An overview and analysis of journal operations, journal publication patterns, and journal impact in school psychology and related fields

Publication criteria and recommended areas of improvement within school psychology journals as reported by editors, journal board members, and manuscript authors

“…Clearly, there are a significant number of responsibilities that need to be met and a significant number of skills that need to be displayed to produce a manuscript that is appropriate for submission to a scholarly journal. For example, it has been recommended that authors, before submitting a manuscript for review, confirm that the target journal is still appropriate, review the journal editor's guidelines for submission, and proofread their manuscript (see Floyd et al, 2011;Martinez, Floyd, & Erichsen, 2011;Nihalani & Mayrath, 2008).…”

“…The peer-review process begins when a manuscript is submitted and the editor or an editorial assistant acknowledges receipt of the manuscript, assigns it a number, and reviews the manuscript for its fit in the journal. On occasion, the editor will reject the manuscript without full review (see Floyd et al, 2011), but if the manuscript is deemed an acceptable fit, the editor assigns it to an action editor. The action editor selects possible reviewers whose expertise would allow them to provide an appropriate review of the manuscript and the manuscript is either sent to these reviewers in hard copy form or the reviewers are emailed invitations to review.…”

“…The most common editorial decisions are "reject: revise and resubmit" and "reject," as represented in journal rejection rates (see Floyd et al, 2011). When revising and resubmitting a manuscript, authors typically include a letter to the action editor stating exactly what was changed, where it was changed, and how the change satisfies reviewers' recommendations.…”

“…As evident in Floyd et al (2011), most manuscripts do not meet publication criteria established by the journal editors and are consequently rejected by action editors. For example, the APA primary journals had an average rejection rate of 71% (SD= 12.52, range= 31%-88%) in 2010 (APA, 2010), and the journal of APA Division 16 (School Psychology), School Psychology Quarterly, had a rejection rate of 72% in 2010.…”

Design and Validation of a Rubric to Assess the Use of American Psychological Association Style in scientific articles

“…Floyd et al (2011) signal different reasons as to why the manuscripts that are presented to the publications for evaluation are rejected and imply the fact that the selection of said works by the editors is centered around general aspects, as well as other specific reasons. Among variables to evaluate are: the theme of investigation, methodology, writing, and the format of the manuscript.…”