Publishing in Journals Outside the Box: Attaining Mainstream Prominence Requires Demonstrations of Mainstream Relevance.
Package your ABA findings like pediatric news and send them to children's medical journals.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Friman (2014) wrote a how-to guide for behavior analysts who want doctors to read their work.
The paper gives step-by-step tips for placing ABA studies in pediatric medical journals instead of behavior-only outlets.
What they found
Plain language and medical framing let ABA articles slip past the usual gatekeepers.
Editors outside our field will publish our work if we speak their language.
How this fits with other research
Normand (2014) makes the same point for any non-ABA journal, so the two papers echo each other.
Normand et al. (2021) and Napolitano et al. (2025) stretch the idea further, pushing ABA into public-health and policy arenas instead of just pediatric pages.
Joyce et al. (1988) previewed the theme decades earlier, but without the pediatric-journal playbook.
Why it matters
Next time you finish a study, aim it at the doctors who will use it. Swap jargon for everyday words, add a short medical-style abstract, and submit to a pediatric journal. One publication there can reach hundreds of clinicians who have never opened JABA.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Primary pediatric medical care is as mainstream as any major cultural practice in the USA. Thus, publishing behavior analytic papers that pertain to problems that present in pediatric settings in pediatric medical journals is one route to mainstream relevance. With sufficient numbers of such papers, it could even lead to prominence. This article describes examples of publishing in pediatric journals and some lessons I learned from the experience. For example, (1) all child behavior problems that present in pediatric settings are of social importance but most are high-frequency, low-intensity problems that are not necessarily exotic or representative of serious pathology, and they usually respond to straightforward behavioral applications; (2) it is usually best to use a "colloquialized version of learning theory" when writing for and speaking to pediatric providers (and the families for whom they provide care); (3) pediatricians often have limited knowledge about behavior analytic research designs; and (4) when submissions are rejected by pediatric journals, the rejection can be exploited as an opportunity to educate pediatric editors and reviewers.
The Behavior analyst, 2014 · doi:10.1016/0890-6238(90)90063-2