CPPP Editorial Column

Updates from Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology – August 2023
Editor-in-Chief: Christina L. Duncan, PhD

Summer has somehow flown by, and autumn colors and cool breezes will soon surround us. Before we know it, pumpkin flavors will be available in just about anything we eat and drink!

We are excited to announce that Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology has been accepted into the Web of Science (WoS) Emerging Source Citation Index and recently received our first official Impact Factor of 1.1! As we formalize plans to apply for MEDLINE indexing in the next year or so, we continue to make efforts in fine-tuning our editorial processes (e.g., standard checks for transparency requirements around IRB approval, COI, and funding), maintaining a consistent theme of pediatric health across our journal content, and enhancing the overall scientific rigor in our publications. We certainly will feel some “growing pains” as we strive to further enhance our journal’s reputation but recognize that the outcome will surely benefit our authors, the Society of Pediatric Psychology (SPP), and our profession.

Editorial Team

I extend my sincere gratitude to our fantastic team of associate editors - Drs. Thomaseo Burton, Diane Chen, and Nicole Kahhan - as well as our ethics special section editor, Dr. Victoria Miller. Their input into the future vision for CPPP and each of the articles they manage has been significant and valued. Additionally, many thanks to our editorial board members and invited reviewers for their commitment to ensuring that CPPP publishes top quality articles to inform the science and practice of pediatric psychology. We look forward to serving our readers and welcome emails sharing comments, suggestions, or ideas (Christina.Duncan@mail.wvu.edu).

Special Issues
We currently are finalizing manuscripts for our 2023 Special Issue, “Innovations in the psychological care of pediatric disorders of gut brain interaction.” This collection of articles is guest edited by Drs. Bonnie Essner and Shana Boyle and will be published in December. Our next planned Special Issue is “Intersections of religion, faith, spirituality, and pediatric psychology,” guest edited by Drs. Thomaseo Burton (CPPP Associate Editor) and Caroline Kaufman, with an anticipated publication in December 2024. Additional future special issues planned will highlight projects led by learners (i.e., students, interns, or fellows) as first authors (and related articles and commentaries on topics tied to mentorship and sponsorship), as well as pediatric traumatic stress. Stay tuned for these announcements soon! Our journal website (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/cpp) provides details regarding these special calls. If you have an idea for a special section or issue topic, please reach out to me at Christina.Duncan@mail.wvu.edu. We are very interested to hear from our readers on what they want to see in CPPP!

DEI Activities

In partnership with the Journal of Pediatric Psychology and its editorial team, we are establishing checklists for authors and reviewers to ensure effective and appropriate reporting and consideration of DEI in the published articles of our respective journals. We also plan to publish an editorial to provide further context and discussion of this important next step.

Social Media & Marketing

You may have noticed our new cover design for CPPP in 2023! We kept the color scheme consistent with the SPP logo to help make CPPP recognizable as an official SPP publication. We also recently advertised for a new position, Social Media Chair, to grow our presence on Twitter (@CPPP_APAJournal) and other social media platforms. We are seeking an enthusiastic new team member who is at the post-doctoral or early career (i.e., within 5 years of degree) level. This person will engage with the editorial team during their regular meetings and create and implement strategies to improve our journal’s social media presence. Consistent with Dr. Schurman’s efforts as previous editor of CPPP, we will continue to disseminate infographics from a key article in each issue and to identify some “virtual” collections over time to highlight trending research topics.

General Call for Papers
We continue to have a solid rate of submissions to CPPP and welcome the opportunity to consider your work in the future. As a reminder, CPPP will consider various types of submissions, such as brief reports, case studies, qualitative analyses, quality improvement works, topical reviews, systematic reviews/meta-analyses, advances in training, and ethics topics, in addition to more traditional empirical clinical studies. We are especially interested in articles that address topics of DEI and practice-related advances, as well as challenges in the field of pediatric psychology nationally and internationally. Please see the website (http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/cpp) for up-to-date journal information and submission guidelines. Please do not hesitate to reach out with questions regarding your potential submission.

---

JPP Editorial Column

 

Updates from the Journal of Pediatric Psychology – August 2023

Editor-in-Chief: Avani Modi, PhD

Happy End of Summer! We recently received our Impact Factor scores and are proud to say we have maintained JPP’s Impact Factor at 3.6 (note that the process changed this past year and now they only use one decimal place). This was despite a lower number of manuscript submissions (255) for the journal in 2022 compared to prior years. I am happy to report that our submission numbers are back up (~175 submissions to date), and we look forward to your continued submissions for 2023.

This was also the first year we published a JPP Supplement issue from the 2023 Society for Pediatric Psychology Annual Conference abstracts. We look forward to partnering with conference organizers this upcoming year for the second SPPAC abstract supplement in time for the conference.

JPP Editor and Support Team

Thank you to our amazing team of Associate Editors (Marisa Hilliard, Chad Jensen, Kristin Long, Cecelia Valrie, Katie Devine, Kurt Freeman, and Emily Law), SPP Student Journal Club Co-Chairs (Karen Dimentstein and Caroline Roberts), Social Media Chair (Alex Monzon), and Transparent Reporting Editors (Andrea Fidler and Kelly Rea). Also, a big thank you to our reviewers and Editorial Board members for taking the time to review manuscripts and ensure we publish high caliber science within JPP.

JPP Portal Updates

We have made a number of updates this year to our submission site and our author instructions to simplify the process (https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/pages/author_instructions), including using word limits instead of page limits. In addition, we have simplified the reviewer buttons to focus on the critical concepts associated with manuscript reviews to reduce reviewer burden. We hope to update our reviewer instructions to align with these changes in the next month.

DEI efforts

We are partnering with Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology to create DEI-focused checklists for future submissions across both journals, as well as an Editorial to discuss the need for these changes.

Special Issues

We have several special sections/issues coming up this year.  Two special sections are ongoing and are focused on 1) Clinical Trials and 2) Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Pediatric Psychology. We accept papers with these foci throughout the year and feature them in special sections within each issue of JPP.  A special series will also be featured in 2023 from the SPP Fall Conference focused on Injury Prevention, which is guest edited by Drs. Chad Jensen and Emily Law. We also have three special issues. The first is focused on Improving Digital Health Implementation in Pediatric Populations: From Design to Sustainment, being managed by Drs. Alexandra Psihogios and Colleen Stiles-Shields. These papers are due by December 1, 2023. The second issue is focused on Prevention, with co-editors Tiffany Rybak, Katie Devine, and Christopher Houck.  Finally, Drs. Emily Law and Katelynn Boerner are serving as guest editors for a special issue with invited submissions focused on Contemporary and Cross-Cutting Evidence-Based Interventions in Pediatric Psychology. This special issue builds upon Dr. Palermo’s Evidence-Based Treatment issue from 10 years ago in JPP.

JPP Student Journal Club

Our JPP Student Journal Club has been going strong this past year, with several wonderful new commentaries and webinar sessions. We have another open call for applications (due August 15^th) from undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, or doctoral trainees, interested in being considered for the JPP Student Journal Club this summer, so stay tuned. Learn more at https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/pages/journal_club