Reflections on the Journal of Applied Psychology in times of change.

Abstract

In the 2 years since my last Editorial, the world is arguably a different place. We have experienced a global pandemic, social justice reckoning including the Black Lives Matter movement, and increasingly pronounced political division in the United States (Dimock & Wike, 2020). Closer to home there has been increased interest and support for open science practices by professional associations, funding agencies, and journals due to the recognition that greater accessibility, transparency, and reproducibility can improve our science (Nosek et al., 2015). This Editorial focuses on two major initiatives that we undertook during these turbulent times at the Journal of Applied Psychology: The Call for Papers on the COVID-19 Pandemic With a Rapid Review Process and the implementation of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines (https://www .cos.io/initiatives/top-guidelines) on November 1, 2021. COVID-19 Call for Papers With Rapid ReviewThe Call for Papers began on April 10, 2020, just 29 days after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic. We received 828 new COVID-19 submissions (including 188 articles submitted on the deadline). Of these 828 submissions, 51% (n = 423) were desk rejected and the remaining 405 manuscripts were sent out for external review. To date, 50 COVID-19 papers have been accepted yielding an overall acceptance rate of 6%. As of this writing, four final COVID-19 manuscripts are in the revision process.I sincerely appreciate everyone's enthusiasm for this initiative (and during a global pandemic nonetheless)-the authors who submitted original research, the 330 COVID-19 reviewers, 1 the COVID-19 Associate Editors, and the other Associate Editors who held down the fort with regular submissions. Special thanks to APA for supporting the Call for Papers and to Jennifer Wood in the Editorial Office for handling the logistics of the Call for Paperswith over 800 submissions, we could not have done it without her. Was the COVID-19 Call for Papers Successful?We designed the call to attract original quantitative and qualitative scholarship aimed at understanding work-and employment-related phenomena associated with a COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of the Call for Papers was to publish relevant and methodologically rigorous research quickly, so that our science could be rapidly available to practitioners, organizational leaders, and employees. The sections that follow take stock of whether we accomplished this goal by reporting on the rapid review process and summarizing the results of a systematic review of the 50 accepted articles in response to the Call for Papers. 2 Rapid ReviewConsistent with our promise for rapid review, the average initial review time for decision letters (excluding desk rejections which averaged 3 days) was 27 days, over 50% faster than our goal of 60 days for regular submissions. All accepted papers were published within 1 month of the author completing the required paperwork, with the first article (Sergent & Stajkovic, 2020) appeari...

Management Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

“…As noted earlier, the process of conducting and publishing management research is not “nimble” (Dykes, 2021), and this posed a practical challenge for researchers interested in studying the implications of the pandemic. It is not surprising, then, that the majority of the research that we reviewed was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology , which made a call for papers on the COVID-19 pandemic that included a “rapid review process” (Eby, 2022). It was required that papers submitted as part of this process be short (≤17 pages), and editorial decisions and requested revisions were expedited.…”

“…Overall, our evaluation of this literature is that it is quite rigorous despite the rapid reviews that were used. Indeed, Eby (2022) reported that the acceptance rate for COVID-19 papers at the Journal of Applied Psychology was only 6%, and the articles that we reviewed employed a variety of theoretical perspectives and utilized research designs that were typically methodologically strong, including the use of multiwave/source survey data, archival data, laboratory experiments, field studies, qualitative data, and so on. In some, these methods were combined through the use of multiple studies.…”

“…This endeavor prompted top journals to publish not only commentaries and thought pieces about the potential managerial implications of the first global pandemic in over a century (e.g., Malhotra, 2021) but also empirical work regarding organizations during this pandemic. Most notably, the Journal of Applied Psychology issued a call for papers on the pandemic, which received >800 submissions that resulted in 55 articles 1 published on this topic (Eby, 2022). Some of these studies complement prior findings from the management literature, such as the positive influence of female leadership in times of uncertainty (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2010; Sergent & Stajkovic, 2020); however, other studies provide new insights.…”

Moving boundaries on what I-O has been, and what I-O can be: The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as an organizing framework

“…The first of these studies (Sergent & Stajkovic, 2020), published under the “Understanding Work and Employment in COVID-19 Pandemic” heading, appeared in August 2020. The call ultimately generated 828 submissions and 50 published articles (Eby, 2022). In the spirit of transparency and open science, all COVID-related articles published by JAP as a result of this call were free to read through the journal’s website.…”

Improving our understanding of predictive bias in testing.

“…Organizational and societal interest in predictive bias and its implications for college admissions, as well as human resource selection and placement, is directly related to ongoing concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), which are considered part of the grand challenges of the 21st century (Eby, 2022; George et al, 2016). Moreover, “historically, testing and assessment has been linked to larger eugenics and white supremacy efforts that have tried to prove, through science, that African Americans and other non-whites are intellectually and culturally inferior” (Davis & Martin, 2018, p. 48).…”