate predecessor Greg Madden of suggesting reviews be limited to two pages and decision letters by Associate Editors to the same (Madden, 2012) so as not to be inadvertently burdensome in the exuberance to help. Associate Editors at JEAB do not engage in the formulaic ‘vote-counting’ of reviewers for deciding whether a paper should be published that may sometimes occur in other journals (Madden, 2012). They read the paper independently and weigh the reviews as evidence to add to their own. The review process at JEAB can be so thoughtful and meaningful that in addition to authors of accepted papers, even authors of rejected papers express their appreciation, as in an e-mail I recently received in which the author asked me to please thank the reviewers for their helpful insights and to “convey my regards to them”. I, in turn, give my regards to you, JEAB readers, authors, and reviewers. I am thankful for this opportunity and I look forward to the next four years.

Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2015 · doi:10.1002/jeab.184