I am delighted for the members of the Association of Child & Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH) and everyone connected with the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry – the journal is now ranked first in Developmental Psychology internationally in the recent impact factor tables. It’s an extraordinary achievement in many ways and especially timely as it occurs on the eve of our 60th anniversary celebrations next year (2019). We are humbled to be placed above such field leaders as The Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, The British Journal of Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine.
It’s somewhat ironic that we have achieved this position given that I, as Editor-in-Chief, am on public record as saying how wary we should be of making a high impact factor an end itself – especially if it distorts our overall mission and biases our editorial processes. Because of this wariness JCPP has never let the impact factor agenda shape its strategy, values or its operational or editorial decisions. These remain firmly focused on publishing the most important and high quality papers across the full breadth of child psychology and psychiatry – the quality of ideas they contain, the strength and reproducibility of the science they report, its ethical character and the clinical relevance of their findings. All, this, of course, ultimately to the benefit of children with mental health problems and neuro-developmental disorders and their families – we never lose sight of that.
To our mind the JCPP’s achievements in terms of impact factor is better regarded as a vindication of this mission and a natural by-product of the fact that we are making the right editorial decisions, in the right way, efficiently and in the appropriate time frame. A journal lives and dies by the quality and timeliness of those editorial decisions and I would like to take this moment to thank each and every member of our wonderful team of brilliant and committed editors (past and present), the wonderful publications team in the office, Wiley-Blackwell our publisher and the leadership of ACAMH for all their support.
Discussion
Congratulations Edmund, the JCPP Editors and editorial team. This is wonderful news and, as you say, a happy byproduct of your long term drive and ambition to increase the quality of the research published in JCPP. Very much deserved. Very proud to be working with you.