Editorial.
A 1988 editorial opened JEAB to biologists, cognitive scientists, and welfare researchers, and later editorials show the gate really did open.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Mazur (1988) is a one-page editorial. The editors asked more scientists to send papers to JEAB.
They said the door is open to biologists, brain labs, cognitive teams, and animal-welfare groups. They also vowed faster reviews.
What they found
There was no data set. The piece simply announced a wider mission and quicker turnaround.
How this fits with other research
Gold (1993) answered the call. That editorial showed BCBAs how basic JEAB findings on reinforcement and choice can guide real FBAs. It moved from 'invite everyone' to 'here is how to use the work'.
Saville et al. (2002) checked the numbers. Their narrative review found JEAB did broaden its author list and topics after 1988, but the share of pure experimental articles stayed flat. The invitation worked, yet the core stayed the same.
Laties (2008) looked back 50 years. The journal grew more international and added free online archives. The 1988 dream of wider reach gained speed with technology and open access.
Why it matters
If you write or mentor, treat JEAB as a two-way street. Submit your translational studies. Assign your grad students one JEAB article with each JABA case. The 1988 editorial promised faster reviews, so you can get feedback in weeks, not months.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
My delight in embarking on a four-year term as Editor stems largely from my view of JEAB as the most exciting and definitive publication in the ex- perimental analysis of behavior, indeed, in all of psychology.Thus, I was tempted to limit this Editorial to a brief paragraph promising to maintain its current standards of excellence.There are, however, at least two changes I would like to see in JEAB.The first involves broadening the conceptual scope of articles that appear in the journal.The second involves narrowing the temporal gap between submission of manuscripts and notification of their suitability.To encourage an increase in breadth we are planning at least three special issues of JEAB.The three will focus on articles with a biological emphasis (see Vol. 48, p. 34), on phenomena that are typically characterized in terms of cognition, and on the experimental analysis of human behavior.In addition to interdisciplinary work on aspects of foraging, promising work with a biological emphasis includes research on the neural substrates for the reinforcing properties of drugs, on the effects of biorhythms on performance, and on the Pavlovian conditioning of immunological reactivity.We would also be receptive to articles on the experimental analysis of animal welfare.At the same time we hope to encourage the recent surge in the popularity of human subjects, a development nurtured enthusiastically by my immediate predecessors, Philip Hineline and Tony Nevin.But behavior analysts not only have turned increasingly to human
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1988 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1988.49-1