ASU psychology professor Danielle McNamara has been named the first editor for the new American Psychological Association journal "Technology, Mind and Behavior."
"Technology, Mind and Behavior" will be one of the first parts of the APA’s new APA Open, an interactive open access journal.
“This journal is really conceived as an interdisciplinary journal,” said Annie Hill, an associate publisher for the APA. “It’s really looking at several different perspectives and how human behavior is affected by its interaction with technology.”
According to Hill, a search committee was formed to find the editor of the journal, and the committee called on members of the psychology community to nominate possible editors.
From there, the nominees submitted their curriculum vitae and the committee chose a short list. Those who made the list were required to submit vision statements and were asked questions. The committee then made a recommendation to the publication board to choose the new editor, Hill said.
At the end of the process, McNamara was chosen.
“They were looking at her extensive experience and stature in the field and her substantial editorial experience,” Hill said. “She served as associate editor in many journals and that experience is really important. We really need someone who covers the breadth of scholarship this journal will represent, and she really does.”
McNamara said the opportunity to be the editor for this journal was exactly what she had wanted. She said her degrees in different areas, including linguistics, clinical psychology and experimental psychology make her uniquely qualified for the role
“I’ve been invited to be an editor for multiple journals throughout my career and I’ve always said no," McNamara said. " ... This is the first journal I had a vision for that I was uniquely qualified to be the editor."
Now, McNamara is building her team of editors, the first being Shawn Green, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.
“It (the journal) acts as a home for a lot of different research I think would benefit from the people working in those domains having closer interactions together,” Green said.
Green added that people across different fields of psychology often publish research in very similar areas in different journals.
“Many times we are studying the same experiences but our research doesn’t really connect with one another … this journal can be a place where we see that all coming through,” Green said
In many ways, this journal follows the traditional outline for a research journal. Researchers will submit their research and McNamara and her board of editors will go over that research and review it. From there, they can reject it or accept it into the journal, McNamara said.
McNamara said "Technology, Mind and Behavior" is different from ordinary psychology journals. First, each edition will be comprised of 10 papers and be published solely online.
Research will be published when it is ready and on a rolling basis, which will prevent long wait periods that researchers face when publishing in a print journal, McNamara said.
Additionally, McNamara said they will encourage authors to publish all the data sources and programming code in order for the research to be replicated.
The first complete issue will come when there are ten papers, McNamara said. Her time as editor will last until 2025.
“I expect it to be a highly recognized journal with high-impact papers that are informing both the public and researchers on various aspects involving technology, mind and behavior.” McNamara said.
Reach the reporter at wmyskow@asu.edu and follow @wmyskow on Twitter.
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Wyatt Myskow is the project manager at The State Press, where he oversees enterprise stories for the publication. He also works at The Arizona Republic, where he covers the cities of Peoria and Surprise.
