We are so pleased to be taking the reins of Health Psychology Review. This journal has an important place in the field in that most other prominent journals in health psychology emphasize empirical contributions over review papers. Quantitative reviews such as meta-analyses, qualitative meta-syntheses and theoretical reviews that propose new ways of conceptualizing the relationship between psychology and health are important for assessing the state of health psychology research and moving it forward. The journal has had an impressive impact factor nearly since its inception.
We also see room for growth. We view health psychology as having three broad domains: health behavior and behavior change; psychology of illness and especially chronic illness; and psychophysiology (e.g., psychoneuroendocrinology, psychoneuroimmunology). Past journal content focused on health behavior and behavior change content, with less coverage of the latter two domains. We hope to facilitate growth of content in these domains in the journal while maintaining the excellent content relating to health behavior.
Toward that end, we have announced a special issue on New Directions in the Biology of Stress. You can see the call for papers at https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/health-psychology-biology-stress/. We are seeking both empirical and theoretical reviews focused on, for example, new taxonomies of stress with implications for biological correlates, new biomarkers that may be affected by stress, and new appreciation for how personal, social, and cultural contexts may affect stress-biology relationships.
Increased interest in methodology has arisen from ongoing conversations about replicability and related concerns in psychological science. As such, there is room for more coverage of methodology in health psychology with an eye toward making the literature more robust and replicable. In addition, the journal is promoting more open science. Since January 2020, we have required that authors share their data for empirical reviews (e.g., meta-analyses). Acknowledging the lag between starting a review and finishing it, we encourage all authors to preregister reviews, but will not require preregistration until January 2021.
There are also some changes to the way the journal does business. First, previous practice was to require authors to identify themselves and encourage reviewers to identify themselves. However, so few reviewers were signing their reviews that it seemed prudent to return to double-blind review until the culture of reviewing changes more. Second, we are authors too, and we know the work involved in reformatting papers for different journal requirements. We have moved the journal to format-free submission. Papers should still be well structured with appropriate signposts (headings, subheadings), and tables and figures should still be well formatted. However, if you feel (for example) that it is better for a figure to accompany the text associated with it, you can embed it in the text. Papers will not be returned for failing to adhere to APA style. For more information, go to https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rhpr20/current and choose Instructions for Authors, then Format Free Submissions. Finally, the journal has a publication backlog, but we are investigating options to reduce the time to print publication. Of course, your papers will be available online before print publication.
We conclude by thanking Professor Martin Hagger, Founding Editor, and Professor Linda Cameron, one of the Senior Associate Editors, for their leadership and stellar work to get the journal to this point. We would also like to thank the members of the Editorial Board, for their excellent service to the journal. Finally, we are delighted six of our expert Associate Editors will be continuing with the journal. We look forward to continuing to build the journal with them over the next few years. Please consider HPR for your next review. We look forward to reading your papers.