Abstract
A year ago, I noted in this space that personality psychology stands at a crossroads: The content range that our science spans has expanded considerably in recent years, demanding ever–broader skills and knowledge from its researchers. At the same time, rapid publication, especially of ‘splashy’ results, is increasingly important to career progression. This is a recipe for exactly what appears to be occurring across the sciences: Too little of what is published in its journals can be replicated. Journals’ editors thus face a choice. We could help our authors build ‘good’ careers by prioritizing splashy over rigorous, or we could prioritize fostering rigorous scientific research. I stated pretty strongly a year ago that my then–newly–launched editorial team was uniformly enthusiastically pursuing the latter course, with the full support of EJP's former editors, publisher and the executive board of its owner, the European Association for Personality Psychology. We remain committed to that course and believe that, over the long run, this will serve the careers of our authors even better. A career built on credible, replicable research is one that is built to last.
Since then, we have implemented a new checklist to help reviewers evaluate papers for the presence of features likely to contribute to ‘soft’ results. Last spring, we published a European Personality Review target article on improving replicability in personality psychology, along with 15 well–considered peer comments. When we have cleared the publication backlog the journal had accumulated, we will be formally launching the Strong Inference Section I announced in this space last year, with several target articles and peer comments intended to increase the theoretical rigour of the field. This year will also feature a fine special issue on personality development edited by Associate Editor Jaap Denissen that has the same intent.
We are also among the charter journals to adopt badges to acknowledge open practices as developed by the Open Science Collaboration. The badges will acknowledge those papers (and thus their authors) that meet standards for openness of methods, data or research process. Openness is a core value of scientific practice. Once the implementation details are complete, we will offer explicit recognition to papers that include information on how to access the data on which they are based (Open Data Badge) and/or that make the components of the research methodology (measures, computer code, details of coding, etc.) publicly available (Open Materials Badge). In addition, we will be offering the Preregistered Badge for any paper reporting a study for which the design and analysis plan was submitted in advance to an institutional registration system such as ClinicalTrials.gov or Open Science Framework (http://osf.io/). This will also require that registration pre–dates realization of the outcomes, that the reported design and analysis fully correspond to those registered and that any additional analyses be noted as such.
Papers will not be required to pursue or earn these badges to be published. The intent is to offer recognition incentive for open practices that increase credibility of the reported research. If you are interested in submitting a paper that might qualify for any of these badges, you will now find a place to indicate this in the submission portal—an option in the first information item, Manuscript Type. You should also describe the badge(s) for which you believe the paper qualifies and how it meets the requirements in more detail in your submission cover letter. The specific badge requirements are now listed in the journal's author guidelines at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/%28ISSN%291099–0984/homepage/ForAuthors.html.