Editorial introduction

Happy 2022! We here at the journal have a lot to be elated about in the last year, 2021, and so much to be excited about in this new year! One thing we implemented in 2021 were journal-related honours and awards. When I became the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) in 2018 one thing I wanted to explore was the idea of having an annual best article award and a top reviewer of the year award, however, the timing was a bit premature as this was an idea that had not been historically explored at the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy (SRT).

Coming into my role as EIC, I had just served as the Virtual Issues Editor for the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy (JMFT) from 2015 to 2018. In this role I served with Dr. Fred Piercy, who was the EIC of JMFT, who in 2013 implemented the JMFT Best Article of the Year Award (Piercy, 2016), and the JMFT Reviewer of the Year Award. I saw how meaningful these honours were to not only the journal’s authors and reviewers, but also to the readers of the journal, as well as to the overall field of couple and family therapy. So, I thought when, and if, I ever had the opportunity to be an EIC of a top journal I would hope to implement similar awards. Thus, I am elated that this is happening for our authors who print published in our journal in 2021, as well as for our reviewers, who served in this capacity in 2021.

So, of the 81 people who served as reviewers in the year of 2021 (all of which are listed in this issue on a standalone page of appreciation), we had two people who reviewed more submissions than anyone else and in the timeliest manner. Hence, these two reviewers are being honoured with the very first Sexual and Relationship Therapy Reviewer of the Year Awards. One is Sarah Hechter, MS., LMFT. Sarah is a counselor at DuPage County Health Department in the state of Illinois. The second is Candice Maier, PhD., LMFT. Candice is an Assistant Professor in the Counseling, Rehabilitation, and Human Services Department and the Clinical Director of the Clinical Services Center at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. The work of these two outstanding reviewers was instrumental in the journal’s success last year and for this we are deeply grateful.

Of the 27 scholarly articles published in print in the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy in 2021, eight were selected to be considered for the first Sexual and Relationship Therapy Best Article of the Year Award in the journal’s history. These eight articles were chosen, because of all those articles published in print in 2021, these articles had the highest citation count, most views, most downloads, and/or highest Altmetric scores. Additional considerations in the selection of the articles to be considered for this award included the: timely nature of the content, overall quality of the writing and/or methodological approach, applicability and meaningfulness of the content to the field, the innovative nature of the contribution, and the promise to advance the field that is offered via the scholarship.

The way the best article was then selected was by sharing the eight nominated articles with the SRT Editorial Board and Guest Editor/s for evaluation using a standardized evaluation form. If any perceived conflict of interest existed (e.g., the author was one of the people reviewing, or a close colleague, or a student), the Editorial Member with the conflict of interest did not evaluate that particular article. Each Editorial Member then forwarded their ratings to SRT Editorial Assistant, who then compiled the results. The results were then shared with the EIC, who then shared the results with the COSRT Chief Executive. The EIC then informed the award winners and honourable mentions of their recognition and now we are sharing the winners formally for the first time in this, the first issue of the year in 2022.

So, without further ado, the Sexual and Relationship Therapy Best Article of the Year Award 2021 goes to first author, Dr. Kimberly Fuller (and co-author Riggs), for their article, “Intimate relationship strengths and challenges amongst a sample of transgender people living in the United States.” This article was published in Volume 36, Issue 4 and Taylor and Francis, the publisher of the journal, has made this award-winning article open access through June of 2022. In this article, Fuller and Riggs (2021) focus on the intimate relationships of transgender people within the context of their negotiating of psychological distress in relation to their experiencing of cisgenderism, which is the ideology that delegitimises people’s own understanding of their bodies and genders (Ansara, 2010; Ansara & Hegarty, 2012; Blumer et al. (2013). To explore this, the authors had participants complete an online questionnaire assessing psychological distress, relationships with partners, and partner support. Fuller and Riggs (2021) reported that participants in relationships were on average satisfied in their current relationship and also experienced relatively high levels of support from their partner. Furthermore, Fuller and Riggs (2021) found that the support one experienced from their significant other was related to lower levels of psychological distress. Below is a comment from one of the SRT Editorial Board members regarding this outstanding article:

• This is a solid study, particularly the theoretical set up for the study itself. I am particularly impressed with the focus on what remains an often-understudied population – transgender folx and their relationships. In addition, the inclusion of animal companions for support is incredibly insightful and creative. In addition, the clinical implications are clearly stated and applicable in working trans folx and their partners and animal companions. Very thoughtful study!

