EDITORIAL

 

Editorial

 

 

Cristiane Silvestre de Paula

Editor-in-Chief

 

 

Dear readers,

After a productive period as the editor-in-chief of the journal Psicologia: Teoria e Prática, Dr. Ana Alexandra Osório is leaving the position and becoming an Associate Editor. During the two years in which Dr. Osório was Editor-in-Chief, her hard work, in partnership with a strong editorial board committed to the journal, resulted in several significant achievements that helped to strengthen the journal, these include:

1) The establishment of an editorial board with renowned researchers from Brazil, other Latin American countries, North America, Europe, and Africa.

2) The publication of all papers in English, increasing their visibility and potential for access and citation. At the same time, most papers are also published in Portuguese, maintaining our commitment to make the documents accessible to all readers.

3) The online publication of articles in a continuous flow brought more agility to the approval and publication of articles.

4) Greater speed in the publication process, with the timeframe between submission and approval of manuscripts decreasing from 13 months in 2019 to 9 months in 2020. This shortened period became one of the important features of our journal in comparison with other Brazilian Psychology journals. Faster processing while maintaining quality is one of our main goals, and, in the coming years, we intend to accelerate this process even further.

5) A significant increase in the volume of manuscript submissions, from 90 papers submitted in 2019 to 160 in 2020, allowing an improvement in the variety and quality of the approved/published material.

6) The production of a special fast-track issue in 2021 about the psychological impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on individuals, families, and society.

In this issue, 140 expanded abstracts were submitted, resulting in 44 manuscripts being submitted. From this total, ten high-quality papers were selected for publication in the five sections of this special edition of the Journal: Psychological Assessment, Human Development, Social Psychology, Clinical Psychology, and Psychology and Education.¹

Alongside these papers, we also published a commentary coordinated by researchers from the renowned London School of Economics and Political Science about the impact of poverty on the mental health and life chances of young people aggravated by the Covid-19. This was based on the findings of CHANCES-6, an international multicenter project that analyzes data from samples from Brazil and five other developing countries.

The goal of our editorial team in the coming years is to maintain this level of quality and make further advances towards excellence in scientific production in line with the needs and values of the field of Psychology.

Some actions are already being taken to achieve this goal, such as the enlargement of our editorial board (section editors) to include researchers from different Brazilian universities, with the aim of better encompassing the diversity of our field, as well as to further increase the speed of the manuscript publication process.

In addition, to maintain the high quality of articles published in the journal, a checklist of recommendations will be made available for authors at the beginning of the submission process regarding the different types of data produced in these manuscripts (quantitative, qualitative, and review). Another important characteristic of the Psicologia: Teoria e Prática is transparency in the submission process. To this end, we will periodically provide some indicators related to the process, such as the number of papers accepted rejected.

Finally, we reaffirm our commitment to the highest ethical standards and the dissemination of relevant, current, and well-designed articles in the various areas of Psychology. All the material in the journal is freely accessible, and we encourage all researchers in the field of Psychology and related areas to submit new manuscripts.

 

 

1 To access the special issue go to: http://editorarevistas.mackenzie.br/index.php/ptp/issue/view/694.