What constitutes editorial virtuous leadership

The International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (IJSEP) has reached a milestone – its 20th anniversary. Reflecting on the past two decades of scholarship found within the IJSEP, we take exceptional pride in being named among the editors who came before us. One of us, Athanasios, is soon to complete his tenure with the IJSEP, while Robert has served as co-editor and editorial partner with Athanasios, since 2016. During our eight years of collaboration, we have co-authored several editorials and commentaries relating to pressing topics such as sport psychology research in emerging countries (Schinke et al., 2016) as we sought to advocate for inclusion and diversity, and navigating physical activity in a socially distanced world during covid (Papaioannou et al., 2020), given the perils we all experienced in terms of mental health when we found ourselves in social bubbles, isolated from peers, friends, and family. More recently, we have invited experienced guest authors we know to be leaders in the field to share their perspectives on diverse topics, found within our 2023 instalments. Scholars including Stuart Biddle, Dan Gould, Diane Gill, Liwei Zhang, and Markus Raab generously agreed to be part of the IJSEP anniversary years, and we are grateful for their efforts and friendship. These named initiatives are mere suggestion of a thriving academic journal, seeking to be at the crest of sport, exercise, and performance psychology science to practice.

Within the current moment, we have also opted to consider, from a reflective vantage as authors, mentors, and as editors, what we believe should be the professional approach to editorship within the IJSEP. We believe, and hold firm, that editorial leadership within the academic realm should always strive toward a standard of excellence and professionalism in what they (including these authors) do and how editors should accord themselves with scholars and readership. According to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Confucius and modern philosophers (e.g., Anscombe, 1958; MacIntyre, 2007), psychologists (e.g., Fowers, 2012), and philosophers of education (e.g., Kristjánsson, 2007), excellence is, and must be, synonymous with virtue. There is no doubt that virtuous leadership is what all scientists expect as knowledge seekers, or at least they hope for, from their peer-review journal editors, as reasonable behaviour. Every editor will be regarded at a given moment as falling short in our attempts at virtue, but try, we must, with humility and sincerity.

With the present editorial we do not want to implicitly or explicitly imply that our editorial leadership has been more or less virtuous than editors in any other journal within our field and among our allied professions. Instead, we undertook this task of reflecting upon virtuous editorship by tapping into our experience through, perhaps, a thirty-thousand-foot vantage, to inform our society, the International Society of Sport Psychology, of what we believe must be the guiding light and vision shared with the next generations of editors and editorial board members should this journal seek to advance and strive for ever-higher standards. Our gaze must turn toward an approach that includes, but also extends beyond striving for ever higher numeric indicators, such as our rapid progress in terms of submission rates, citations, readership, and altimetric scores. How we do our business must be at the very core of our reputation; for it speaks to who we are and why we are making such earnest attempts. In short, this journal's leadership must be values-driven, with our gaze toward virtuous conduct.

Searching for virtues across cultures, and based on the legacy of Aristotle and Confucius, Hackett and Wang (2012) identified five cardinal virtues among leaders, described as universal by Petersen and Seligman (2004). These virtues are courage, temperance, justice, humanity, and wisdom. A sixth cardinal virtue might be either truthfulness/honesty (Hackett & Wang, 2012) or transcendence (i.e., a meaning or purpose larger than us) (Petersen & Seligman, 2004). The universal cardinal virtues, we propose, should characterise the editorial leadership of the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology.

Courage

As IJSEP editors primarily serve a society and science at large, they need to be courageous decision makers, especially when they realise that their journal does not serve its society or science well enough. Gershon Tenenbaum and Dieter Hackfort required courage to depart from Pozzi in 2003 when creating a new journal (IJSEP), now owned by ISSP. Likewise, it was a courageous decision to move for a third time within eight years since the inception of the IJSEP, from a well-known but small publisher in the field of sport psychology, to a large multinational publisher (Taylor & Francis) without roots in sport psychology until that time (Papaioannou, 2011). Courageous decision making is also required in everyday editorial practice. The editor(s) might accept a submission because there is something important in it that the reviewers or an associate editor might undervalue for various reasons, maybe because of theory indifference, or when its findings are not in line with current trends, perhaps because they come from a place lesser known in an English-speaking journal. Courage might also be needed when the editor decides not to accept a manuscript that does not meet the standards of the journal but is submitted by a co-author with international fame or by someone there is a pre-existing relationship to. There are many such considerations that must weigh upon an editor's deliberations as one seeks to find clarity in murky waters.

Temperance

Temperance is important to prioritise within one's editorial work, given that it is among other distractions, such as research, teaching, student supervision, societal commitments, applied practice, volunteerism, and such. Despite these weighing demands, one must stay committed in everyday editorial practice and respond promptly and with care and equity to authors, as they convey requests and share concerns regarding their academic contributions and lifeblood. Editor temperance is also needed to always communicate politely with reviewers, especially when they do not show sufficient responsibility and care in reviews, or when an editor faces ironic comments, rudeness, or even authors’ attempts to cheat in some extreme cases we have witnessed and sought to resolve. Importantly, temperance implies moderation and self-control over excessive response. It is hard to escape from the emphasis on journal metrics, for a journal is highly valued in scientific societies when metrics are achieved through long-term consistent emphasis on high quality of most published articles. However, such performance markers should not be derived from tricks that attract citations from very few highly cited articles. An editor in the IJSEP must always play the long game and seek a strong, wide base of good practices and well-constructed submissions as opposed to leveraging one's place in the immediate on a few favoured contributions.