Of the eight nominated articles, we also had one article recognized as the Sexual and Relationship Therapy Best Article of the Year Award 2021 Honourable Mention, which was the article, “‘We are naked waitresses who deliver sex’: A phenomenological study of circumstantial sex” by first author Michael Curtis, MS. (and co-authors D’Aniello, Twist, Brents, and Eddy). This article was also published in Volume 36, Issue 4 and Taylor and Francis has also made this article open access through June of 2022. In this article, Curtis et al. (2021) share their qualitative themes from interviews conducted with ten commercial sex workers about their personal relationships, experiences in society, and access to therapeutic care. The six themes that emerged were: (1) financial freedom, entrepreneurship, personal agency and self-exploration, (2) the temporal nature of the adult industry, (3) disclosure as a continuously impactful process, (4) compartmentalization as protection, (5) segregation and isolation, and (6) therapeutic experiences and preferences. The authors’ identified clinical implications are in alignment with many of those shared in our 2019 SRT special issue that was focused on the personal and professional lives of sex workers (Sprankle & Bloomquist, 2019). Such implications emphasize sex worker-affirming psychosexual and relational therapy practices, which includes an emphasis on self-of-the-therapist processes like authenticity, genuineness, and management of judgment (Antebi-Gruszka et al., 2019; Bloomquist & Sprankle, 2019). Below is one of the comments from SRT Editorial Board members regarding this article:

• It is a fantastic study of the lived experiences of one of the most marginalized populations: sex workers. Most of what has been written previously about sex workers has not been done with sex workers in mind, but with assumptions about them, without speaking to them. This study actually paid attention to listen to sex workers’ voices, and analysing the data of their own reported experiences. It is a very important paper because it can help challenge the many pre-conceived assumptions of sex working, the conflation between sex work and sex trafficking, and the motivation of sex workers for entering and staying in the profession. This paper is going to be very helpful in educating sex therapists in being less judgmental and provide guidelines on how to better understand the multi-dimensional life of sex workers so that therapists make less assumptions based on biased views. I hope that this study will encourage other studies to pay more attention to this population.

As you can see, we have a lot to be proud of here at SRT and we are looking forward to the incredible scholarship to come in 2022!

A note of appreciation to our 2021 reviewers

We here at the journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy deeply appreciate the work of our reviewers. Our reviewers are instrumental to the journal’s success. So, we just wanted to take a moment to thank each of our reviewers from 2021 [see list below in alphabetical order by last name]:

Jaffar Abbas

Parvin Abedi

Jeffery Adams

Sheila Addison

Serdar Aydin

Madeline Barger

Meg-John Barker

Christopher Belous

Eric G. Benotsch

Katie Bloomquist

Adrian Blow

Scott R. Braithwaite

Omer Onur Cakir

Seyhan Cankaya

Manju Chawla

Raven Cloud

Jennifer Conner

Jaclyn Cravens

Lisa Cunningham

Michael Curtis

Cyndi Darnell

Rita DeMaria

Hacer Yalniz Dilcen

Farnaz Farnam

Brittany Farrow

Judith Fogel

Tsung-chieh Fu

A. Chur-Hansen

¹*Sarah Hechter

Coreen Haym

Debra Herbenick

Heather Hessel

Sam D. Hughes

Kevin Hynes

Robert Irwin

Safieh Jamali

Harneet Kaur

M. F. Kilinc

Kyle Killian

Toby Klein

Kara Langin

Nathan D. Leonhardt

Mark Levand

*Candice Maier

Robin Milhausen

Ghada F. A. Mohammed

Silva Neves

Kimmery Newsom

F. M. Nimbi

Megan Numbers

Emily Nusymowicz

Nurive Ozengin

Cennet Safak Ozturk

Maria Manuela Peixoto

Panagiotis Pentaris

Nicole Prause

Jae Puckett

Uzma Rehman

Nikki Rotunda

David Rowland

Aoife Sadlier

A. Sansone

Lena Nilsson Schonnesson

Juan Carlos Sierra

Ben Snyder

Eric Sprankle

Richard Sprott

William Stayton

Kyle Stephenson

Lindsay Sycz

Lis Tomlin

Hülya Yurteri Türkmen

Jaroslava Varella Valentova

Laura Vowels

Armeda Wojciak

Mark Wolfe

Paul S. F. Yip

Chun-Qing Zhang

Xiansheng Zhang

Kevin Zimmerman

Notes

1 *denotes named one of the Sexual and Relationship Therapy Reviewer of the Year Award winners