Authorship Trends in The Analysis of Verbal Behavior: 1982–2016

Abstract

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior (TAVB) is the only journal focused on theoretical and empirical research in verbal behavior. An assessment of authorship trends can provide a critical perspective on practices in verbal behavior analysis (e.g., participation by non-US institutions, contributions by female authors). The present study examines authorship trends in all articles published in TAVB since its inception (between 1982 and 2016). All authors and their affiliations were listed and the first authors denoted as such. Authors were characterized as follows: prolificacy, new vs. frequent contributor status, number of co-authors, editor status, fellow status in a professional organization, and gender. Institutional affiliations were characterized as follows: academic vs. nonacademic institutions, prolificacy, and location (country). The review included 383 articles by 487 authors from 200 institutions. Our findings revealed areas in which TAVB is reaching maturity (e.g., author gender) and areas in which further action by contributors and editors is needed (e.g., international participation). Keywords Authorship trends. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior. Verbal behavior Verbal Behavior News was created in 1982 by the Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group (VB SIG) of the Association for Behavior Analysis. This newsletter provided up-to-date information on developments in verbal behavior (VB) research and teaching. More substantive submissions led to the creation of a journal, The Analysis of Verbal Behavior (TAVB), in 1985 (Sundberg, 1997). From its inaugural issue, TAVB has primarily focused on publishing original papers pertaining to verbal behavior (Skinner, 1957).

In Memoriam: Jack Michael (1926‐2020)

“…The story goes that he had been teaching classes on verbal behavior since he started in academia back in 1956, using a mimeographed version of Skinner's William James Lectures (Esch & Esch, 2016;Sundberg, 2013). Over the years, Jack's former students, all of whom have taken VB at least once, 1 played an active role in disseminating Skinner's analysis of verbal behavior, by conducting research, teaching classes on the topic, serving as editors, associate editors and reviewers, as well as playing important roles as area coordinators for the Association for Behavior Analysis International annual conferences and being actively engaged in its Verbal Behavior Special Interest Group (Dal Ben & Goyos, 2017).…”