APS Journal on Research Practices and Methods Launches

APS’s new journal devoted to research methods and practices now has an editorial team in place and is now accepting submissions.

Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science (AMPPS) is APS’s sixth journal. AMPPS will be published quarterly, initially both in print and online, and will also use the “Online First” publication practice employed by other APS journals. The first issue will appear in early 2018.

Daniel J. Simons (University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) has been named Editor-in-Chief of the new publication, and has assembled a team of Associate Editors that includes Pamela Davis-Kean (University of Michigan), Alex O. Holcombe (University of Sydney), Michael Inzlicht (University of Toronto), Frederick L. Oswald (Rice University), Jennifer L. Tackett (Northwestern University), and Simine Vazire (University of California, Davis). (Vazire is also an APS Board Member.)

AMPPS also will be served by an advisory council of scientists who represent the extensive spectrum of research interests and methods of the APS membership. The advisory council will provide guidance and suggest topics for the publication, and includes Dorothy V. Bishop (University of Oxford), Anna Brown (University of Kent, United Kingdom), Lorne Campbell (University of Western Ontario), Chris Chambers (Cardiff University, United Kingdom), Charles Randy Gallistel (Rutgers University), Ellen Hamaker (Utrecht University, the Netherlands), Moritz Heene (Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich), Alison Ledgerwood (University of California, Davis), Betsy Levy Paluck (Princeton University), Russell A. Poldrack (Stanford University), Victoria Savalei (University of British Columbia), Yuichi Shoda (University of Washington), Barbara A. Spellman (University of Virginia), Sanjay Srivastava (University of Oregon), Eric-Jan Wagenmakers (University of Amsterdam), and Rolf A. Zwaan (Erasmus University Rotterdam). (Gallistel is APS Past President.)

Submission guidelines are available on the APS website. The editorial scope of the journal will encompass the breadth of psychological science, with editors, reviewers, and articles representing a balance among diverse disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches.

Consistent with APS’s mission, AMPPS also will bridge and integrate conversations on scientific best practices in various areas of psychological science, including practices that can apply across subfields, from clinical to social to neuroscience. It also will make methodological advances available and accessible to the full range of APS members, not just expert methodologists and statisticians, Simons noted.

“Experts likely will find the contents interesting, but the primary audience will be the broad spectrum of psychological scientists: people who want to improve their own research practices and are looking for resources to help them do so,” he said.

APS President Susan Goldin-Meadow said the journal will strive to be the leading resource for peer-reviewed, widely accessible information and insights on research methods and practices.

“We’re proud to be in the vanguard of the changes that are taking place in our field,” Goldin-Meadow said. “AMPPS marks a momentous step forward in APS’s commitment to promoting strong research practices, innovative methodologies, and open science.”

AMPPS will have two main sections. The Empirical section will include new research adopting innovative methodological approaches. APS’s Registered Replication Reports (RRRs) — large-scale, multicenter replications of important findings aimed at giving more precise estimates of effect sizes — will migrate from Perspectives on Psychological Science to this section of AMPPS. Other forms of multilab collaborations will be published in the journal as well.

The Research Practices section will include tutorials, metascience papers, simulation and modeling papers, commentaries, information about new research tools, debates about best practices, and more. Occasional special sections with commentaries, debates, and other articles also are planned.

AMPPS is the latest in a series of initiatives that APS has taken in recent years to strengthen research practices. In addition to the RRRs, these include:

• awarding badges in recognition of open science practices in Psychological Science and Clinical Psychological Science, an incentive now being adopted by other scientific journals; and
• signing onto the Transparency and Openness Promotion TOP guidelines, a multidisciplinary initiative to promote open science practices in all areas of scientific research.

AMPPS will take those efforts further by serving as a go-to source for information and insights about improving standards and approaches to empirical research.

“This journal will be unique in the field, will complement APS’s existing journals, and will reflect APS’s leadership in strengthening psychological science findings through innovation and change,” said APS Executive Director Sarah Brookhart.