Justice

Justice is to treat authors fairly, irrespective of who they are, whether they are famous or not and history of past interactions between editors and authors. This approach to justice applies to editors, associate editors, and reviewers. Our field is small, most of us know each other and we often judge submissions from colleagues that we know, sometimes as friends, and sometimes when frayed relationships exist. Justice is critical to minimise the effects of any kind of bias in the editorial process.

Justice is also important in the composition of the journal's editorial board. Equal representation of male and females, as well as scholars from different countries should be included in the Editorial Board. Furthermore, there must be diversity in values, beliefs, and worldviews. Although we are always falling behind in such standards despite deliberate effort, this is a policy that should be pursued continuously with a healthy appetite, and with interest in the present and foresight into the near future. Still, since its establishment, the IJSEP is among the few journals in sport psychology with an extensively broad representation of countries in its editorial board as well as in the authorship of articles. In 2022 eighty-one articles from 24 countries were accepted (18,79% acceptance rate), 58% of them from non-English speaking countries. There must be a place at the table for nations sometimes overlooked due to language diversity.

Humanity

Humanity is required to make good on the editorial commitment to others, particularly scholars who are less privileged. Within the ISSP Managing Council, it became clear to our co-editors that members from developed countries had access to written resources, such as books, academic journals, and web-based information, not accessible in several developing countries. Sport psychology knowledge seekers exist most everywhere, though clearly, access is not equal, and we must recognise this unfairness with compassion and concern. Consequently, a deliberate place at the table must be offered and encouraged of professionals, traditionally with less access to knowledge and professional dialog. We have attempted, albeit too modestly to this point, to address these concerns through the promotion of special issues, position stands, and key invited papers addressing issues and challenges. Within these encouraged submissions, awareness is advanced about disadvantaged individuals from fertile, but strained communities. From this awareness, our humanity must spring forth, bridging divides. Humanity is also needed to promote research in the less privileged parts of the world. Two special issues of the IJSEP focused on sport psychology in emerging countries (see Papaioannou et al., 2019; Schinke et al., 2016) are two examples of only modest efforts to present.

Wisdom

Wisdom is of paramount importance for editors to correctly assess any situation pertaining to submissions, whereby one can make the right judgments to achieve the right goals for the IJSEP. To become more explicit, we prefer the term “moral wisdom” to remind ourselves that wisdom should go along with integrity, implying both the means and ends of editorial actions should be morally sound. The emphasis on integrity and honesty across the entire editorial process is also at the centre of the sixth virtue of truthfulness suggested by Hackett and Wang (2012) and is linked with transcendence (Petersen & Seligman, 2004) because honesty is authentically achieved when one forgets one's own interests and primarily seeks to serve truth and science before one's personal, human feelings and the imperfections in behaviour that are part of our human condition.

Further virtues

Beyond the cardinal virtues above, some other traits that are closely linked with virtue are important. An emphasis on growth is found throughout Aristotle's philosophy and in modern thinkers and scholars in psychology (e.g., Ryff, 1989). Editors are asked to move the journal one step forward from where they had received it. An editor of the IJSEP is there to strengthen the journal, and not the inverse. When one of us took over as Editor in 2008, the journal was receiving less than 10% of the current number of submissions, while the journal had no Impact Factor (IF). The latter was particularly challenging within a scientific field where IF was standard among most other reputable journals, including the previous official journal of ISSP that continued its circulation after separating from the ISSP. For several years we knew that the IJSEP's mock IF was comparable to other journals in our field, but due to two previous mistakes of different publishers in the application procedure to acquire an IF, we expected patiently to apply for the third and final time for an IF. Today, the IJSEP is one of the leading journals in sport psychology both in terms of number of received submission and size as well as in terms of metrics, including, but not limited to its IF. Growth should go along with temperance, control of excess, and integrity.

Finally, empathy is important to understand various challenges that authors might face, such as writing in the English language when from a non-English speaking country or enclave. Though it is easy to say a contribution is not of the standard, and therefore should be dismissed out of hand, doing so sometimes silences perspectives that need to be heard, even if they take longer in the submission process to crystalise or convey.

Reflecting upon where the IJSEP must position itself, this journal must strive to be value driven. The values in need of ongoing germination, watering, and harvesting must be as pure as humanly possible to bear fruit. Though it is impossible for editors to step outside of their own form as they seek to do and be better, this is exactly what we believe must be the path forward for this journal. The International Society of Sport Psychology is a society open to all people, from all countries, political ideologies, and identities. The International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology will continue to expand the founding tenets of its parent society, and the people who are and will become its members base, with care, interest, and openness.